Ezekiel 22:15
And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee.
The word came through a prophet of priestly family to whom God first revealed His glory and great majesty in wonderful visions, so that having once seen God he would not fear the face of man in meeting sinners. He labored among the captives of Israel between the years 595 and 574, beginning and closing his work just a little later than Jeremiah. It stands among his awful messages of warning and reproof to the sinners among his own people. It belongs to the prophetic warnings given before the destruction of Jerusalem, in the part of Ezekiel occupied with correction, denunciation and reproof.
It means that God scatters His people among the heathen and disperses them in foreign nations and in other lands to consume and purge their filthiness and uncleanness from them. Sin must therefore be forgiven, or it will be consumed. That dispersion among the nations was the harvest of Israel's transgressions, for idolatry and Sabbath desecration led them into trouble and exile. The background was that Israel's priests had been carried into pagan apostasy, violating God's law and profaning His Sabbath. It also belongs to God's description of our generation, the professed people of God in the last days, speaking of the same time and people spoken of in Isaiah 30:8-11, Ezekiel 13, and Jeremiah 6:9-19.