Ezekiel 6
Ezekiel's oracles grow more pointed. The LORD tells him to set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them (v. 2) - addressing the land itself, the hills and valleys, as though the very ground could hear. The reason is plain: the mountains are where the high places stood, the hilltop shrines where Israel had abandoned the God of the covenant to burn incense to idols. The sentence is thorough. I will destroy your high places. And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken (vv. 3-4). What the people built with their own hands to honour false gods will be unbuilt; the slain will be laid before the very idols that could not save them. This is not random violence. It is the dismantling of a lie.3
And yet the judgment is not the last word, nor even its own purpose. Folded inside the wrath is a startling mercy: Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations (v. 8). The survivors, carried far from home, will do there what they would not do in the land - they shall remember me among the nations… and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed (v. 9). Stripped of temple and country, they will at last turn. The chapter closes with the threefold judgment of the sword… the famine… and the pestilence (v. 11), and the slain scattered upon every high hill… and under every green tree where they had once offered to their idols (v. 13).
Above all of it, like a refrain returning again and again, sounds one line: ye shall know that I am the LORD (vv. 7, 10, 13, 14). It is the heartbeat of the whole chapter, and of the whole book. Everything else - the broken altars, the desolate cities, the scattered remnant - serves this single end. The high places are torn down so that, in the silence where the idols used to be, the living God can finally be recognized for who He is. The judgment is severe; its goal is knowledge. That ye may know that I am the LORD turns out to be the deepest mercy the chapter has to give.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Ezekiel 6:1-7Against the Mountains of Israel
1And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 2Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them, 3And say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD; Thus saith the Lord GOD to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys; Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. 4And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. 5And I will lay the dead carcases of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars. 6In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished. 7And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
The chapter opens with a prophetic gesture: Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them (v. 2). To set the face toward something is to fix oneself on it with deliberate, unbending intent - the body itself made into a sign of the message. And the target is striking. Ezekiel does not address kings or priests or armies first, but the mountains, and then the hills… the rivers, and the valleys (v. 3) - the whole landscape of the land, summoned as if it could hear. There is a reason the geography is named so carefully. The mountains and hills were precisely where Israel's idolatry had taken root; the high places crowned the heights, and the shaded valleys held their own shrines. So the LORD addresses the very ground that had become complicit, the scenery of a long unfaithfulness. Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you - the doubled I, even I presses that this is no accident of history, no mere collision of empires. It is the LORD Himself, acting in person, against the places where He had been forsaken.3
The sentence falls with terrible thoroughness on the apparatus of false worship: your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken… your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished (vv. 4, 6). Notice how the verbs pile up - desolate, broken, laid waste, cut down, abolished - as though the prophet means to leave no part of the idolatrous system standing. The high places were not harmless folk customs. They marked a deep turning away: on these hilltops Israel had sought other gods, burned incense to images, and bent the worship owed to the LORD toward things that could not answer. What human hands had built, divine judgment now unbuilds. And the most haunting image is the slain laid before their idols (v. 4) - the worshippers fallen at the feet of the very gods they trusted to protect them, the lifeless before the lifeless. The point is not cruelty but clarification. When the idols lie shattered and powerless among the bodies of those who served them, the lie is exposed for what it always was. The gods that could not save are seen, at last, to be nothing.
The first movement ends on the line that will govern the whole chapter: And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and ye shall know that I am the LORD (v. 7). This is the refrain that beats through the book of Ezekiel more than any other - some seventy times in all - and here it sounds for the first time in the chapter. It is worth pausing over what it claims. The aim of the judgment is not destruction for its own sake; it is knowledge. The whole catastrophe drives toward a single recognition: that I am the LORD. So long as the high places stood and the idols seemed to prosper, the people could persuade themselves that the LORD was one option among many, a tribal deity who could be set beside Baal and Asherah without consequence. The judgment ends that illusion. When the false gods are broken and only the LORD's word stands fulfilled, His reality can no longer be evaded. The terrible mercy hidden in the refrain is that even this - even ruin - is bent toward getting the people to see. A God who let them drift comfortably toward death would be no mercy at all. This God will be known.
Ezekiel 6:8-10A Remnant That Shall Remember
8Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries. 9And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. 10And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.
After the unrelenting sentence of the first seven verses, a single word turns the whole chapter: Yet. Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations (v. 8). The judgment is real, but it is not total. The LORD preserves a seed, a surviving few, carried away into the lands of their captors. And He tells us what these survivors will do there: they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives (v. 9). The word remember is doing tender and weighty work. In the land, surrounded by the high places and the rhythm of their false worship, they had forgotten the LORD - not from lack of information but from a heart turned elsewhere. It is in exile, stripped of temple and homeland, with every familiar prop gone, that memory returns. The very loss that looks like abandonment becomes the occasion of remembering. This is one of the deep patterns of Scripture: that God's people often come to themselves not in their comfort but in their stripping, recalling in a far country the God they ignored at home. The scattering, which seemed pure punishment, turns out to be the soil in which remembrance can finally grow.
The verse goes further, into language of startling intimacy and grief: the LORD says I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols (v. 9). It is arresting that God describes Himself as broken - not merely angry but wounded, grieved like one betrayed by a beloved who has gone after others. Idolatry, in the prophets, is never a cold legal infraction; it is the breaking of a marriage, a heart given away. And then comes the survivors' response: they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. To lothe oneself is a severe phrase, and it is easy to mistake it for mere self-hatred or despair. But that is not what it is. This is the recoil of a heart that has finally seen its sin for what it is - the honest revulsion of one who looks back at what he gave his life to and is sickened by it. It is the opposite of the comfortable self-justification that kept them at the high places for so long. This loathing is not the wound that destroys; it is the wound that heals, the grief that turns a person around. In exile they remember, and in remembering they grieve, and in grieving they begin, at last, to come home.
The refrain returns, now with a sharp addition: And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them (v. 10). Twice already the chapter has driven toward this knowing; here it gains a particular edge. The remnant will know not only that the LORD is God, but that His word was true. For years the prophets had warned, and the warnings had been waved off as empty threats - surely the LORD would not really act; surely tomorrow would be like today. The word in vain answers that complacency directly. What God said, He did. The judgment proves that His words are not idle, that the long patience of His warnings was never weakness. There is something steadying, even in so severe a verse, about a God whose word can be trusted to be true - for the same faithfulness that stands behind His warnings stands behind His promises. The remnant comes to know a God who means what He says. And that knowledge, hard-won, is the ground on which every later hope in the book will be built: the God who kept His word in judgment will keep His word in mercy.
Ezekiel 6:11-14Sword, Famine, and Pestilence
11Thus saith the Lord GOD; Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of Israel! for they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. 12He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword; and he that remaineth and is besieged shall die by the famine: thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. 13Then shall ye know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols. 14So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath, in all their habitations: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
The final movement opens with another gesture, even more vivid than the first: Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of Israel! (v. 11). The prophet is told to clap and stamp - a bodily outburst that could read as shock, as grief, or as a kind of dreadful applause at a verdict now sealed. The cry Alas carries genuine lament; even as judgment is announced, it is announced with mourning, not glee. Then the sentence itself is named in a triad that tolls through the prophets like a bell: they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. These three - war, hunger, and disease - are the classic instruments of covenant judgment, the calamities that fall upon a besieged and broken people. Verse 12 distributes them with grim completeness: He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword; and he that remaineth and is besieged shall die by the famine. There is no escape by distance and none by nearness; the net is total. Thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. The word accomplish matters - this is not rage spilling over but a settled purpose being carried through to its end.
The refrain sounds a third time, and the scene attached to it is unforgettable: Then shall ye know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols (v. 13). The geography is the geography of idolatry itself - the high hills, the mountain tops, the shade of every green tree and thick oak, all the favoured spots where incense had risen and sacrifices had burned. Now those same beautiful places are filled with the bodies of the worshippers. The phrase sweet savour is bitterly pointed: it is the very language of acceptable offering, the pleasing aroma that was meant to rise to God, here spent instead on idols - and answered now by the stench of death. The judgment lands exactly where the sin was committed. And still, even over this grimmest of scenes, the refrain insists on its purpose: then shall ye know. The knowledge of God is wrung even from the wreckage. Verse 14 closes the chapter with the LORD's outstretched hand and a land made desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath - a stark comparison to an outlying waste - and then, a fourth and final time, the refrain: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Ezekiel 6 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the recognition refrain vi-yidatem ki ani YHWH (vv. 7, 10, 13, 14, “ye shall know that I am the LORD”), for bamot (vv. 3, 6, the “high places”), and for the verb behind lothe themselves in verse 9.
- Ezekiel 6 ↔ John 17 · 2 Corinthians 7 · Leviticus 26Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Ezekiel 6 to the rest of Scripture - the recognition refrain (vv. 7, 10) read alongside this is life eternal, that they might know thee (John 17:3), the remnant who lothe themselves (v. 9) beside the godly sorrow that works repentance (2 Cor. 7:10), and the threefold judgment (v. 11) against the covenant warnings of Leviticus 26.
- Ezekiel 6 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Ezekiel 6 - the prophetic sign of setting the face toward the mountains (v. 2), the vocabulary of the high places and their altars (vv. 3-6), the difficult phrase about a broken heart in verse 9, and the threefold sword, famine, and pestilence of verses 11-12.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Against the Mountains of Israel
- Leviticus 26:30-31I will destroy your high places... and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols... I will make your cities waste.The covenant warning Ezekiel 6 enacts almost word for word - the high places destroyed, the slain among the idols.
- 2 Kings 17:9-12they built them high places in all their cities... and there they burnt incense in all the high places... and served idols.The long history behind verses 3-6 - the high places that drew Israel into the idolatry now being judged.
- Isaiah 2:17-18the loftiness of man shall be bowed down... and the idols he shall utterly abolish.The same reckoning as verse 6 - the proud heights brought low and the idols swept away.
- John 17:3this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.The goal toward which the refrain of verse 7 points - to know God is life itself.
- 1 Corinthians 8:4we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.The lesson the broken idols teach in verses 4-6 - that the false gods are, in the end, nothing.
A Remnant That Shall Remember
- Romans 11:5Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.The preserved remnant of verse 8 carried into the Gospel - the people God keeps for Himself in every age.
- 2 Corinthians 7:10godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.The self-loathing of verse 9 named for what it is - the grief that turns a heart home rather than crushing it.
- Luke 15:17-18And when he came to himself... I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned.The remembering and turning of verse 9 pictured - a son who, stripped in a far country, comes to himself and goes home.
- Deuteronomy 30:1-3thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations... and shalt return unto the LORD... then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity.The promise behind verse 9 - that scattered Israel would remember among the nations and return.
- Ezekiel 36:31Then shall ye remember your own evil ways... and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities.The same turning as verse 9, sounded again later in the book - remembering, and loathing the old sin.
Sword, Famine, and Pestilence
- Jeremiah 14:12I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.The same threefold judgment as verses 11-12 - sword, famine, and pestilence as the instruments of covenant reckoning.
- Hosea 4:13They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars... because the shadow thereof is good.The idolatrous worship of verse 13 - the high hills and shaded trees where Israel offered to its idols.
- Hebrews 8:11they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest of them, saith the LORD.The knowing of verses 13-14 brought to its fullness - the new-covenant promise that all God’s people will know Him.
- Philippians 3:8I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.The goal of the refrain (vv. 13-14) embraced as treasure - the knowledge of God worth more than all else.
- 2 Corinthians 4:6God... hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.Where the knowledge sought in verse 14 finally rests - the glory of God seen in the face of His Son.