6:1–5 The previous sign-acts and words focused almost exclusively on Jerusalem as the target of God’s wrath. In this chapter, however, the circle of judgment is widened to include the mountains of Israel (v. 2). Topographically, this is Israel’s heartland, the mountainous spine of the country running from north to south, bordered on the west by the foothills of the Shephelah and the wide coastal plain and descending on the east rapidly into the Jordan valley. Most of Israel’s important towns were located in this mountainous region, and whatever the ebbs and flows of its political fortunes, this territory had consistently remained under its control. In this case the prophet is instructed to set his face toward the mountains of Israel, representing the Lord’s anger toward that region, just as he had earlier set his face against Jerusalem (4:3).35 Along with this hostile expression Ezekiel is told to prophesy against the mountains of Israel (6:2)—though, of course, the real audience for his words is his fellow exiles in Babylon, not a series of distant Judean hilltops.

The Lord’s complaint is that the mountains of Israel, so different in topography from the flat plain in Babylon where Ezekiel and his fellow exiles live, have become contaminated with idolatry. Throughout Israel’s history, the “high places” scattered throughout the land were a seductive alternative to the proper worship of the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem. These pagan places of worship might consist of stone platforms with an altar and idols in the form of Baal and/or sacred trees dedicated to his consort, Asherah. Buildings were sometimes built for the associated festivities. Often, though not always, these would be located in an elevated area above the surroundings—hence the name “high places.” They could also be located within cities and at lower elevations, however, in which case they were simply raised above their immediate surroundings.

Israel was supposed to destroy all of these Canaanite high places when it took possession of the land at the time of the conquest (Deut. 12:2–3). However, all too often these cult centers were permitted to remain. Prior to the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem in the time of Solomon, these sites could serve as locations for authentic worship and sacrifice (cf. 1 Kings 3:2). Yet even after the Lord chose Jerusalem to house his temple as the place for his name to dwell, the high places continued in use, serving as entry points for Canaanite religious ideas and practices, such as the worship of Baal and Asherah and the practices associated with those fertility religions. The issue of the high places throughout the land is a major concern throughout 1–2 Kings, which repeatedly note the success or failure of the rulers of both northern and southern kingdoms in suppressing them. Only Hezekiah and Josiah are recorded as having taken significant steps to rein in those cults. In some case the kings even encouraged the idolatrous worship that went on there (Manasseh is a prime example; 2 Kings 21:3), while in other cases they simply turned a blind eye to those popular local practices. The high places provided easily accessible local places of worship in lieu of the distant temple in Jerusalem, while their forms of worship were attractive and directly addressed people’s felt needs for rain and fertility (which in their setting went hand in hand).

Although Israel and Judah’s kings might sometimes have ignored the goings on at these locations, Israel’s divine King had forbidden such tolerance. Leviticus 26:30 declares, “I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars36 and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you.” In Ezekiel 6:3–5 the prophet quotes the Lord in an echo of that language from Leviticus: “I will destroy your high places. Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain before your idols.37 And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel38 before their idols.” One common method of defiling altars in antiquity was to burn human corpses upon them (1 Kings 13:2; 2 Kings 23:16); in this case, however, the bones are scattered all around the altar in a macabre parody of the pagan dances previously performed in worship of their idols (cf. 1 Kings 18:26). There would be no rest in the grave for these idolaters, nor would there be a resurrection to new life, as there would be for the dry bones that represented the Israelite exiles (Ezekiel 37).

The inability of the idols to protect their sanctuaries and devotees testifies loudly to their impotence: as the product of human imaginations, they can do and say nothing. The contrast is stark in that, even though the Lord will also extend similar destruction to his own sanctuary and people, he will declare it ahead of time as his own action of judgment because of his people’s sin that has defiled themselves and their beloved temple.

6:6–7 The high places will not be alone in receiving the Lord’s judgment; it will fall on the Israelite towns and cities as well, as these were the places that sponsored the false worship at the high places. Then, the Lord says, “They will know that I am the Lord.” This formula highlights a rhetorical concern on the part of the prophet to vindicate the Lord’s words of judgment. Although in the present these words might easily be dismissed by Israel, coming events will demonstrate that there has indeed been a prophet among them (cf. 2:5). This phrase, particularly characteristic of Ezekiel, is used once in chapter 5 but no fewer than four times in this chapter (6:7, 10, 13, 14), stressing the knowledge of God communicated through his acts of judgment and salvation in history. The phrase is used earlier in the OT of the knowledge gained by the Egyptians of the Lord’s power as he judged them and their pretended deities (Ex. 14:4, 8). Now Israel too will see the emptiness of their idols when the Lord acts in judgment against them, leaving their cities laid waste and desolate. Unlike their powerless idols, the Lord’s name is to be feared!

6:8–10 As in the sign-act of the prophet’s hair in Ezekiel 5, however, a small remnant will survive the coming judgment—though not unscathed. As in chapter 5, survival is not mere coincidence but a direct action of the Lord: “I will leave some of you alive” (6:8). This small remnant will be taken into exile, where it will remember the Lord—not merely that he exists but who he is and what Israel owes him as his people. “Remembering” in Hebrew is never simply a mental activity; it encompasses the appropriate actions that flow from that activity. The Israelites will thus remember the pain their sin caused the Lord; in a graphic image, he is said to have been “broken” over Israel’s adulterous heart (v. 9). Like a betrayed husband, he is devastated by his wife’s infidelity. The result of Israel’s remembering her past sins will be a true repentance in which the people abhor their own earlier evil acts (v. 9) and recognize that the Lord’s judgments upon them have been both fitting and just. Of course, this message will act as a call to Ezekiel’s immediate audience already in exile: they too should acknowledge and respond appropriately to the same realities. They should recognize that Israel’s long history of spiritual adultery thoroughly deserves the outpouring of God’s righteous indignation upon them and that the Lord’s heart is broken over their sin and failure. As a result, they should repent and lament over their own involvement in these sins.

6:11–14 Yet, in keeping with the dark nature of this section of the book, Ezekiel’s oracle does not end with the focus on the small, repentant remnant. Rather, he returns to the theme of judgment, specifically “by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (v. 11), three of the so-called four horsemen of the apocalypse in Revelation 6.39 Ezekiel is to perform the threatening gestures of clapping his hands and stamping his feet, representing God’s summoning judgment against the people. The same combination of gestures occurs in Ezekiel 25:6, with the same threatening aspect. This threatened judgment is comprehensive, encompassing those who are far off and those who are near, as well as some of those preserved through the original stage of judgment when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. In that way they resemble some of the prophet’s hairs initially preserved and protected, only to be tossed later into the fire (5:3–4). The very places at which the Israelites earlier sought life and blessing by worshiping idols—on all the mountaintops and under every green tree (cf. Deut. 12:2; 1 Kings 14:23)—will now be covered with the corpses of the worshipers, from the wilderness in the south to Riblah40 in the north. Although not part of the normal northern boundary of Israel, Riblah is significant as the place to which King Jehoahaz was exiled by Pharaoh Neco (2 Kings 23:33) and where judgment was carried out on King Zedekiah and his sons by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:6–7). The wilderness and Riblah are thus linked together thematically as places of judgment upon Israel.