Scripture Daily

Context No. 209 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 6:1-7: in context

1The LORD’s word came to me, saying, 2“Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy to them, 3and say, ‘You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD! The Lord GOD says to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys: “Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places. 4Your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be broken. I will cast down your slain men before your idols. 5I will lay the dead bodies of the children of Israel before their idols. I will scatter your bones around your altars. 6In all your dwelling places, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be desolate, so that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be abolished. 7The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am the LORD.

Ezekiel was a priest taken to Babylon with the first wave of exiles, years before Jerusalem finally fell. He prophesies about a homeland he can no longer see. Here God tells him to set his face toward the mountains of Israel, and the mountains are the point.

The hills of the land were covered with high places, open-air shrines on the summits where people burned incense. Some were meant for the LORD and many were shared with other gods, and Ezekiel's tradition treated the whole system as the country's deep sickness. The judgment in these verses is aimed there. The altars will be thrown down, the incense stands broken, and the bodies of the worshipers laid in front of the idols they served. Bones scattered around an altar was the plainest way to ruin a shrine, since contact with the dead made a holy place unclean.

The phrase that closes the passage is the one Ezekiel returns to more than any other: you will know that I am the LORD. The recognition comes through loss, after the shrines are gone and there is nothing left to burn incense on. It is a hard way to learn a name. Where have I built my worship on a height I would not give up until it was taken from me?

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