Reflections on Ezekiel 6

Ezekiel 06 (Contemporary English Version)
1. The LORD God said:
   
2. Ezekiel, son of man, face the hills of Israel and tell them:
   
3. Listen, you mountains and hills, and every valley and gorge! I, the LORD, am about to turn against you and crush all the places where foreign gods are worshiped.
   
4. Every altar will be smashed, and in front of the idols I will put to death the people who worship them.
   
5. Dead bodies and bones will be lying around the idols and the altars.
   
6. Every town in Israel will be destroyed to make sure that each shrine, idol, and altar is smashed--everything the Israelites made will be a pile of ruins.
   
7. All over the country, your people will die. And those who survive will know that I, the LORD, did these things.
   
8. I will let some of the people live through this punishment, but I will scatter them among the nations,
   
9. where they will be prisoners. And when they think of me, they will realize that they disgraced me by rebelling and by worshiping idols. They will hate themselves for the evil things they did,
   
10. and they will know that I am the LORD and that my warnings must be taken seriously.
    
11. The LORD God then said: Ezekiel, beat your fists together and stomp your feet in despair! Moan in sorrow, because the people of Israel have done disgusting things and now will be killed by enemy troops, or they will die from starvation and disease.
    
12. Those who live far away will be struck with deadly diseases. Those who live nearby will be killed in war. And the ones who are left will starve to death. I will let loose my anger on them!
    
13. These people used to offer incense to idols at altars built on hills and mountaintops and in the shade of large oak trees. But when they see dead bodies lying around those altars, they will know that I am the LORD.
    
14. I will make their country a barren wasteland, from the Southern Desert to the town of Diblah in the north. Then they will know that I, the LORD, have done these things.
    
    

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    The relationship God desires with His people, both in Ezekiel's day and now, is like that of a husband and wife. This comparison is used throughout scripture. An instance of this is found in Isaiah 54:5, "For your husband is your Maker--His nEzeliel ame is Yahweh of Hosts--and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is called the God of all the earth." God is not distant or uninterested in the affairs of mankind, as some think. Instead, He desires an intimate relationship with each of us, to care for us as a husband cares for his wife. Therefore, it is in this light that God refers to Israel's worshipping of other gods as adultery. In verse 9 of this chapter, God says, "I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols." This word "promiscuous" is also translated "lewd" and "whorish."  This gives a rather clear sense of how God felt about Israel's idolatry and why He was taking such strong action against her.
    
    Therefore, God's instruction to Ezekiel in verse 2 to, "turn your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them," was a reference to her idolatry. It was the mountains of Israel on which the people had built their high places, or shrines to false gods. The message Ezekiel was to deliver to the "mountains and the hills" was that God was "about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. Your altars will be desolated and your incense altars smashed. I will throw down your slain in front of your idols. I will lay the corpses of the Israelites in front of their idols and scatter your bones around your altars. (6:3-5) There is no doubt that God's strong judgment against Israel was due to her idolatry and thus her unfaithfulness to God. The result of Israel's idolatry was that she also turned away from the teachings of God and had become wicked in her practices as well. So her wickedness was a part of the judgment, but the leading cause was her idolatry.
    
    But we must not forget that God's judgment is never an end in itself. Its intent, always, is to bring a reconciliation between God and His people. It is this intent that always inserts a ray of hope within such messages of judgment. We find it here in verses 8-10, "Yet I will leave a remnant when you are scattered among the nations, for throughout the countries there will be some of you who will escape the sword. Then your survivors will remember Me among the nations where they are taken captive, how I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves because of the evil things they did, their abominations of every kind. And they will know that I am the LORD; I did not threaten to bring this disaster on them without a reason."