6 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face towards the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them, 3 and say, You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God! Thus says the Lord Godto the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. 4 Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain before your idols. 5 And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. 6 Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out.7 And the slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord.
8 “Yet I will leave some of you alive. When you have among the nations some who escape the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries,9 then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations. 10 And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them.”
11 Thus says the Lord God: “Clap your hands and stamp your foot and say, Alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. 12 He who is far off shall die of pestilence, and he who is near shall fall by the sword, and he who is left and is preserved shall die of famine. Thus I will spend my fury upon them. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to all their idols. 14 And I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste, in all their dwelling places, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”
Ezekiel's words are so plain in their flow that not a great deal of comment is necessary in order to understand them. There are, however, some points to note. In 2 the prophet is commanded to set his face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them. The significance of this is that it was generally on the mountains that the 'high places' were found and idolatries practised. The history of these high places was that in the earlier days, before Solomon's temple was built, the tendency was for the worship of Jehovah to take place, here, there, and anywhere, throughout Israel. In the pre-Solomon era they were generally regarded as innocuous and harmless - after all, the people had to worship God somewhere - although many of them had originally been Canaanite places of idolatrous worship. But when the Temple was built, worship was centralised at Jerusalem and forbidden anywhere else. And after this time, when the high places were used, they were not only not innocuous, but became places of terrible idolatry, quickly reverting to the heathenish practices and losing all semblance of the true worship of Jehovah. It was against these no longer innocuous but highly dangerous and idolatrous places that Ezekiel was bidden to prophesy. One cannot help thinking there is a message here for the Church in our time, with the proliferation of splinter groups meeting in houses and other places and drawing away people from the central worship of the Church. This is always fraught with peril in spiritual life. It is one thing when little groups gather together to worship and to pray when the Church is dead and barren and there is no ministry or spiritual food for the people; but it is quite another matter for such groups to form or to persist when there is life in the Church and true ministry and substantial spiritual food. It is here that dangers can and do arise, for the whole question of motive comes in. Which would we rather be, a little fish in a big pool, or a big fish in a little pool? When such groups become an end in themselves instead of a means to an end, trouble always follows.