Ezekiel 34:18
Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet? Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?
Ezekiel 34:18 pictures unfaithful shepherd-leaders eating up the good pasture and drinking the deep waters for themselves and then treading down and fouling the residue with their feet, so that the flock must eat what has been trodden and drink what has been fouled. The wrong is twofold, taking the best nourishment for self and then making what remains unfit for others, and the image condemns shepherds who feed themselves while spoiling the provision of the flock.
Those shepherd-leaders are the priests and rulers of Israel, who selfishly consumed the best spiritual provision and corrupted the rest instead of acting as shepherds to the people. They should have been a blessing to the needy and helpless, giving comfort and sympathy and tender regard to those who needed it, but they withheld what the people so much needed. They did this because they had not the fear and love of God and many had no true commission, so heaven regarded their work as strangely neglected and without its seal.
The pasture and water are God's Word and its promises, which false ministers claim for themselves while withholding saving truth from the people. They despise His statutes and judgments and make His law contemptible, including the Sabbath truth. The same trampling applies to ministers who reject God's truth when it demands self-denial, accept only the parts of His Word that suit their practice, and tread His law underfoot, thereby depriving the people of wholesome spiritual food.
The verse serves as a warning to guard against being deceived into becoming such unfaithful shepherds who consume the good pasture and clear water and then spoil the rest. Drinking the deep waters means having once received, known, enjoyed and kept the full Sabbath truth, and fouling the residue with the feet means afterward giving up the Sabbath and trampling it underfoot, describing those who once kept it and then abandoned it.
Those who thus trample the Sabbath, even though they believed in Christ's coming and taught it with energy, are weighed in the balance and found wanting because of that rejection, with that verdict written on their garments and left howling in agony. That howling in agony takes place at the time of Jacob's trouble, when the saints cry day and night for deliverance and are delivered by the voice of God. At that time the verdict stands written in large characters on the garments of the unfaithful, while the 144,000 triumph with faces lighted by the glory of God.