Ezekiel 6:4

And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(4) Your images.—The original word indicates, as is shown in the margin, that these were images used in connection with the worship of the sun. The whole verse is taken from Leviticus 26:30. The same woes were there foretold by Moses in the contingency of the people’s disobedience; that contingency had now come to pass, the promised judgments had already begun, and Ezekiel declares that the fulfilment of them was close at hand.

Your slain men before your idols.—Their idols should be worshipped no longer by the living, but by the prostrate bodies of their dead worshippers. In this and the following verse a kind of poetic justice is described. There was nothing so utterly defiling under the Mosaic law as the touch of a dead body. (See Numbers 9:6-10; 2Kings 23:14; 2Kings 23:16.) The Israelites had defiled the land with idols, now the idols themselves should be defiled with their dead bodies.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:1-7. War desolates persons, places, and things esteemed most sacred. God ruins idolatries even by the hands of idolaters. It is just with God to make that a desolation, which we make an idol. The superstitions to which many trust for safety, often cause their ruin. And the day is at hand, when idols and idolatry will be as thoroughly destroyed from the professedly Christian church as they were from among the Jews.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Images - See the margin and margin reference, and the Ezekiel 8:16 note.

Idols - The Phoenicians were in the habit of setting up "heaps" or "pillars" of stone in honor of their gods, which renders the use of the word more appropriate.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

4. images—called so from a Hebrew root, "to wax hot," implying the mad ardor of Israel after idolatry [Calvin]. Others translate it, "sun images"; and so in Eze 6:6 (see 2Ki 23:11; 2Ch 34:4; Isa 17:8, Margin).

cast your slain men before your idols—The foolish objects of their trust in the day of evil should witness their ruin.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Your altars; God’s altar was only at Jerusalem, these were their altars.

Desolate; no priest to attend, no sacrifice offered, nor a votary come to them.

Images; statues, and perhaps the particular images made to the sun, as the Hebrew word including heat may signify. Or the open places on the tops of your houses, where you worshipped the sun, 2 Kings 23:5; and Isaiah 27:9, mentions this piece of idolatry.

Broken; either torn down from their places to be carried captives, which was a part of heathen conquerors’ insolence, or torn in pieces in contempt, and to be destroyed.

I will cast down; my hand shall guide the pursuing enemy, who shall slay your men before the altars of those idols they worshipped formerly, and to whom, as senseless as the idols, they flee for refuge, as perhaps Sennacherib did, Isaiah 37:38.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And your altars shall be desolate,.... Being pulled down; or because the priests and worshippers would now be slain, and there would be none to attend them:

and your images shall be broken; the "images of the sun" (b). The word for images has its derivation from heat; and were so called, either from the heat of the sun, to whose worship they were devoted, or from the heat of the love and affections of their worshippers:

and I will cast down your slain men before your idols; before your dung, or your "dunghill gods" (c); for the word used has the signification of dung, Ezekiel 4:12. The Targum renders it,

"before the carcass of your idols;''

where they committed idolatry, there they should be slain; which points at the cause of their punishment.

(b) "simulacra vestra solis", Pagninus; "solaria vestra", Vatablus; "subdiales statuae vestrae", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus. (c) "coram stercoreis diis vestris", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus; "coram stercoribus vestris", Cocceius.

Geneva Study Bible

And your altars shall be desolate, and your {b} images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

(b) Read 2Ki 23:14.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

4. your images] As marg., sun-images, i.e. symbols of the sun-god, probably in the shape of a pyramid or obelisk. They stood beside the altars. So again Ezekiel 6:6.

your idols] The term used is an opprobrious or contemptuous epithet, applied to idols, though its precise meaning is doubtful. Most probably it means block-gods; though others connect it with the word dung (ch. Ezekiel 4:12) and render dung-gods, which is less probable. The term occurs in Ez. nearly 40 times, otherwise Leviticus 26:30; Deuteronomy 29:17; Jeremiah 50:2; 1 Kings 15:12; 1 Kings 21:26; 2 Kings 17:12; 2 Kings 21:11; 2 Kings 21:21; 2 Kings 23:24. These idols were probably of Jehovah for the most part.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 4. - Your images, etc. The "sun images" of the Revised Version shows why these are mentioned as distinct from the "idols." The chammanim were pillars or obelisks identified with the worship of Baal as the sun god, standing on his altars (2 Chronicles 34:4), coupled with the "groves," or Asherim (Isaiah 17:8; Isaiah 27:9), and with the "high places" in 2 Chronicles 14:5. I will cast down your slain men before your idols. As in the prophecy against Bethel (1 Kings 13:2), and in Josiah's action (2 Kings 33:16), this was the ne plus ultra of desecration. Where throe had been the sweet savour of incense there should be the sickening odour of the carcases of the slain. The word for "idols" (gillulim), though found elsewhere, notably in Ezekiel's favourite textbooks (Leviticus 26:30; Deuteronomy 29:17), is more prominent in his writings (where it occurs thirty-six times) then in any other book of the Old Testament, and means, primarily, a cairn or heap of stones, which, like the "sun images," came to be associated with Baal. Ezekiel repeats both words in ver. 6, with all the emphasis of scorn. He predicts the coming of a time when the work of destruction should be done more thoroughly than even Josiah lind done it. When that time came, the familiar formula, "Ye shall know that I am the Lord," should receive yet another fulfilment. Ezekiel 6:4

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The Desolation of the Land, and Destruction of the Idolaters

Ezekiel 6:1. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Ezekiel 6:2. Son of man, turn thy face towards the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them. Ezekiel 6:3. And say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah: Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains, and to the hills, to the valleys, and to the low grounds, Behold, I bring the sword upon you, and destroy your high places. Ezekiel 6:4. Your altars shall be made desolate, and your sun-pillars shall be broken; and I shall make your slain fall in the presence of your idols. Ezekiel 6:5. And I will lay the corpses of the children of Israel before their idols, and will scatter your bones round about your altars. Ezekiel 6:6. In all your dwellings shall the cities be made desolate, and the high places waste; that your altars may be desolate and waste, and your idols broken and destroyed, and your sun-pillars hewn down, and the works of your hands exterminated. Ezekiel 6:7. And the slain will fall in your midst; that you may know that I am Jehovah. - With Ezekiel 6:1 cf. Ezekiel 3:16. The prophet is to prophesy against the mountains of Israel. That the mountains are mentioned (Ezekiel 6:2) as pars pro toto, is seen from Ezekiel 6:3, when to the mountains and hills are added also the valleys and low grounds, as the places where idolatry was specially practised; cf. Hosea 4:13; Jeremiah 2:20; Jeremiah 3:6; see on Hos. l.c. and Deuteronomy 12:2. אפיקים, in the older writings, denotes the "river channels," "the beds of the stream;" but Ezekiel uses the word as equivalent to valley, i.e., נחל, a valley with a brook or stream, like the Arabic wady. גּיא, properly "deepening," "the deep ground," "the deep valley;" on the form גּאיות, cf. Ewald, 186da. The juxtaposition of mountains and hills, of valleys and low grounds, occurs again in Ezekiel 36:4, Ezekiel 36:6, and Ezekiel 35:8; the opposition between mountains and valleys also, in Ezekiel 32:5-6, and Ezekiel 24:13. The valleys are to be conceived of as furnished with trees and groves, under the shadow of which the worship of Astarte especially was practised; see on v. 15. On the mountains and in the valleys were sanctuaries erected to Baal and Astarte. The announcement of their destruction is appended to the threatening in Leviticus 26:30, which Ezekiel takes up and describes at greater length. Beside the בּמות, the places of sacrifice and worship, and the חמּנים, pillars or statues of Baal, dedicated to him as the sun-god, he names also the altars, which, in Lev. l.c. and other places, are comprehended along with the בּמות eht htiw; see on Leviticus 26:30 and 1 Kings 3:3. With the destruction of the idol temples, altars, and statues, the idol-worshippers are also to be smitten, so as to fall down in the presence of their idols. The fundamental meaning of the word גּלּוּלים, "idols," borrowed from Lev. l.c., and frequently employed by Ezekiel, is uncertain; signifying either "logs of wood," from גּלל, "to roll" (Gesen.), or stercorei, from גּל, "dung;" not "monuments of stone" (Hvernick). Ezekiel 6:5 is taken quite literally from Leviticus 26:30. The ignominy of the destruction is heightened by the bones of the slain idolaters being scattered round about the idol altars. In order that the idolatry may be entirely rooted out, the cities throughout the whole land, and all the high places, are to be devastated, Ezekiel 6:6. The forms תּישׁמנה and יאשׁמוּ are probably not to be derived from שׁמם (Ewald, 138b), but to be referred back to a stem-form ישׁם, with the signification of שׁמם, the existence of which appears certain from the old name ישׁימון in Psalm 68 and elsewhere. The א in יאשׁמו is certainly only mater lectonis. In Ezekiel 6:7, the singular חלל stands as indefinitely general. The thought, "slain will fall in your midst," involves the idea that not all the people will fall, but that there will survive some who are saved, and prepares for what follows. The falling of the slain - the idolaters with their idols - leads to the recognition of Jehovah as the omnipotent God, and to conversion to Him.