NOTES for Eze 22:1-31
The denunciations of the sinful city, so familiar to readers, are suddenly interrupted by a question: who could stand in the breach in the fortress wall to shield the people from God's wrath? Truly, His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. We are accustomed to expecting the punishment of sinners as their just reward; we are ready to accept God's mercy, which surpasses every notion of justice, but what the Lord reveals to us here surpasses human understanding itself. One might even say that passages such as these, which people would scarcely have thought up on their own, are precisely what testify that the Bible is the Book of Revelation.
Thus the Lord, even after showing us what we are worth and deserve, is so unwilling that we should perish that He Himself calls us to stand before Him and intercede for those who are perishing. And if we are created in His image and likeness, then our humility before Him consists not in self-abasement but in agreement with God and acceptance of the responsibility entrusted to us. And the day will come when He Himself, becoming one of us, will show us the example by standing in the breach on Calvary.