Chapter Six

Prophecy Against the Land

Ezekiel 6:1. The word of the Lord came to me: In chapters IV and V the prophet had in view primarily the city; now he turns to the whole land (and in chapter VII to the kingdom), in order to present the guilt and punishment in their broader connection. The defilement of the temple through idolatry stands in connection with worship on high places, which became widespread throughout all the land (v. 3) and can be rooted out only by complete devastation of it (v. 6) and destruction of its population (v. 5 and 7); only when all these sanctuaries with their pagan images fall (v. 4) and the idolatrous people are brought low directly before their idols (v. 7); only then will the stubbornness of those few from Israel who survive in the universal scattering be broken (v. 8-9), and though they come to the realization that the Jehovah proclaimed by the prophets is the one true God (v. 10). This is what is being prepared for the land of Israel. With angry scorn and undisguised indignation, the prophet can look upon the people’s conduct: God will soon put an end to this conduct (v. 11-13); the thickly populated land will become a desert, which will spread over an immense space (v. 14).

Ezekiel 6:2. Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them, Palestine, especially Judea, is a mountainous land, wherefore the prophet, who lived in the Babylonian plains, loves to call it the “mountains of Israel,” cf. Ezek 13:17 and others. But this name has a very special meaning for the prophet: on the mountains stand the hateful altars of high places.

Ezekiel 6:3. and say, O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: behold, I Myself will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places; If the prophet demands that the mountains listen to the word of the Lord, this is more than a rhetorical figure: already the prophet Isaiah brings inanimate nature into religious contemplation—“Ravines,” literally “streams,” that is, the beds of streams, which are temporary and so numerous in Palestine and are known there even now under the name of wadi. “The joining of valleys to the mountains aims to embrace the whole land (cf. Ezek 32:5-6 and others); but besides this, here, as in the address to the mountains, there is an intention toward the idolatrous purpose of the valleys; in this regard the valley of the sons of Hinnom was particularly well known (Jer 7:31); the valleys were covered with trees and groves, under whose shade the worship of Astarte was especially practiced. “Sword”—war. “High places,” bamot—a technical term; a place of certain peculiar cults; see Jer 7:31. Ezekiel’s view of them is more fully set out in Ezek 20:27-29.

Ezekiel 6:4. Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken; and I will cast down your slain before your idols; “Altars” are distinguished from “high places” also in other places: 2 Sam 21:3. “Incense altars,” Church Slavonic “idolhouses,” Hebrew “haman”—special pillars—symbols of Baal, as the god of the sun, set up at or on (according to 2 Chr 34:4) his altars (“baal-hamon” of Phoenician inscriptions); the Hebrew name may derive perhaps from a ridge between Syria and Cilicia. “And I will cast down your slain (Church Slavonic more accurately: “your wounded,” the wounded, because the slain are spoken of further) before your idols.” The powerlessness of idols will become palpable when their servants, expecting help from them against enemies, are slain before them. Idols are here called gilipul, which may come from gel—kal,—Ezekiel’s favorite name for them: used by him 38 times out of 47 total occurrences (also in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah); XX simply “idols.” “In the formation of such contemptuous names the Hebrews are generally strong” (Bertholet.).

Ezekiel 6:5. And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones around your altars. A double threat: the slain will be deprived of burial, their bones will be manure for the soil (cf. Jer 8:2) and corpses will defile the sanctuaries (cf. 2 Chr 23:14; Josephus, Archaol. XVIII, 2, 2).

Ezekiel 6:6. In all your dwelling places the cities shall be waste, and the high places shall be desolate; so that your altars will be waste and desolate, your idols broken and destroyed, and your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out. “The cities shall be waste.” Idolatry will be completely destroyed, because there will be no one to practice it. Perhaps it refers mainly to cities situated on the slopes of those high places, on whose summit the altars of high places stood, for example, Rama.

Ezekiel 6:7. And the slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord. The devastation of the land and the slaughter of the inhabitants has primarily the goal of destroying the hated altars, so that with the prophet who predicts this, God might also be proven right. The chief motive of God’s activity for Ezekiel in general is the glory of His name. “And the slain shall fall in your midst.” Not all the inhabitants will be slain, so that the survivors are not unable to recognize in all this the hand of God.

Ezekiel 6:8. But I will leave a remnant, so that you may have some that escape the sword among the nations, when you are scattered among the lands. Ezekiel 6:9. And those of you who escape shall remember Me among the nations to which they have been carried captive, when I have broken their lewd heart that has departed from Me, and their eyes that play the harlot after their idols; and they shall loathe themselves for the evil things that they have done, in all their abominations; Long captivity, to which those who escape Nebuchadnezzar’s sword will be subjected, will make them know their sin and repent of it: “I will break their heart” (LXX, “I have sworn to their heart”), but besides their heart, external senses will also repent, that is, the eyes, which led the heart into sin (cf. Num 15:39). “A lewd heart, playing the harlot after idols.” In this image Ezekiel follows Hosea, who was the first to represent the relationship of God and the people as a marriage; this image Ezekiel later developed to its furthest extent (chapters XVI and XXIII); it could become the more beloved with Ezekiel because the word “harlotry” could allude to pagan cults in which sensuality played a role, and such cults were most seductive; this image had wide and frequent application down to the New Testament (“adulterous generation”). “Idols” the LXX here call them επιτηδευματων “institutions,” “customs,” Church Slavonic “beginnings.” “They shall loathe themselves”; Church Slavonic: “they shall strike their faces.”

Ezekiel 6:10. and they shall know that I am the Lord; I have not spoken in vain when I said I would bring this evil upon them. “And they shall know,” that is, the captives, “that I am the Lord.” The prophet Ezekiel was able to observe this even in his surroundings. God did not punish without purpose, but to bring about repentance.

Ezekiel 6:11. Thus says the Lord God: clap your hands and stamp your foot, and say, Alas! because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel; for they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. To clap one’s hands and to stamp one’s foot (Church Slavonic: “and tremble”) was a gesture of scornful mockery; cf. Ezek 25:6 (malice of the Ammonites over the destruction of Israel); Ezek 21:14. “And say, Alas!”; Hebrew “ag” is rather an interjection of laughter (ha-ha) than of sorrow; so also ευγε, and Church Slavonic “well...” From this one can see the contrast in which Ezekiel stands to his people: he does not suffer with them, as Jeremiah does, but seems unfeeling and indifferent to their fate; cf. Ezek 5:5 (Bertholet.); but this comes from extraordinary zeal for the glory of God: the honor of God’s name was in danger.

Ezekiel 6:12. Whoever is far off shall die of the pestilence; and whoever is near shall fall by the sword; and whoever is left and is preserved shall die of famine. Thus I will spend My wrath upon them. The three punishments of chapter V appear again, but in application to the whole land already in different distribution: where the Chaldean sword does not reach, there epidemic and famine will seize the guilty (some LXX codices, contrary to the accepted text, more correctly place first the sword, then the plague, θανατος, and famine). “Whoever is left and is preserved”; Church Slavonic: “those who are besieged,” more accurately “those under siege.”

Ezekiel 6:13. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when their slain lie among their idols all around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak, the places where they offered pleasing odor to all their idols. The verse repeats and supplements the thoughts of verses 4 and 5, as verse 14 supplements verses 6 and 7. The verse provides a vivid enumeration of the places of idolatry. Mountains and hills were chosen for idols and shrines in the belief that these places are nearer to heaven (Tacitus, Ann. XIII, 57; cf. Num 22:41 and others). Equal to mountains, shady valleys under thick-leaved trees were chosen as places of worship, for example, terebinths (“oaks”), because it was believed that divinity dwelt in trees. “Sweet incense,” Church Slavonic “fragrant odor”—the usual designation of a sacrifice pleasing to God; what according to the law should have been preserved for God was offered in sacrifice to idols; the expression sounds with mournful jealousy.

Ezekiel 6:14. And I will stretch out My hand against them and make the land desolate and waste, from the wilderness of Diblah throughout all their habitations; thus they shall know that I am the Lord. “I will stretch out My hand”—I will punish; cf. Ps 137:7 and others. “Make the land desolate and waste,” Church Slavonic: “to ruin and destruction”; in Ezek 33:29 the same Hebrew words are rendered in Russian translation as “wasteland of wastelands.” A hyperbole, since holy land never turned into an actual wasteland. “From the wilderness of Diblah.” The Hebrew construction allows also the translation: “From the wilderness to Diblah,” or: “more (desolate) than the wilderness of Diblah”; one of the two latter translations should be accepted, as with the first (Russian Bible) no terminus ad quem (up to where) is indicated. The wilderness of Diblah is unknown. In Jer 48:22 and Num 33:46 a city of Beth-Diblatha is mentioned, mentioned also in the inscription of the Moabite king Mesha (line 30) and perhaps located at the great Arabian desert; but nowhere is this or another desert called by the name of this insignificant city. Therefore, it is supposed that there is an error of the copyist instead of “Riblah” (the letters resh and daleth are so similar in Hebrew that such an error is possible and frequent): “from the desert, that is, the Arabian, to Riblah.” Riblah lay in the country in Hamath at the Orontes on the same latitude as Tripoli, and in other places Hamath is often indicated as the northern boundary of the promised land; if Ezekiel mentions Riblah here, it may be because of the fatal significance of this city for the Jews of that time: there Nebuchadnezzar overtook Zedekiah and carried out a cruel judgment upon him (2 Sam 25:6-7). Copyists could have changed Riblah to Diblah under the influence of the cited Ezekiel and Numbers passages—“Throughout all their habitations.” The conqueror spared no city or village.