This chapter discusses the threat of destruction of Israel for their idolatry and the promise of a return of a remnant to God through repentance and reformation. It also gives directions to the prophet and others to lament the iniquities and calamities of Israel.
Ezekiel 6:1-7
➔ The prophecy is directed to the mountains of Israel, and the prophet must set his face towards them. He must look boldly and steadfastly, as the judge looks at the prisoner and directs his speech to him. The mountains are called upon to hear the word of the Lord, and the prophets must gain attention from the mountains as from the rebellious and gainsaying people. God’s cause will have a hearing, whether we hear it or no. The word of the Lord echoes to the hills, rivers, and valleys, warning them of the judgments coming. However, the people refused to take the message and persecuted the messengers, making it easier for God’s prophets to speak to the hills and mountains.
➔ The total annihilation of idols and idolaters—by the sword of war—is what is foreseen in this prophecy. God is the expedition’s supreme commander against Israel’s mountains. He is the one who declares, “See, I, even I, will bring a sword against you” (v3). The Chaldean sword is under the control of God; it travels where he sends it, comes where he brings it, and burns where he commands.
◆ The idols should be destroyed together with all of their accessories. The lofty spots, which were on mountaintops (v. 3), will be leveled and become desolate; they won’t be decorated or as popular as they once were. The altars where they sacrificed and burned incense to unknown gods will be destroyed and left in ruins. The images and idols will be disfigured, destroyed, and cut down, and all the elaborate, expensive work that was done around them will be abolished (v. 4, 6).
● The people, places, and things that were considered to be the most precious cannot escape the terrible destruction caused by that battle because everyone and everything is consumed by the sword.
● Since the Chaldeans themselves were idolaters, it is true that God occasionally destroys idolatries by their own hands. But, as if the god were a regional phenomenon, the Chaldeans were the greatest admirers of their own country’s gods and the worst despisers of those of other nations.
● God has every right to turn that devastation into an idol because he is a jealous God and cannot stand having competition.
● If men fail to eradicate idolatry as they should, God will—first or last—find a method to do it. They rebuilt the high places, altars, and idols after Josiah had demolished them with the sword of justice; nevertheless, God will now destroy them with the sword of war. We’ll see who has the courage to do so.
➔ The worshippers of idols and all their adherents should be destroyed, and their slain shall fall in the midst of them. It is also threatened that their dead carcasses should be laid, and their bones scattered, about their altars. Finally, God will destroy any man who defiles the temple of God.
◆ As a result, the dead bodies that they had been worshipping would defile their idols and dirty the areas where they had placed them. God will desecrate their graven
image covering if they do not, Jesus. 30:22. The fact that the carcasses were thrown among them, much as on the dunghill, suggests that they were merely dunghill deities.
◆ The carcasses of dead men, who, like them, have eyes and hearing but no hearing, was the best company for them because they were implied to be nothing more than dead objects unfit to compete with the life God.
◆ As a result, both idolaters and the idols themselves came under fire for their failure to protect those who worshipped them. This was because, despite their repeated requests for assistance and placement under their protection, the idolaters really perished at the hands of the enemy. While doing adoration in the temple of his god, Sennacherib was killed by his sons.
◆ The sin could be understood in the context of the punishment, where the dead men are thrown in front of the idols to demonstrate that they were killed because they had worshiped such idols (see Jer. 8:1, 2. Let the survivors witness it and learn a lesson not to worship idols; let them see it and understand that God is the Lord and that he alone is God.
Ezekiel 6:8-10
Until now, judgment had prevailed, but in these passages, mercy celebrates in opposition to judgment. People’s provocations come to a tragic, but incomplete, end. Even while it appears that everyone will perish, I will nevertheless leave a small remnant, distinct from the general populace, a few of many, and it is God who abandons them. This suggests that they deserved to be isolated from the group and would have been if God had not abandoned them. (Isaiah 1:9) For it is God who, through his generosity, accomplishes in them what he intends to spare them.
➔ God promised that some of the Jews of the dispersion, as they were afterward called, would escape the sword. None of those who were to fall by the sword about Jerusalem will escape, but some of them will escape the sword among the nations, where they will be the seed of another generation, out of which Jerusalem will flourish again.
➔ The penitent remnant is a type of remnant reserved out of the body of mankind to be monuments of mercy, who are made safe in the same way that these were by being brought to repentance. God’s patience both leaves room for repentance and encourages sinners to repent. However, many who escape the sword do not forsake the sin, as it is promised that these shall do.
◆ Their incarceration served as both a judgment and an act of mercy, which served as the catalyst for their repentance; mercifully, they managed to avoid being killed by the sword while in captivity. They were expelled from their own country, but not from the land of the living or from the entire planet, as other people were and should have been. Remember that thinking about the mercy that is mingled in with the just corrections that Providence is giving us should motivate us to repent so that we might serve God’s purposes in both. God will accept genuine repentance even if it is prompted by our problems; in fact, sanctified suffering frequently serves as a catalyst for conversion, as it did with Manasseh.
◆ The root and principle of repentance is the remembrance of God among the nations. Those who forgot God in the land of their peace and prosperity were brought to remember him in captivity. This was the first step they took in returning to him. Sin takes rise in forgetting God, and repentance takes rise from the remembrance of him and of our obligations to him. God promises to give them the grace to do so, and by
bringing God to their mind, they will be brought to their right mind. The prodigal son remembered his father, and so do penitents.
● Idolatry is spiritual whoredom, a breach of a marriage covenant with God, and the setting of affections upon that which is a rival with him. It is a base lust that deceives and defiles the soul and is a great wrong to God in his honor. It is the same as the treacherous elopement of a wife from her husband or the rebellious revolt of a subject from his sovereign.
● God was broken by the sins of the generation, and this was a grief to God and to the Spirit of his grace. God’s measures were broken, and he was even compelled to punish them. This will affect and humble them on the day of repentance, and they will look on him as they have pierced and mourned. Nothing grieves a true penitent so much as to think that his sin has been a grief to them and to God.
◆ They will hate themselves for the wrongs they have done in all their abominations as the result and proof of their repentance. God will therefore grant them grace to make them eligible for forgiveness and deliverance. Even if their whorish heart had broken him, he would not completely abandon them. See Isa. 57:17, 18; Hos. 2:13, 14. His
goodness uses their badness as an opening to become more illustrious.
● Real penitents view sin as an evil deed that repulses the Lord and renders sinners, as well as their services, detestable to him (Jer. 44:4; Isa. 1:11. It taints the sinner’s conscience, turning him into an abomination in his own eyes unless he is beyond feeling. Particularly, an idol is referred to as an abomination, Isa. 44:19. The gratifications that sinners’ hearts were fixed on as delicious pleasures are now viewed as loathsome by repentant people.
● There are several sins committed in these abominations, many of which are contained in, accompany, and flow from them. This is one sin, Lev. 16:21. They occasionally committed whoredom (as in the worship of Peor) and occasionally murder (as in the worship of Moloch) in their idolatries; these were sins committed in their abominations. Maybe it represents the immense evil that sin is; it is an abomination that contains a vast deal of wickedness.
● Since self-loathing is always a companion to genuine repentance, those who sincerely despise sin cannot help but despise themselves as a result of their transgression. Penitents argue with themselves and can never be at peace with themselves until they have reason to believe that God is at peace with them; otherwise, they will collapse in shame when he is at peace with them.
◆ As stated in v10: “They shall know that I am the Lord; they shall be convinced of it by experience, and shall be ready to own it, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them, finding that what I have said is made good, and made to work for good, and to answer a good intention and that it was not without just provocation that they were thus threatened and thus punished.”
● God will either cause sinners to repent or cause them to perish in order to make them understand and acknowledge that he is the master.
● All sincere penitents are required to acknowledge the fairness and effectiveness of God’s word, especially when it threatens, and to defend God in their making and carrying out
Ezekiel 6:11-14.
The same warnings from the previous chapter and the first half of this chapter are repeated here, with a command to the prophet to weep over them so that those he foresaw would be more moved by his foresight.
➔ The speaker must use gestures to express the deep sense he had of the iniquities and calamities of the house of Israel. He must smite with his hand and stamp with his foot to make it appear that he was in earnest in what he said to them and to signify the just displeasure he had at their sins and the dread he was under of the judgments coming upon them. Some may reject these gestures, but God bids them to enforce the word and give it the setting on. Those that know the worth of souls will be content to be laughed at by the wits, so they may help edify the weak.
◆ For every sinful transgression committed by the House of Israel. In particular, the vile abominations of the family of Israel, whose sins are more abhorrent and contain more evil than the sins of others, cause God’s devoted servant’s much anguish.
◆ They will suffer from the sword, starvation, and pestilence as a punishment for these abominations. Remember that it is our responsibility to feel compassion for the misery that wicked people inflict upon themselves as well as for our own crimes and afflictions, just as Christ did when he saw Jerusalem and cried over it.
➔ He must reinforce what he previously mentioned about the disaster that was coming to them.
◆ God will punish His enemies by running them down and ruining their lives with judgments and arrows. He will also punish those who remain in the city and die by famine, the saddest death of all. God will do all that he had intended to do against them.
◆ They will be punished for their sin by being buried among their idols, where they had prostrated themselves in honor of their idols. Their dead carcasses will send forth an offensive smell to atone for their misplaced incense. They lived among them and will die among them.
◆ The Lord will make the land desolate, more desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath (Num. 33:46; Jer. 48:22). City and country will be depopulated, leaving only their idolatrous altars standing. Sin is a desolating thing, so stand in awe and sin not. The land of Canaan is one of the most barren and desolate countries in the world.