Ezekiel chapter 6

vs 1

Get used to that, Ezekiel. It's going to happen a lot.

vs 2

Now you might think, "Why the mountains? What crime did they commit? Isn't this between God and his people?"

vs 3

God is going to punish the high places of the mountains. Now obviously the mountains didn't put them there, but God is so angry wit Israel's idolatry, he is going to take it out on mountains too, just for holding the altars. That's the point.

vs 4

Your people, as if the people belong to the mountains. They are not God's people, these idol worshippers. God is one angry suzerain.

vs 5

Hence desecrating them. So God himself will desecrate the altars of these idols through the mass extermination he has planned.

vs 6

I think he's swapped halfway through the last verse to be talking about the people now, not the mountains. So even outside Jerusalem, in the outlying towns, he will show no mercy. It will all be smashed and broken, because this is the main reason God is crushing them - persistent idolatry which led them to ignore him.

vs 7

You hear this "you will know I am the Lord" a lot in this book. It's not usually a good thing.

vs 8

Huzzah? I suppose life is better than death, even at the enslaved hand of the nations.

vs 9

This is what needed to happen. It is an awful, terrible tragedy, but actions speak louder than words, and God alone knew what action needed to be taken to speak to his people about idolatry, and to turn their hearts from it. It took exile. That probably says more about the hardness of Israel's hearts than it does some meanness about God.

vs 10

He sure didn't threaten it in vain. Not only does he show that he keeps his promises - even if he is very, very slow to boil in anger, but he also shows them that they have done wrong, and does it in a way that makes them loathe their wickedness.

vs 11

Now, is this what Israel should do? Or is this what Ezekiel should do? I'm not sure. I think this is what God is telling Ezekiel to tell the people. They should do the stomping and clapping.

vs 12

When he says a third, a third, a third, you might recognise that this equals 100%. And yet we know that God doesn't kill everyone. Because measurements just weren't that precise then. God saves the remnant - the little bit that sticks to the scales, or falls on the floor out of the bags between measuring - but he saves it. That's the remnant. Those that survive are the margin of error.

vs 13

Knowing God is the Lord is apparently a much more difficult lesson than it should be. It involves wholesale slaughter and destruction of idols at the hands of a foreign power. I wonder how big a stick God has to use in some people's lives today.

vs 14

The land, the poor land, it's always been like the meat in the sandwich between God's relationship with his people. Because the Land was part of the promise, it is the land that so often bears the brunt of curses, plagues, famines, locusts, armies etc. And now it will too, just on top of all the problems of the people. Very, very bad. Not that it will matter greatly to Israel, because they won't be living there anyway. They'll be exiled.