14:12–20 The Lord does not explicitly mention Judah as the target of his judgment; the principles he describes apply to any “land [that] sins against me by acting faithlessly” (v. 13). This makes it easier for the Lord’s hearers to acknowledge the fairness of his judgment, unencumbered by their own feelings about Judah, and makes clear that the Lord has not unfairly singled Judah out for judgment. Nevertheless, it is clear that Judah must be the country in view, since only a nation in covenant with the Lord could “act faithlessly” against him (v. 13). This terminology elsewhere describes marital unfaithfulness (Num. 5:12, 27) or some other breach of a covenant relationship, such as stealing an object dedicated to the Lord (Josh. 7:1) or breaking an oath made in the Lord’s name (Ezek. 17:19). These are not abstract transgressions but sins against someone with whom one is in a relationship—“sins against me,” as the Lord puts it. The judgments described are not random acts of violence but precisely the legally required covenantal punishments threatened in Leviticus 26 should Israel break her covenant with the Lord.

The point of the passage is not simply that covenant breaking leads to covenantal punishment, however. That is taken for granted. The point is that when such a curse comes upon a land, even the most righteous men cannot deflect that inevitable judgment by their presence. Four parallel scenarios of judgment are sketched. In each a different covenant curse is imagined as descending on this hypothetical land: famine through a breaking of the bread supply (Ezek. 14:13; cf. Lev. 26:26), wild beasts (Ezek. 14:15; Lev. 26:22), the sword (Ezek. 14:17; Lev. 26:25), and pestilence (Ezek. 14:19; Lev. 26:25). These four judgments have already each been threatened against Judah in Ezekiel (4:16; 5:12; 5:16–17). In each case the hypothetical land contains three righteous men: Noah, Daniel, and Job (14:14, 16, 18, 20). In each case they are unable to save anyone but themselves through their righteousness and intercession.

Noah, Daniel, and Job are linked together by the common motif of standing firm for righteousness in a corrupt generation. Righteousness here is primarily a relational term, just as “sin” and “faithlessness” are. These men are righteous not so much in terms of moral perfection but in terms of faithfully following the Lord. Noah was a “righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Gen. 6:9) who famously did save his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law through his upstanding behavior when all around him perished in the flood. God described Job to Satan as a model of righteousness (Job 1:8), which Job demonstrated by trusting God despite great suffering and provocation from his wife and his friends (though in his case his own personal piety did not spare his children). Meanwhile, Daniel’s faithfulness would be well known to Ezekiel’s fellow exiles.103 One might suppose that such a group of “superheroes” together in one place could ward off any danger to that location on the basis of the principle of covenant solidarity, whereby the fate of a family unit or a people is often determined by the obedience (or otherwise) of its covenant head. After all, the Lord would surely not sweep away the righteous along with the wicked, as Abraham argued centuries earlier (Gen. 18:23). Yet, as the example of Sodom and Gomorrah demonstrates, if a city contains only a few faithful people, the Lord can deliver them out of the judgment he is bringing on a city; the presence of Lot and his family in its midst certainly did not spare Sodom, though Lot and his daughters survived (Genesis 19).104

14:21–23 If a land with three such heroes of righteousness within it would have no survivors (apart from the three men themselves) when attacked by a single judgment curse of God, what will be the fate of Jerusalem—which has no such righteous remnant—when attacked by all four of God’s judgment curses at the same time: the sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence? Surely everyone in the city, man and beast, will be wiped out. Yet the story has an unexpected ending.105 There will be a remnant, some survivors emerging, shell-shocked, from the rubble. They are not saved because of their own righteousness or the righteousness of the head of their family, however. Indeed, they are not said to be delivered at all (Hb. natsal, as in Ezek. 14:14, 16, 18, 20) but rather “brought out” (yatsaʾ), like prisoners of war.106 They survive simply in order to serve as an object lesson for those already in exile. When the exiles see the depravity of those who have survived the holocaust, they will realize that the Lord has not brought this judgment upon Jerusalem without cause (v. 23). This dawning reality will console the exiles as it reminds them of the Lord’s justice and holiness. The judge of all the earth will indeed do what is right (Gen. 18:25). At the same time it leaves open the hope of the exiles that some of their own sons and daughters, whom they left behind in Jerusalem, might yet survive the coming destruction of the city.