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Ezekiel, part 20, The Prophecy Against the Mountains

Ezekiel 6: broadens the judgment from Jerusalem to the land surrounding it. Chapter 5 concentrated on the city’s rebellion; chapter 6 exposes the idolatrous worship that had spread throughout the countryside. The land God had given Israel had become filled with sanctuaries and shrines dedicated to other gods.

Prophesying Against the Mountains

Ezekiel 6:1, 2 begins,

¹ And the word of the Lord came to me saying, ² “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them.”

God commands Ezekiel to set his face toward the mountains of Israel. This is the posture of a prophet delivering a determined verdict. Ezekiel’s face expresses the opposition of God toward the practices established there. The mountains are addressed as witnesses of Israel’s high places that were often built there, overlooking the ravines and valleys. The landscape itself had become associated with covenant unfaithfulness.

Here, “Israel” should not automatically be restricted to the northern kingdom. Ezekiel was speaking among the Judahite exiles while Jerusalem still stood. His language treats the land as Israel’s inheritance as a whole, with the approaching Babylonian judgment falling upon the hills of Jerusalem and Judah.

Ezekiel 6:3 continues,

³ and say, “Mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord God! Thus says the Lord God to the mountains, the hills, the ravines and the valleys: ‘Behold, I Myself am going to bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places’.”

The law had already commanded Israel to destroy the nations’ worship sites on mountains, hills, and beneath flourishing trees (Deuteronomy 12:2, 3). Israel had instead adopted those practices. After their failure to execute His judgment against idolatry, God Himself would now destroy the sanctuaries that His people had been commanded to remove.

Ezekiel 6:4 says,

⁴ “So your altars will become desolate and your incense altars will be smashed, and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols. ⁵ I will also lay the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of your idols; and I will scatter your bones around your altars.”

The destruction of the altars and incense altars exposes the powerlessness of the gods worshiped there. Their worshipers would fall before the very objects from which they had sought protection. The sanctuary would become a place of death rather than refuge.

The Hebrew word translated “idols,” gillulim, is a contemptuous designation, commonly associated with dung. Gillulim occurs twice in the Torah, both times referring to idols: Leviticus 26:30 and Deuteronomy 29:17. Ezekiel’s vocabulary strips these objects of the dignity their worshipers gave them. Isaiah and Jesus later help define dung in terms of the traditions of men. It begins as good food but after human processing (“works”), it comes forth as dung.

This also explains why the judgment strikes religious objects so directly. God was exposing the falsehood upon which the people had built their confidence.

Bones Around the Altars

The scattering of human bones around the altars carries both judicial and ritual significance. Human remains convey death and uncleanness under the law (Numbers 19:16). Consequently, the places regarded as sacred would become defiled. Josiah had previously used human bones to desecrate idolatrous altars (2 Kings 23:14–20). Ezekiel announces a comparable result through the coming judgment: the worshipers’ own remains would testify against their worship.

The direct legal background is Leviticus 26:30, where God warned that covenant rebellion would bring the destruction of high places and incense altars, with the people’s corpses laid upon their lifeless idols. Ezekiel was announcing the enforcement of that existing covenant sentence.

There is a terrible appropriateness in the picture: those who attached themselves to lifeless gods would lie lifeless beside them.

The Destruction of Their Works

Ezekiel 6:6 continues,

⁶ “In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out.”

The devastation extends to cities and dwelling places because idolatry had become embedded in the community’s life. Religious corruption from the word of the Lord to the traditions of men could not be isolated from its consequences for the nation.

The reference to their “works” being blotted out concerns, in this setting, the objects and establishments they had made for false worship. What human hands had constructed as a substitute for God, along with the man-made traditions and interpretations of the divine law, would be dismantled by God’s judgment and replaced by truth.

The apostle Paul picks up on this in his epistles, showing the distinction between faith and works. True faith emanates from one’s spirit; works emanate from one’s fleshly soul, that is, the carnal mind of man. Faith comes by hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17); works are created by the soul’s imagination, the source of positive thinking.

More than a century ago, Charles Fillmore set forth his teachings that redefined faith in terms of positive thinking. Instead of faith being a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8), “faith” became a construct of the human will. His teachings were later adopted by certain Christian leaders who, not understanding the sovereignty of God, failed to understand the difference between faith and positive thinking. Hence, they too replaced the will of God with the will of man and created their own version of the traditions of men.

Knowing That He Is the Lord

The passage reaches its stated purpose in Ezekiel 6:7,

⁷ “The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am the LORD.”

This recognition formula becomes a recurring feature of Ezekiel’s prophecies. The fulfillment of God’s word would establish that He had spoken and that Israel’s idols could not overturn His verdict.

Here, knowing the Lord means being compelled by events and the light of truth to acknowledge His identity and authority. Judgment thus exposes false worship and prepares the way for repentance. The following verses introduce “a remnant” who remember Him and come to abhor their former sins. Ezekiel 6:8–10 says,

⁸ “However, I will leave a remnant, for you will have those who escaped the sword among the nations when you are scattered across the countries. ⁹ Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols; and they will loath themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed, for all their abominations. ¹⁰ Then they will know that I am the Lord; I have not said in vain that I would inflict this disaster on them.”

On the surface, the remnant are simply the survivors and their descendants. But the “remnant” is also a prophetic term that is synonymous with the overcomers. Paul tells us in Romans 11:1-7 that the remnant of grace are those who actually are the recipients of the promises of God. The biological Israelites, he says, are not the “chosen” ones. Romans 11:5-7 says,

⁵ In the same way, then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. ⁶ But if it is by [God’s] grace, it is no longer the basis of [man’s] works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. ⁷ What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened [“blinded,” KJV].

Many Christians are taught that their salvation is the result of their own decision, failing to give credit to God for His gracious work which caused them to repent and turn to Christ. By taking credit for their own salvation—by the power of man’s will—“grace is no longer grace.” How then can they be part of the “remnant according to God’s gracious choice”? They attempt to be part of this remnant by the power of man’s gracious choice. Yet if that were so, then salvation would be based on the will of man, which is rooted in the doctrine of “works.”

But through Ezekiel, God declares that in spite of judgment and exile, He has chosen a remnant by the counsel of His own will. A few of these, such as Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel and his three friends, were part of the remnant from the time that they first received the gift of faith. They form the pattern for the entire remnant for generations to come.

What Do They Loathe?

In Ezekiel 6:9, the NASB’s “they will loathe themselves in their own sight” conveys a Hebrew idiom. Their repentance involves seeing their own conduct truthfully and becoming disgusted with what they had formerly approved. Though it is not stated clearly, we ought to understand this in terms of what Paul calls the “old self” that must be put to death (Romans 6:6). He also calls it the “natural man” (1 Corinthians 2:14), which is our “self” that was brought forth by our human parents. The term is, more literally, the soulish man, that is, the conscious identity of the soul begotten by the original Adam, who was made as a living soul (1 Corinthians 15:45).

Paul says that this soulish conscious “self” is incapable of understanding spiritual things. Hence, when it is convinced to follow Christ, its reformation cannot be complete by the power of positive thinking, no matter how strong is its intent. Salvation cannot be obtained by changing the thoughts and intentions of the soul.

Instead, the immortal and incorruptible seed of the word must beget the “new self” and create a new creation man that resides in the human spirit (1 Peter 1:23-25). This “new self,” as Paul calls it, is distinct from the soul’s “old self” and is the “man” that is actually immortal. He, then, is the seat of one’s salvation fulfilling the promises of God.

That “new self” is part of the remnant. Hence, when Ezekiel prophesies against the mountains, altars, and shrines in Israel, he is a messenger of judgment against all forms of the traditions of men, idolatry, and the power of positive thinking, which men hold in an attempt to obtain the promises of God by the works of the flesh.