Ezekiel 6:6
Wherever you live, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and desecrated, your idols smashed and obliterated, your incense altars cut down, and your works blotted out.
Sermons
False Religion and its DoomH. Bonar, D. D.Ezekiel 6:6
False WorshipW. Greenhill, M. A.Ezekiel 6:6
The Idolatry of the Land AvengedJ.R. Thomson Ezekiel 6:1-6
The Impotence of IdolsW. Jones Ezekiel 6:1-7
The Land Involved in Man's PunishmentJ.D. Davies Ezekiel 6:1-7














Turning from the city of Jerusalem to the land generally, the Prophet Ezekiel addresses himself to Israel, the nation whom God had chosen, and who had rejected God. By a striking figure of speech, he delivers his message to the mountains and hills, the water courses and ravines of Palestine. How dear all these features of the land of his fathers must have been to the prophet, we can easily imagine; national and religious associations must, in the course of centuries, have gathered round every portion of the territory which Jehovah had given to the descendants of Abraham. The apostrophe to the country was at the same time a word to the nation; the people and the land were identified. The artist, the poet, may deal with scenery apart from the living inhabitants who dwell amidst it. But the patriot, the prophet, the preacher, love the land for the people's sake who make it their home. To Ezekiel the land of Israel was -

I. A SCENE OF IDOLATRY. Before its possession by the Israelites, the land of Canaan was a stronghold of idolatry and of idolatrous rites and practices of the foulest and cruellest kind. The commission which the children of Israel received was a commission to extirpate the idolaters, and to purse the land of its heathen abominations. Yet the candid and faithful record of Old Testament Scripture informs us that from the first the chosen people were led away by the example and influence of the ancient dwellers in the land, and learned to practise the abominations they were appointed to repress. One great aim of the seers and prophets was to reproach the nation because of prevailing idolatry and superstition, and to summon them to return to their allegiance, ever due to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is evident that the worship of the deities adored by the surrounding nations was prevalent even among those who were called to a purer faith; and that some of the kings, both of Judah and of Israel, sanctioned and encouraged idolatrous observances and idolatrous priesthoods. Thus the high places and the ravines of Palestine were defiled by the rites of folly, cruelty, and lust. These heathen deities were embodiments in imagination of the lusts which corrupt the human heart.

II. A SCENE OF PROPHETIC PROTEST AND REBUKE. It was a token of Divine mercy and forbearance that the apostate Israelites were not left to the delusions and errors, the defection and rebellion, into which they had suffered themselves to be led. The voice of the Lord's prophets was heard upon the mountains, and throughout the valleys, which had been abandoned to those who practised the fanatical, bloodthirsty, and polluted observances distinctive of Canaanitish and Phoenician idolatry. Impressions were produced upon individuals which resulted in a return to the service of Jehovah. There were temporary reformations, distinguished by penitence and by vows. But the reader of the prophetic Scriptures cannot but admit that there was no great national movement in the right direction. Notwithstanding faithful rebuke, severe denunciation, compassionate promise, the people returned again and again to their former follies. It was as though Israel had resolved that no exhortation and no threat should avail to keep the nation faithful to him who bad exalted, defended, and prospered it, and who bad borne with the manners of the rebellious people, not only in the wilderness, but in the land of promise. It was as though nothing short of captivity and exile, conjoined with the destruction and desolation of the capital, could teach the lesson which it was Israel's vocation first to acquire, and then to communicate to the world around.

III. A SCENE OF DESOLATION AND OF DEATH. The Prophet Ezekiel speaks here with conviction and certainty. There rises before his mind a vision which can only fill his heart with grief and mourning. It is a satisfaction, indeed, to his righteous soul to foresee the high places destroyed, the altars desolate, the images broken, and the works of idolaters abolished. But this is not all. He sees the dead carcases of the children of Israel, the scattered bonus, the slain in the midst of the city, etc. And the vision of the depopulated land, the deserted and silent city, the vanquished and decimated nation, profoundly affects his patriotic and sensitive nature. It is a stern lesson, this which he has to teach; it is a terrible punishment, this which he has to anticipate and to foretell. Yet the lesson and the punishment are the Lord's. It is the word of the Lord which the prophet has to declare, the Lord of Israel who is at the same time the King of righteousness and of judgment. God brings the sword upon his own people; covers his own land with ruin and desolation. For his authority must not be defied, his laws must not be broken; his name must not be dishonoured with impunity. "The way of transgressors is hard." "The wages of sin is death." Until this lesson is learned, there is no place for the publication of clemency, for the proffer of mercy. The Law comes before the gospel; and they who do not honour the Law will not appreciate the gospel. It is in the midst of wrath that God remembers mercy.

APPLICATION.

1. There is such a thing as national guilt and apostasy. In our own time, individualism is carried to such an extreme that this fact is apt to be overlooked. A nation sins by its collective acts, and a nation suffers the just punishment of its evil doing. History is ever teaching this lesson, which men - good and bad - in their absorption in personal interests, are prone to overlook.

2. The Church has responsibility for witnessing against national errors, for warning the people of the inevitable consequences of apostasy from God, and for uttering clearly and boldly the mind and will of him who is eternal righteousness and eternal love. - T.

That your altars may be laid waste.
1. Where idols and false worship are got into a church or state, they are not easily got out again. Their cities must be destroyed, that their altars and idols may be broken and cease.

2. See what it is that ruins cities; altars, idols, false worship, mixtures of man's inventions with the Lord's pure ordinances. These are great cannon, that batter cities; these are gunpowder, that blow them up; these bring the Lord of hosts to war against them.

3. Idolatry and false worship do so provoke God, that He will destroy cities, kingdoms, churches, but He will have them out.

4. Men love to have somewhat of their own in worship; they are not content with what the infinitely wise God commends unto them, but will be adding.

5. God is not pleased with anything in worship which is not His own; He must prescribe whet way and wherewith He will be worshipped.

6. Judgments cause idolaters to know the true God from the false.

(W. Greenhill, M. A.)

Man says he wants sincerity and earnestness. What God asks is truth, the one religion which He has revealed.

I. FALSE RELIGION: there is such a thing; it may be earnest and zealous, yet false.

II. ITS USELESSNESS: it profits nobody, either here or hereafter; is not acceptable to God.

III. ITS HATEFULNESS: God abhors it; it is outward, untrue, against His revelation; dishonouring, self-exalting.

IV. ITS DOOM: its condemnation is —

1. Certain.

2. Utter.

3. Visible.

4. Expressive.

5. Contemptuous.

6. Everlasting.Apply —

(1)See that your religion is true.

(2)Your worship real.

(H. Bonar, D. D.)

People
Ezekiel, Israelites
Places
Jerusalem, Riblah
Topics
Abolished, Altars, Blotted, Broken, Cease, Ceased, Cities, Cut, Demolished, Desolate, Destroyed, Devastated, Dwell, Dwelling, Dwellingplaces, Dwelling-places, Dwellings, Ended, Hewn, Idols, Images, Incense, Laid, Living-places, Places, Rubbed, Ruined, Smashed, Sun-images, Towns, Walls, Waste, Wherever, Wiped, Works
Outline
1. The judgment of Israel for their idolatry
8. A remnant shall be blessed
11. The faithful are exhorted to lament their abominations and calamities

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Ezekiel 6:6

     7386   incense

Ezekiel 6:2-10

     5029   knowledge, of God

Ezekiel 6:3-6

     7442   shrine

Ezekiel 6:6-7

     5508   ruins

Library
John the Baptist's Person and Preaching.
(in the Wilderness of Judæa, and on the Banks of the Jordan, Occupying Several Months, Probably a.d. 25 or 26.) ^A Matt. III. 1-12; ^B Mark I. 1-8; ^C Luke III. 1-18. ^b 1 The beginning of the gospel [John begins his Gospel from eternity, where the Word is found coexistent with God. Matthew begins with Jesus, the humanly generated son of Abraham and David, born in the days of Herod the king. Luke begins with the birth of John the Baptist, the Messiah's herald; and Mark begins with the ministry
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Ezekiel
To a modern taste, Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance; it was very largely from him that Judaism received the ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it was powerfully
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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