Ezekiel 6

Translator Notes

1. The standard prophetic reception formula. The Hebrew le'mor ('saying') introduces the divine speech that follows and is rendered as a colon.

Translator Notes

1. The command sim panekha ('set your face') indicates a physical orientation — Ezekiel is to turn his body toward the west, facing the land of Israel from Babylon, and direct his oracle at the mountains. The mountains of Israel are addressed because they are the sites of the bamot ('high places') where idolatrous worship was conducted on hilltops and ridges throughout the land.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The address encompasses the full topography of the land: harim ('mountains'), geva'ot ('hills'), afiqim ('ravines, streambeds'), and ge'ayot ('valleys'). Every type of terrain is addressed because idolatrous shrines occupied every type of landscape. The word bamot ('high places') is the technical term for the hilltop sanctuaries that were the persistent sin of Israel's history — the reform-resistant worship sites that even faithful kings struggled to remove (cf. 1 Kings 15:14, 2 Kings 12:3).

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The word chammanim is debated — it may refer to incense altars, sun-pillars, or other cultic objects associated with Canaanite worship. We rendered 'incense stands' following the likely connection to chammanah ('heat, sun'), suggesting objects used in sun-worship or incense-burning rituals. The word gillulim ('idols') is Ezekiel's characteristic derogatory term, likely derived from galal ('dung, dung-pellet') — it is a deliberately contemptuous label reducing the gods of the nations to excrement. We render it simply as 'idols' in the text but note the scatological force of the Hebrew.

Translator Notes

1. The word pigrei ('corpses, carcasses') treats the dead worshipers like slaughtered animals — the same word is used for animal carcasses in Levitical purity law. The scattering of bones around the altars is both a desecration of the worship sites and a grim reversal: the worshipers who came to the altars seeking blessing now litter the ground around them as unburied dead. In priestly terms, human bones render a site permanently unclean (cf. 2 Kings 23:14, 16, where Josiah defiles altars by burning bones on them).

Translator Notes

1. The verb ye'shemu presents a textual difficulty — it could derive from shamem ('to be desolate') or asham ('to bear guilt'). We rendered 'bear their guilt' to preserve the priestly concept that the altars themselves have incurred guilt through the worship conducted on them. The sequence of destruction verbs is relentless: yechervu ('laid waste'), nishberu ('shattered'), nishbetu ('brought to nothing'), nigde'u ('cut down'), nimchu ('wiped out') — five different words for destruction piling up to convey total elimination.

Translator Notes

1. This is the first appearance of Ezekiel's signature recognition formula. It will recur approximately sixty times throughout the book, functioning as the theological thesis statement: all of God's acts — destruction, exile, restoration — aim at one outcome: that Israel and the nations will know who the LORD truly is. The formula links Ezekiel's theology directly to the Exodus narrative, where the plagues were also 'so that you will know' (Exodus 7:5, 14:4, 14:18).

Translator Notes

1. The shift from total destruction to remnant preservation is abrupt but characteristic of prophetic rhetoric. The word pelitei cherev ('escapees of the sword') identifies the survivors specifically as those who survived military violence — not those spared from it, but those who lived through it. The remnant is not unscathed; they carry the trauma of what they witnessed.

Translator Notes

1. The Hebrew nishbarti can be read as 'I was broken' (Niphal of shavar) or 'I broke' (with libbam as object). The Niphal reading — 'I was broken/crushed' — is more striking and is followed here: God himself was crushed by their unfaithfulness. The adjective hazzoneh ('adulterous, whoring') applied to the heart uses the same root (z-n-h) that dominates the extended allegories of chapters 16 and 23. The verb naqotu ('they will loathe') conveys physical disgust — it is stronger than mere regret and suggests a bodily revulsion at one's own past.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase lo el chinnam ('not for nothing, not idly') asserts that God's warnings through the prophets were not empty rhetoric. Every threatened judgment was a genuine declaration of intent. The word hara'ah ('the disaster, the evil') uses the same Hebrew root as 'evil' but here refers to calamity or disaster — it is the consequence of their own evil, not arbitrary divine malice.

Translator Notes

1. The physical gestures — striking hands (hakkeh vekhappekha) and stamping the foot (urqa beraglekha) — are expressions of grief and outrage, not celebration. The exclamation ach is an interjection of lamentation, rendered 'What horror!' to capture the emotional force. The triad of cherev ('sword'), ra'av ('famine'), and dever ('plague') repeats from 5:12 and will continue to recur as the standard formula for comprehensive judgment in Ezekiel.

Translator Notes

1. The three fates are arranged geographically: those far from Jerusalem die by plague, those nearby fall by the sword of the invading army, and those trapped inside the besieged city perish from famine. The arrangement is comprehensive — no distance from Jerusalem offers safety. The verb killeti ('I will exhaust, complete, finish') indicates that God's wrath has a terminus — it is not infinite but will be fully spent.

Translator Notes

1. The list of worship locations — hills, mountaintops, green trees, leafy oaks — catalogs the typical settings for Canaanite and syncretistic worship throughout the land. The phrase etz ra'anan ('green tree') and elah avuttah ('leafy oak') echo the formulaic condemnation in Deuteronomy 12:2 and throughout Kings (1 Kings 14:23, 2 Kings 16:4, 17:10). The phrase reiach nichoach ('pleasing aroma') is deeply ironic — this is the same vocabulary used for acceptable sacrifices to the LORD (Leviticus 1:9, 13, 17), here applied to idol worship. The priestly language of legitimate worship is being used to describe its perversion.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase natiti et yadi ('I will stretch out my hand') echoes the Exodus language of divine intervention — but whereas God stretched out his hand to deliver Israel from Egypt (Exodus 6:6), he now stretches it out to devastate their land. The place name Diblah (or Riblah — some manuscripts read Riblah, a city in the land of Hamath where Nebuchadnezzar held court and executed Zedekiah's sons, 2 Kings 25:6-7) establishes the geographic scope of the devastation: from the southern wilderness to the far northern border. The phrase shemamah umeshammah ('desolation and desolation') uses two forms of the same root for emphasis — utter, compound devastation. The chapter closes with the recognition formula, creating an inclusio with verse 7.