Therefore tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Repent and turn away from your idols; turn your faces away from all your abominations.
Now God shows why he had threatened the false prophets and the whole people so severely, namely, that they should repent; for the object of God’s rigor is, that, when terrified by his judgments, we should return into the way. Now, therefore, he exhorts them to repentance.
These elders came feigning piety, sitting gravely as God's people do, but God saw what they truly were: idolaters playing at religion, consulting the prophet as they would any false oracle, curious and self-deceived. Bad men have always dressed themselves in the clothes of devotion.
AI summary
Commenting on Ezekiel 14:1-11
Therefore say unto the house of Israel,.... Deliver out the following exhortation to repentance unto them; for God's end, in all his threatenings and judgments, is to bring men to repentance: thus saith the Lord God, repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; or, "turn, and cause to be turned from your idols" (w); turn yourselves from the worship of idols, as the Targum, and...