Ezekiel 6

When the sons of Asaph wanted to describe the city of Jerusalem, they wrote, “Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King” (Ps. 48: nkjv). The Babylonian Talmud says, “Of the ten measures of beauty that came down to the world, Jerusalem took nine” (Kidushin 49b), and, “Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in its splendor has never seen a lovely city” (Succah 51b). Of modern Jerusalem, Samuel Heilman wrote, “It is a place in which people actually live; it is a place that lives in them.” One of the Jewish exiles in Babylonian wrote: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Ps. 137:5–6 nkjv). When Jewish families around the world celebrate Passover, they conclude the meal with, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

The Jewish exiles wouldn’t be happy with the three messages Ezekiel would bring them from the Lord, for he was going to announce the destruction of Jerusalem and the ravaging of the Promised Land. It was bad enough that the Jews were exiles in a pagan land, but to be told that they would have no city to return to was more than they could bear. No wonder they preferred the encouraging messages of the false prophets.

God had commanded His prophet to remain silent except for those times when He opened his mouth and commanded him to preach a special message. In these two chapters, there are two messages of judgment from the Lord. The first explains that the idolatry of the people had defiled the land and the temple, and the second describes the terrible disaster that would come with the arrival of the Babylonian army. Ezekiel the watchman was warning the people that an invasion was coming because God had seen their sins and was about to punish them.

God’s judgment of the high places (vv. 1–7). The land belonged to the Lord, and He allowed the Jewish people to use it as long as they didn’t defile it with their sins (Lev. 25:23; 18:25, 27–28). If the Jews obeyed His law, God would bless them in their land (26:1–13). But if they failed to keep the terms of His covenant, the Lord would punish them by withholding blessing from the land He had given them or by “vomiting” them out of the land (Lev. 18:24–30; 26:14ff.; Deut. 28:38–42, 49–52). This explains why Ezekiel “set his face”against the mountains, hills, rivers (ravines), and valleys of the land, for they had been defiled by the idolatry of Israel. Of course, it wasn’t the physical terrain that had sinned but the Jewish people who had polluted the Holy Land by erecting their “high places [idolatrous shrines] under every green tree” (Ezek. 6:13; see Deut. 12:2; 1 Kings 14:23; Jer. 2:20; 3:6, 13).

The Jewish prophets despised idolatry and spoke scornfully about the idols that the people valued so much. The prophets called the idols “nothings” or “vanity” (Isa. 66:3; 1 Chron. 16:26; Jer. 14:14), “abominations” (2 Chron. 15:8), and “terrors” (1 Kings 15:13); but the word Ezekiel used is even more derisive because it can mean “pellets of dung.” The people treated their false gods as the highest things in the land, but God saw them as the lowest and most defiling thing—dung.

The Babylonian army would come into the land and break down the shrines and altars and destroy the idols. But even more, the soldiers would kill the worshippers and leave their rotting corpses as “sacrifices” to the fallen idols. “I will bring a sword upon you” (v. 3) and “you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 6:7). The enemy would stack the corpses around the shrines like so many logs and pieces of defiled flesh. In His covenant with Israel, God warned Israel that this would happen if they turned from Him and worshipped false gods. During Israel’s history, godly kings would destroy these abominable places and evil kings would rebuild them (2 Kings 18:3–4; 21:1–6; 23:8–9).

God’s grace to the Jewish remnant (vv. 8–10). Against the background of this nationwide slaughter, Ezekiel reminds the people of the grace of God in sparing a remnant, a topic that he had illustrated when he put some of the shaved hair in the hem of his garment (5:1–3). He will mention the remnant again in 7:16; 11:16–21; 12:15–16; 14:22–23; and 16:60–63. That a remnant of faithful people would be spared was part of the covenant promise (Lev. 26:40–46). It was this feeble remnant that returned to the land, rebuilt the temple, restored the worship of the Lord, and eventually made possible the coming of the Messiah (Luke 1—2).

Not only was the worship of idols an abomination and a participation in filth, but it was adultery (Ezek. 6:9). The nation had been married to Jehovah at Sinai, and the worship of any other god was an act of adultery (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 2:1–8; 3:14; 31:32; Hos. 2:16). Here we see God’s heart broken over the unfaithfulness of His people: “How I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts” (Ezek. 6: niv). The jealousy of God over Israel, His adulterous wife, is often mentioned in Ezekiel’s prophecy (8:3, 5; 16:38, 42; 23:25; 36:5; 38:19).

God’s chaste love for Israel, His wife, is the major theme of the prophet Hosea, whose wife became a prostitute and had to be bought back by her loving husband. This was an “action sermon” (and a costly one) that rebuked Israel for their unfaithfulness to God, but the prophet assured them that the Lord would forgive if they would repent and return. Ezekiel announced that the Jews scattered throughout the Gentile nations would realize their sins, remember their God, loathe themselves, and return to the Lord; and this remnant would become the future of the nation. In the midst of judgment, God would remember mercy (Hab. 3:2).

God’s weapons of destruction (vv. 11–14). As he lamented the abominations that his people had committed, the prophet combined both speech and action (clapping, stamping his foot). In 21: and 17, these actions represented God’s response to the invasion and assault of the Babylonians. From the context, when Ezekiel struck his hands together, it symbolized the marching of soldiers and the clashing of the swords as God’s wrath was “spent” or “accomplished” against His disobedient people. This wasn’t something the Lord enjoyed doing, because He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (18:23; 33:11). The Lord unleashed His three weapons against His people: the swords of the Babylonians, famine in the city, and the pestilence that usually accompanies famine (see 5:1–2).

Once again, Ezekiel described the unfaithful Jews being slaughtered at their idolatrous shrines and their corpses stacked up around the altars like so much dead wood (6:13; see vv. 3–5). When God “stretches out his hand” (v. 14), it means that judgment is coming (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7, 13, 16). The word Diblah might be a shortened form of Beth Diblathaim in Moab (Jer. 48:22), but if it is, the significance of the reference has been lost to us. Some Hebrew manuscripts read “Riblah,” a city in Syria, and this seems to fit. God promised to devastate the land “from the desert to Riblah [Diblah]” (niv), that is, from the south to the north. It’s like saying “from Dan to Beersheba,” from the north to the south.

At least sixty times, Ezekiel wrote, “And they shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 6:14). Whether in blessing or chastening, the Lord’s purpose is to reveal Himself to us in His love and grace. If the people of Israel had truly known the character and ways of their God, they could never have rebelled against Him as they did. “Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!” (Deut. 5: nkjv).

The Second Spoken Message: The Devastation of