I Found None

A hotel conference room, one verse on the screen, and a speaker asking who here will stand in the gap. Hands go up all round the tables.

Four words at the end of the sentence rarely make the slide. But I found none. Then the next verse: Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. By the time Ezekiel wrote this down the search was over and it had failed.

Read the list it comes at the end of, because the search covered everybody. Her prophets, in a conspiracy, like a roaring lion ravening the prey. Her priests, who have put no difference between the holy and profane. Her princes, like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. Then the ordinary population: The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy.

The gap is a hole in a city wall. Ezekiel had used the picture before, aimed at the prophets: Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle. So the man being sought is a defender standing in the breach while the enemy comes through it, and the charge is desertion under fire. The role had been filled once in Israel's memory, and the psalm that says so gives the name: had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath. Jerusalem's walls came down inside Ezekiel's own lifetime.

Nothing here promises what one praying person can avert, and Jeremiah ran the same search through the same streets and came back with the same finding. What the chapter puts to you is harder than the hands going up. That search covered prophets, priests, princes and the people of the land. If it came down your street this week it would not be looking for volunteers.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 144 is Joy Comes in the Morning (Psalm 30:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two