The next three chapters contain divinely given parables. The object of these parables is to expose still further the false hopes which the people had during the reign of Zedekiah, the last King of Judah. He rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar after the second invasion (2 Kings xxiv:20). He hoped, and the people with him, that deliverance would come through the alliances Zedekiah had formed with Edom, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon. He also had sent to Egypt for help. "But he rebelled against him (the king of Babylon) in sending ambassadors into Egypt that they might give him horses and much people" (Ezek. xvii:15). In all this Zedekiah and the remnant of people left in the land despised the Word of Jehovah. Prophet after prophet had delivered the same message concerning the ultimate and complete overthrow of Jerusalem. During Josiah's reign in the midst of the great reformation-revival, Hulda the prophetess, had given the warning, "I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof" (2 Kings xxii:16). The great reformation could not keep back the decreed judgment. Nor can any reformation movement in the close of our own age avert the judgment which is predicted upon an ungodly world and an apostate church. Josiah's reign was followed by the reign of Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. It went from bad to worse. Twice Nebuchadnezzar had come and spoiled Jerusalem. It was evident that Jehovah's judgment was being gradually executed upon the land and the city. We have learned from the preceding chapters how often and in how many different ways the Lord had repeated through Ezekiel's visions and utterances that the judgment would surely do its complete work, and that nothing would be able to arrest it. Yet Zedekiah, in the awful blindness characteristic of all who deliberately reject the Word of God and continue in an impenitent state, hoped for better things. And the exiles also shared more or less this false hope.