Bible Commentaries

Ezekiel 6:3-4. I will destroy your high places, all the necessaries of idolatry. במות bomoth, βουνοι, thence βωμοι. Your high altars. In Montfaucon’s Antiquities we have various views of heathen altars, all the devices of men. The druids preferred a tabular rock unhewn, supported by three pillars, usually called cromlechs. They had no idols; but the apostate jews had their idols in some adjacent temple or covering.

Ezekiel 6:5. I will scatter your bones round about your altars. It was an ancient custom to bury treasures and trinkets with the dead. This tempted invading armies to desecrate every splendid tomb, as stated in Jeremiah 8:1-2.

Ezekiel 6:11. Stamp with thy foot. A preacher may use proper action at all times, but extravagant action on strong occasions only. Divine truths, conformably to their nature, should call forth the energies both of the body and the mind.

Ezekiel 6:14. And make the land—more desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath, the town adjacent to the terrible desert.

REFLECTIONS.

What a striking apostrophe to mountains and hills smoking profanely with victims, to vallies and rivers where Moloch was more obscurely worshipped, and infants immolated. The high places of altars and the idols are named last as the most detestible; for God hated their crimes, and allowed not of more than one altar, excepting in some cases of extremity. Very soon shall the Assyrian hunters pursue the scattered families of the ten tribes, and those of Judah who succeeded them, and inherited all their crimes.

The holy prophets often describe the evangelical state of the church by the culture of desert lands, and turning them to inviting abodes, surrounded by the most flourishing agriculture; yea, by springs in the desert, and pools in the parched ground. Just the reverse of that is the character of apostasy in religion. The fine gold becomes dim, and the fruitful field a place of briers and thorns. If men will learn wisdom, the volume is open; and the abyss is before the eyes of the incorrigible. Execration often attends the wicked, after their abuse of prosperity in the present world, and even after death. Why should the bones of the epicure and the polluted atheist be respected on earth? They are memorials of their wickedness. And if God sent his hunters on the mountains of Samaria, making desolate the mausoleums, what became of the tenants that were hurried away in the awful habits of apostasy, revolt and crime. How will they meet the fiery Judge, or abide the opening of his books.