Ezekiel 14:12-14

The Lord spoke to Ezekiel again. He revealed that Jerusalem’s great sins had made deliverance from divine punishment impossible. Evidently some of the exiled Jews were remembering God’s promise to Abraham that He would deliver Sodom if there were enough righteous people in it (Genesis 18:22-33). Surely, they thought, there were enough righteous people in Jerusalem that God would not destroy it.

"This attitude is nothing less than using the saints as an insurance policy to cover the sinners. It has been a human failing in every generation. A community is a trifle embarrassed to have a saint among its number, but it derives a sense of security from his presence, rather like the possession of a religious lucky charm. A family with no pretensions to spirituality is often glad to have a minister of religion in one of its branches, however far removed." [Note: Taylor, p. 128.]

When sin had gone so far that Yahweh stretched out His hand in severe judgment by famine, even the righteousness of a Noah, a Daniel, and a Job could not save the nation. Noah was the only righteous man of his day, but his righteousness did not avert God’s judgment on the rest of humanity. Daniel was righteous, but his presence in Jerusalem had not precluded the deportation of many Judahites. Job’s righteousness could not even prevent judgment that touched his family members and possessions. All three men were righteous men who lived amidst unrighteousness-Noah, a pre-Israelite, Daniel, an Israelite now living in Gentile Babylon, and Job, a non-Israelite. Some scholars believed the Daniel in view was not the Daniel of the Book of Daniel, Ezekiel’s contemporary, but a character in a Canaanite epic. [Note: E.g., ibid., p. 129; Stuart, p. 130; and Allen, p. 218.] Most conservative commentators have rejected this view. [Note: For a rebuttal of it, see Cooper, pp. 163-64.] If these three men lived in Jerusalem, the Lord would deliver them for their own righteousness, but He would deliver no others for their sake. God had, in fact, delivered Daniel from the coming destruction of Jerusalem by removing him safely to Babylon. God would have spared Sodom if only 10 righteous people lived there (Genesis 18:33), but He would not spare Jerusalem if three of the most righteous people in history lived there. Jerusalem’s guilt was greater than Sodom’s.

"Noah, Job, and Daniel-each one of them faces a distinct challenge that demands a profound level of faith. The issues that confronted them: faith in the word of God amid prevailing scientific skepticism, faith in God in spite of acute suffering; faith in God displayed in a situation of sophisticated pluralism, choosing to accept death rather than dishonor God." [Note: Jo Ann Davidson, "’Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job’ (Ezekiel 14:14; Ezekiel 14:20)-Why These Three?" Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 12:2 (Autumn 2001):143-44.]

"All of them were tested and proved faithful, Noah by the Flood, Daniel in the lions’ den, and Job by painful trials from Satan." [Note: Wiersbe, p. 188.]

The Lord said that this principle of judgment applied to "a country" (Ezekiel 14:13), any country that acted treacherously against the Lord.

"It probably is sufficient simply to note that the hypothetical situation has both a general character (note that Noah, Daniel, and Job are all associated with non-Israelite contexts) and a specific application to Israel. The point of the passage is that Israel was under a divine judgment that was irreversible in its very nature." [Note: Cooper, p. 162.]