Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out.
God tells Ezekiel to preach to a landscape instead of to people — to the hills and valleys where Israel had built its shrines. God will empty every town, smash every altar, and wipe out everything the people made. Why does He aim His sword at places? And what does He want Israel to learn once the rubble settles?
The mountains God chose
Israel's land was not chosen at random. A country of hills and valleys, fed only by rain, suited a people who had to depend on God every day:
Frederick W GrantEgypt was the land of independence. It was watered by its river, and the sources of that river were so far off that in practice the people could forget all about them. Israel's land was different. It was a land of mountains and valleys, drinking the water of the rain of heaven. It depended on God, and that dependence was plain to see. Because the land was cast upon God like this, He specially chose it for a people who were in the same way to be dependent upon Himself, and so to know His gracious and continual care.
That is what makes the high places such an insult. The very heights that should have kept Israel looking upward became advertisements of their turning away:
Frederick W GrantBut, sadly, what had Israel done? They had made these very mountains into nothing but heathen altars, and used them to insult their gracious Protector, the Source of all their blessing. On the tops of those mountains stood the idolatrous altars, in full view of everyone. They were now the sad witnesses that Israel had departed from the Lord, their covenant God.
What a "high place" really was
Not every high place was openly pagan. Some were built for the worship of the true God — and God still condemned them, because the issue was who decides how He is approached:
W. W. FeredayThe Israelites were to destroy all the high places of the heathen. This showed their horror at the heathen's wicked ways. But human nature is no better in those who are near to God than in those who are far from Him. The time soon came, sadly, when Israel chose high places for themselves. Some of these were for idolatrous worship, and some for the worship of the Lord. But all the high places were offensive in His sight, whatever the motives of those who set them up. They were the expression of self-will, of hearts that would not obey His commandments.
Judgment as thorough as the sin
The verse covers every dwelling place, every altar, every image. The evil ran that wide, and the idols themselves proved worse than useless:
William KellySo the Lord would wake up the sword to destroy Israel throughout the land. They had abandoned Him for heathen gods. Those gods could not shield them from destruction; they surely exposed them to it. Worshippers, altars, and images should all perish, idolaters falling before their idols.
The point of the wreckage
One refrain runs through the whole book, and the wreckage of verse 6 serves it. Israel must learn who God is:
Frederick W Grant"That you may know that I am Jehovah" rings through almost every part of the book. This is a striking link with the book of Leviticus. In Leviticus, the same words are added again and again to the commandments that enforce the holiness of their Deliverer: "I am Jehovah." Here His dealings with them affirm what He is — the Unchangeable, true to His own nature at all times, and never able to turn aside from it.
For some, that knowledge comes through the judgment itself:
J. N. DarbySo this knowledge of the Lord is by the judgment itself, not by any resulting spiritual knowledge of Him.
Mercy kept in reserve
The chapter does not end in ashes. A few verses later God promises survivors. One commentator argues that older English versions missed the sense of verse 9:
William KellyYet the Lord in judgment will remember mercy… In verse 9 the true meaning appears to be, "when I shall have broken their unfaithful heart which had departed from Me, and their eyes"… Heart and eyes are broken together in repentance before God.
The same mountains, spoken to again
Later in the book God sends Ezekiel back to the same mountains with a different message:
Frederick W GrantGod has spoken to these mountains before, in the sixth chapter, but in very different terms. They were then the seats of an idolatry which dared to lift its head in a special way in the high places of the land. So desolation had come upon them… But these mountains of Israel… were by nature green and fruitful mountains, the places of pasture for the flock.
Summary
- Chosen — God gave Israel hills and rain-fed valleys to keep them dependent on His daily care.
- Corrupted — Israel crowned those same heights with altars. Worship they chose themselves offended God, even when it carried His name.
- Cut down — cities, shrines, images and handiwork fall together. The idols shield no one from the sword.
- Confessed — the wreckage has one aim: that they know "I am Jehovah," the God who does not change. For some, that knowledge comes only through the blow.
- Restored — God spares a remnant, with heart and eyes broken in repentance, and later calls those same mountains green pasture.