Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, {f} Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a {g} wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar:

(f) Read Geneva Jer 6:14

(g) While the true prophets prophesied the destruction of the city to bring the people to repentance, the false prophets spoke the contrary, and flattered them in their vanities, so that what one false prophet said

(which is here called the building of the wall) another false prophet would affirm, though he had neither opportunity nor good ground to hear him.

Wesley's Notes

13:10 Peace - They told sinners, no harm would happen to them. And those are the most dangerous seducers, who suggest to sinners that which tends to lessen their dread of sin, or their fear of God. These are compared to men who build a slight tottering wall, which others daub with untempered mortar; sorry stuff, that will not bind, nor hold the bricks together: doctrines not grounded on the word of God.

King James Translators' Notes

a wall: or, a slight wall

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. Because, even because-The repetition heightens the emphasis.

Peace-safety to the nation. Ezekiel confirms Jer 6:14; 8:11.

one-literally, "this one"; said contemptuously, as in 2Ch 28:22.

a wall-rather, "a loose wall." Ezekiel had said that the false prophets did not "go up into the gaps, or make up the breaches" (Eze 13:5), as good architects do; now he adds that they make a bustling show of anxiety about repairing the wall; but it is without right mortar, and therefore of no use.

one . others-besides individual effort, they jointly co-operated to delude the people.

daubed . with untempered mortar-as sand without lime, mud without straw [Grotius]. Fairbairn translates, "plaster it with whitewash." But besides the hypocrisy of merely outwardly "daubing" to make the wall look fair (Mt 23:27, 29; Ac 23:3), there is implied the unsoundness of the wall from the absence of true uniting cement; the "untempered cement" answering to the lie of the prophets, who say, in support of their prophecies, "Thus saith the Lord, when the Lord hath not spoken" (Eze 22:28).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

13:10-16 One false prophet built the wall, set up the notion that Jerusalem should be victorious, and made himself acceptable by it. Others made the matter yet more plausible and promising; they daubed the wall which the first had built; but they would, ere long, be undeceived when their work was beaten down by the storm of God's just wrath; when the Chaldean army desolated the land. Hopes of peace and happiness, not warranted by the word of God, will cheat men; like a wall well daubed, but ill built.