Ezekiel 6

God tells Ezekiel to speak to the mountains of Israel, where the people worshiped idols. Judgment will fall on the high places, the altars and the people who trusted in them. Yet God promises to keep a remnant, who will remember him, loathe their sin, and know that he is the LORD.

Ezekiel 6:1-2

Again the word of the LORD comes to Ezekiel. He is told to turn toward the mountains of Israel and speak against them. The hills stand for the whole land, because they were the very places where the people practiced false worship.

BSA: set (“appoint, place”): Ezekiel is to fix his face deliberately toward the mountains, like a man sent on a task he cannot avoid.

Hebrew: שִׂים (sim, H7760) — “set, fix, place.” It is a firm, deliberate word. Ezekiel’s steady gaze toward the mountains is itself a sign that judgment has been settled.

See also: Ezekiel 4:7.

Ezekiel 6:3

God speaks to hills, ravines and valleys as if they could hear, because everything in the land had been made a place for idols. He promises a sword and the destruction of the high places, the hilltop shrines the people had built.

BSA: hear (“listen and obey”): Even the land is called to hear in the way that leads to obedience, which shows how deaf the people had become. high places (“cultic platforms, elevations”): These were raised sites built for worship that God had forbidden.

See also: Leviticus 26:30.

Ezekiel 6:4-5

The altars and incense stands will be smashed, and the bodies of the people will lie before the idols they trusted. The idols cannot save their worshipers. They will stand as helpless witnesses to the death of those who served them.

BSA: idols (“images, objects of worship, logs or round pieces of wood”): The Hebrew word sounds like a term of contempt, suggesting lifeless blocks of wood.

Ezekiel 6:6

The ruin will be total, in every town where the people live. The cities, shrines, altars and idols will all be wiped out. What the people built for security and religion will be erased.

BSA: obliterated (“completely destroyed, cut off”): Nothing will remain of the idols, so no one can trust in them again.

Ezekiel 6:7

As the slain fall among the people, they will learn by hard experience that the LORD is real and means what he says. This phrase, you will know that I am the LORD, runs through the whole book.

BSA: know (“perceive, learn, or understand”): This is knowing through experience, not just information.

See also: Exodus 7:5.

Ezekiel 6:8

In the middle of judgment comes mercy. God will keep a remnant, some who escape the sword. They will be scattered among the nations, but they will still be alive and still be his.

BSA: remnant (“a small surviving group”): God never lets judgment become complete extinction of his people. He keeps a small group through whom his promises continue.

See also: Isaiah 10:21-22; Romans 11:5.

Ezekiel 6:9

In exile the survivors will remember God and see how their unfaithfulness wounded him. God speaks like a husband grieved by a wife’s betrayal. Seeing this, they will turn against their own sin. That is the beginning of repentance.

BSA: grieved (“broken, deeply distressed”): Sin does not just break rules. It breaks the heart of God. lusted (“played the harlot, were unfaithful”): Idolatry is pictured as sexual unfaithfulness against a covenant partner.

Hebrew: נִשְׁבַּרְתִּי (nishbarti, H7665) — “I was broken.” The Hebrew literally says God was broken. It shows how deeply the people’s unfaithfulness pierced him.

See also: Ezekiel 16:15; Psalm 78:40.

Ezekiel 6:10

The disaster will prove that God’s word was true. He did not warn them for nothing. When the judgment comes just as he said, the survivors will have to admit that the LORD speaks and acts.

BSA: in vain (“without purpose, for nothing”): God’s warnings are never empty threats. They are real, and they were meant to be heeded.

Ezekiel 6:11

Ezekiel is to show grief with his whole body: clapping, stamping and crying out. He is to mourn what the people refuse to mourn. The three judgments of sword, famine and plague are named together here.

BSA: Alas (“ah, expressing sorrow and woe”): It is a cry of real sorrow, so even in judgment there is no pleasure in the destruction.

See also: Ezekiel 21:14; Ezekiel 33:11.

Ezekiel 6:12

No one will be out of reach. Those far away die of plague, those nearby by the sword, and those who survive by famine. The judgment closes every way of escape, and God’s anger is fully spent on a people who would not turn.

BSA: fury (“intense anger, rage”): God’s anger is a settled, holy response to evil, not a loss of control.

Ezekiel 6:13

The very places of false worship, the hills and mountaintops and shady trees, will be covered with corpses. The spots where they burned sweet incense to idols will become places of death, and then they will know the LORD.

BSA: fragrant incense (“pleasant aroma, soothing fragrance”): They offered a pleasing aroma to idols that rightly belonged to God alone.

See also: Deuteronomy 12:2; Jeremiah 2:20.

Ezekiel 6:14

God will raise his hand against them and make the land desolate from one end to the other. The chapter closes as it began with the goal of all God’s judgments: that they will know he is the LORD.

BSA: hand (“an open hand; strength, a side or share”): God’s hand is the sign of his power, which once saved the people and now strikes them. desolate waste (“a barren and uninhabited place, devoid of life and fertility”): The land will be emptied of life, the opposite of the fruitful land God had given.

See also: Exodus 6:6.