Ezekiel 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Ezekiel to turn toward the mountains of Israel and speak against them, announcing that the worship sites on the hills will be wrecked, the altars and idols broken, and the people killed there among the images they served. Sword, famine, and plague will come, and the land will be left empty. Some will survive and be scattered among other nations, and there they will remember the LORD and hate themselves for what they have done. The chapter repeats one refrain: they will know that he is the LORD.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel.
   • The word of the LORD came saying something that follows.
2. 6:2
   • The LORD addressed him as son of man.
   • The LORD told him to set his face toward the mountains of Israel.
   • The LORD told him to prophesy against the mountains of Israel.
3. 6:3
   • The LORD told him to say: mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD.
   • The Lord GOD spoke to the mountains and to the hills.
   • The Lord GOD spoke to the ravines and to the valleys.
   • The LORD said he himself was about to bring a sword upon them.
   • The LORD said he would destroy their high places.
4. 6:4
   • The LORD said their altars would be made desolate.
   • The LORD said their incense altars would be broken.
   • The LORD said he would cast down their slain before their idols.
5. 6:5
   • The LORD said he would lay the corpses of the children of Israel before their idols.
   • The LORD said he would scatter their bones around their altars.
6. 6:6
   • In all their dwelling places the cities would be laid waste.
   • The high places would be made desolate.
   • The purpose was that their altars would be laid waste and made guilty.
   • The purpose was that their idols would be broken and brought to an end.
   • The purpose was that their incense altars would be cut down.
   • The purpose was that their works would be wiped out.
7. 6:7
   • The slain would fall in the midst of them.
   • They would know that he is the LORD.
8. 6:8
   • The LORD said he would leave a remnant.
   • Some of them would escape the sword among the nations.
   • They would be scattered through the lands.
9. 6:9
   • Those of them who escaped would remember the LORD among the nations where they were taken captive.
   • The LORD said he was broken by their adulterous heart, which had turned away from him.
   • The LORD said he was broken by their eyes, which went whoring after their idols.
   • It is ambiguous whether the LORD says he was broken by their heart and eyes or that he broke their adulterous heart and eyes.
   • They would loathe themselves for the evils they had committed.
   • They would loathe themselves for all their abominations.
10. 6:10
    • They would know that he is the LORD.
    • The LORD said he had not spoken in vain that he would do this evil to them.
11. 6:11
    • The Lord GOD spoke.
    • The LORD told him to strike with his hand.
    • The LORD told him to stamp with his foot.
    • The LORD told him to say, Alas.
    • The outcry was because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel.
    • The house of Israel would fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.
12. 6:12
    • The one who is far off would die by the pestilence.
    • The one who is near would fall by the sword.
    • The one who remains and is besieged would die by the famine.
    • The LORD said he would exhaust his fury upon them.
13. 6:13
    • They would know that he is the LORD.
    • They would know it when their slain lay among their idols around their altars.
    • The slain would lie upon every high hill.
    • The slain would lie on all the mountaintops.
    • The slain would lie under every green tree.
    • The slain would lie under every leafy terebinth.
    • Those were the places where they offered a pleasing aroma to all their idols.
14. 6:14
    • The LORD said he would stretch out his hand against them.
    • The LORD said he would make the land a desolate waste.
    • The desolation would extend from the wilderness to Diblah.
    • It is ambiguous whether the phrase means the land would be more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblah or that the desolation would reach from the wilderness to Diblah.
    • The desolation would be in all their dwelling places.
    • They would know that he is the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

"The word of the LORD came to me" is a set formula that opens a prophetic message; it marks what follows as speech Ezekiel received rather than his own. LORD in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters (YHWH) that readers spoke aloud as "Lord" instead of pronouncing. Ezekiel is writing in Babylonia, among Judeans deported there around 597 BC, several years before Jerusalem's fall.

6:2

"Son of man" is a Hebrew idiom for a human being, a mortal. It is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, roughly "you, human." It is a form of address, not a title. "Set your face toward" is a gesture-phrase: to turn deliberately and stare at something as an act of hostile intent. It is the posture of a person delivering a verdict, not simply looking. The "mountains of Israel" are the hill country running down the spine of the land, the settled heartland where most towns and most hilltop shrines stood. Addressing the landscape itself, rather than the people, is a standard prophetic device.

6:3

"Lord GOD" with GOD in small capitals renders a doubled Hebrew title, Adonai YHWH: "Sovereign" plus the personal divine name. Where the King James has "rivers," the Hebrew word means ravines or streambeds, gullies that run with water in the rainy season and lie dry the rest of the year. "High places" (Hebrew bamot) were open-air worship sites, usually on hilltops or raised platforms, with an altar and often a standing stone or sacred pole. They were long-standing Canaanite installations that Israelites also used, and prophets condemned them as rivals to the Jerusalem temple.

6:4

The King James "images" translates a word for incense altars or incense stands, small pillars for burning aromatic offerings, not statues of gods. The word behind "idols" here (gillulim) is one Ezekiel uses constantly. It is a term of contempt, formed to sound like the word for dung or dung-pellets, so something closer to "filth-things" than a neutral word for images.

6:5

Scattering human bones around an altar is not just insult but sabotage: contact with a corpse made a place ritually unclean, and bones strewn over a shrine put it permanently out of use. The same tactic is described at 2 Kings 23:14–16, where King Josiah shuts down shrines by burning human bones on them.

6:6

"Your works" means the things your hands made, the images and shrine furniture themselves, not deeds or actions in general.

6:7

"You will know that I am the LORD" is a recognition formula that recurs more than sixty times in Ezekiel, four times in this short chapter. It marks the stated purpose of an event: that those who see it will be forced to identify who is behind it.

6:8

A "remnant" is the surviving fragment left after a disaster, the few who come through a war or deportation alive. The word became a standing term in prophetic writing for the portion of Israel that outlives a catastrophe.

6:9

"Whorish heart" and "go a whoring" translate a Hebrew verb (zanah) for sexual infidelity. Prophets use it routinely for worshiping other gods, because the bond between God and Israel was described as a marriage; the language is figurative and its force is betrayal of an exclusive relationship, not sexual behavior as such. "I am broken" is a literal rendering of a Hebrew verb meaning shattered or crushed; here it describes being wounded or grieved by the betrayal. Some translations instead read it as "I have broken their whorish heart." The Hebrew allows both. "Abominations" translates to'evah, a word for practices treated as detestable and out of bounds. In Ezekiel it most often points to the rites carried out at the shrines.

6:10

In the King James "this evil" means this disaster or this harm, not moral wickedness. Older English used "evil" for any bad thing that happens to a person, including war, famine and illness. "In vain" means emptily, without the words coming to anything.

6:11

Clapping the hands and stamping the foot were public gestures of violent emotion. The Hebrew does not settle which emotion is meant: the same actions elsewhere express scorn and gloating over an enemy's fall, and elsewhere express shock and grief. "Alas" translates a one-syllable cry of mourning. "Sword, famine, and pestilence" is a fixed set phrase for the three ways a besieged population dies: killed in the fighting, starved when supplies run out, and carried off by the epidemics that spread in a crowded, blockaded city. Ezekiel and Jeremiah use the trio repeatedly as a unit.

6:12

The three cases are meant to cover everyone: the person who has fled far from the city, the person caught in the open near it, and the person shut inside during a siege. In a siege an attacking army surrounded a walled city and cut off food and supplies instead of storming it, waiting for hunger and disease inside to finish the job, which could take months or even years.

6:13

"Under every green tree" is a stock phrase for open-air worship sites. Large evergreen or leafy trees marked sacred spots, and shade trees on high ground were standard settings for local shrines. "Sweet savour" is the technical language of sacrifice: the smoke of a burnt or incense offering rising as a scent the deity was said to find pleasing. Israel's own sacrificial laws use the identical phrase, which is part of the sting here.

6:14

Diblath is otherwise unknown. Many Hebrew manuscripts and most modern translations read Riblah, a town in Syria far to the north, which would make the phrase mean "from the southern desert to Riblah in the north," that is, the whole length of the land. The King James follows the reading Diblath and takes the sense as a comparison, more desolate than that wilderness. The Hebrew is uncertain, and both readings are defensible. "Stretch out my hand" is an idiom for taking direct action against someone, the gesture of a ruler reaching to strike.