The Geography of Idolatry Text: Ezekiel 6:1-7
Introduction: Judgment Begins at Home
We live in an age that is allergic to judgment, particularly divine judgment. Our generation wants a God who is a celestial guidance counselor, a divine affirmation machine, but never a King who judges. But the God of the Bible, the only God there is, is a God who judges evil. And He is not sentimental about it. He does not grade on a curve. Furthermore, and this is the point that makes modern evangelicals shuffle their feet, His judgment always begins with His own people. Judgment begins at the house of God.
The prophet Ezekiel is a case in point. He is a prophet in exile, carried off to Babylon with the first wave of deportees. But his prophetic ministry is not directed at the Babylonians, not at first. God does not tell him to go preach repentance to Nebuchadnezzar. No, God turns his face back toward Jerusalem, back toward the covenant land, back toward the people who should have known better. The word of the Lord comes to Ezekiel and tells him to set his face toward the mountains of Israel. This is a word for the church. This is a word for us.
Israel had committed spiritual adultery on a grand, industrial scale. They had taken the good gifts of God, the blessings of the covenant, and they had used them to bankroll their sordid affairs with every pagan deity in the neighborhood. They thought their worship was a private affair, a matter of personal preference. They thought they could have Yahweh on the Sabbath and Baal on the high places the rest of the week. But God does not do open relationships. He is a jealous God, which is another way of saying He is a faithful husband. And in this passage, He announces that He is coming with a sword to clean house. This is not a distant, abstract threat. This is a declaration of holy war against the apostate covenant community. God is coming to desecrate their sacred spaces, to make their holy places a horror. And He does this for a very specific reason, which is the refrain of this entire book: "that you will know that I am Yahweh."
The Text
And the word of Yahweh came to me saying, "Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them and say, 'Mountains of Israel, hear the word of Lord Yahweh! Thus says Lord Yahweh 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. So your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be broken; and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols. I will also put the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter your bones all around your altars. In all your places of habitation, 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 cease, your incense altars may be cut in pieces, and your works may be blotted out. The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am Yahweh.'"
(Ezekiel 6:1-7 LSB)
A Prophecy Against the Landscape (vv. 1-3)
The prophecy begins with a peculiar directive.
"Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them and say, 'Mountains of Israel, hear the word of Lord Yahweh! Thus says Lord Yahweh to the mountains, the hills, the ravines, and the valleys...'" (Ezekiel 6:2-3)
God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the geography. He is to speak to the mountains, hills, ravines, and valleys. Now, why does He do this? Is this some kind of primitive animism, as though the rocks and dirt had ears? Not at all. God is personifying the land because the land itself had become a co-conspirator and a silent witness to Israel's sin. The land was groaning under the weight of their idolatry. The very creation was stained by their rebellion.
The "high places" were central to this. Originally, they were simply places of worship on elevated ground. But they had become the headquarters for Israel's syncretistic paganism. They would build an altar to Yahweh, and right next to it, an altar to Baal, and an Asherah pole. It was a spiritual buffet, a disgusting mixture. By addressing the mountains, God is saying that the sin has soaked into the very fabric of the nation, into its very topography. The creation itself is going to be called to the witness stand to testify against Israel.
And notice the authority. "Thus says Lord Yahweh." This is the language of a sovereign king issuing a decree. And He addresses every part of the landscape, from the high mountains to the low valleys. There is no place to hide. The judgment will be comprehensive. God says, "Behold, I Myself am going to bring a sword on you." This is not an accident. This is not bad luck. This is not the unfortunate result of geopolitical forces. God Himself is the one wielding the Babylonian army as His sword. He is taking personal responsibility for this judgment. He is owning it.
The Desecration of Sacred Things (vv. 4-5)
Next, God details the nature of the destruction. It is a targeted, theological demolition.
"So your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be broken; and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols. I will also put the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter your bones all around your altars." (Ezekiel 6:4-5 LSB)
This is a profound and terrible irony. The people of Israel went to these altars seeking life, blessing, and protection from their idols. They offered sacrifices, burned incense, and prayed for deliverance. And God says He is going to turn those very places into their graves. The slain will fall "in front of your idols." The idols they looked to for salvation will be the silent, impotent witnesses of their slaughter.
But it gets worse. God will put their dead bodies and scattered bones right in front of the idols and around the altars. In the Mosaic law, contact with a dead body was the ultimate source of ceremonial defilement (Numbers 19:11). By littering their places of worship with corpses, God is pouring out His ultimate contempt upon their idolatry. He is saying, "You think this place is holy? I will make it so profoundly unclean that no one would ever dare to worship here again. I will pollute your polluted worship."
We become like what we worship. Psalm 115 says that idols have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see. And then it says, "Those who make them become like them." Israel had worshipped dead, lifeless idols, and so they became dead, lifeless corpses before them. Their worship was a sham, and God exposes the sham by piling the bodies of the worshipers at the feet of the useless gods they served.
Total Obliteration (v. 6)
The judgment is not just confined to the high places. It will be total.
"In all your places of habitation, 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 cease, your incense altars may be cut in pieces, and your works may be blotted out." (Genesis 6:6 LSB)
The infection of idolatry had spread from the high places into every city, every place of habitation. And so the judgment must follow it there. God is performing radical surgery. He is not just trimming the hedges; He is pulling the whole thing out by the roots. The goal is the complete obliteration of their idolatrous infrastructure. Altars, idols, incense altars, all of it must go.
Look at the verbs: waste, desolate, broken, cease, cut in pieces, blotted out. This is the language of de-creation. Israel's idolatry was an attempt to un-create God's covenant order, and so God responds by un-creating their rebellious order. He is wiping the slate clean. The phrase "your works may be blotted out" is particularly striking. All their religious effort, all their piety, all their sacrifice, all the things they thought were earning them favor with the gods, God calls it all "your works," and He is going to erase it all. It counts for nothing. It is less than nothing. It is an offense that must be removed.
The Great Object Lesson (v. 7)
Finally, we come to the ultimate purpose behind this terrible judgment.
"The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am Yahweh." (Ezekiel 6:7 LSB)
This is the bottom line. This is the goal of all history. God is not throwing a tantrum. He is teaching a lesson. He is revealing Himself. The people of Israel had forgotten who Yahweh was. They had domesticated Him, put Him on a shelf alongside all their other trinkets. They thought He was one god among many. They thought He was manageable. They had forgotten that He is the sovereign Creator of heaven and earth, the covenant Lord who redeemed them from Egypt, the holy God who will not be mocked.
So God says, "If you will not know me as your Savior, you will know me as your Judge. If you will not know me in my mercy, you will know me in my wrath. But one way or another, you will know that I am Yahweh." This is the great presupposition of reality breaking through. All of our idolatries, whether ancient or modern, are attempts to suppress this truth. We want to be the center of our own universe. We want to define good and evil for ourselves. We want to be as God.
And God's judgment is the great reality check. It is the final, undeniable demonstration that He is God and we are not. The idols could not save them. Their political alliances could not save them. Their religious works could not save them. When the Babylonian sword fell, when the bodies were piled high, in that moment of utter desolation, the truth would be inescapable: Yahweh is Lord. He keeps His promises, both the promises of blessing for obedience and the promises of curses for rebellion. He is not a tame lion.
Conclusion: The Idolatry of the Heart
It is easy for us to read a passage like this and thank God that we are not like those ancient Israelites, bowing down to statues on hills. But the apostle Paul tells us that covetousness is idolatry. The human heart is an idol factory, as Calvin said. We manufacture gods out of anything and everything: our careers, our families, our politics, our comfort, our reputation, our lusts.
We set up these little altars in the high places of our hearts and we burn incense to them daily. We look to them for our security, our meaning, our identity. And the message of Ezekiel 6 is that God will not tolerate rivals. He comes to us with the sword of His Spirit, which is the Word of God, and He comes to demolish our high places. He comes to topple our idols and blot out our self-righteous works.
This is the painful, bloody work of sanctification. But it is a judgment of grace. For us, in Christ, this judgment fell upon another. On the high place of Golgotha, the Son of God was made a curse for us. The judgment we deserved fell upon Him. God's wrath against our idolatry was poured out on the cross. And He did this so that we might know that He is Yahweh, not just as Judge, but as Father. He tears down our flimsy shelters of rebellion so that He can build us into a holy temple for Himself, a place where He alone is worshiped, forever. He makes us desolate so that He might fill us with Himself. And in that glorious ruin, we finally learn the lesson Israel would not: that He is the Lord.