Commentary - Ezekiel 6:8-10

Bird's-eye view

In the midst of a searing prophecy of judgment against the idolatrous mountains of Israel, God inserts a promise that is the bedrock of all redemptive history: the promise of a remnant. This is not an afterthought, but a foundational element of God's sovereign plan. He declares that even in the midst of a just and terrible scattering, He will deliberately preserve a people for Himself. This preservation is not for their sake, but for His. The goal of this gracious remnant-leaving is to produce true repentance. In the crucible of exile, their eyes will be opened to the gravity of their sin, which God describes in the intimate terms of marital betrayal. This will lead them to a genuine self-loathing for their spiritual harlotry. And the ultimate end of it all is a true and experiential knowledge of God. They will know that He is Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, whose words of promised judgment and promised mercy are both utterly reliable.

This passage is a miniature portrait of the gospel. It shows us that salvation begins with God's sovereign choice to save (the remnant), is accomplished through a clear sight of our sin and God's grief over it (broken hearts), results in genuine repentance (self-loathing), and culminates in the true knowledge of God. Wrath and mercy are not at odds here; God's wrath is the very instrument He uses to bring His elect remnant to their senses and, consequently, to salvation.

Outline

Context In Ezekiel

Ezekiel 6 is a prophecy of doom directed at the "mountains of Israel." These high places were the centers of Israel's idolatrous worship, the locations of their illicit altars and pagan shrines. God, through Ezekiel, declares that He is coming to utterly desecrate their counterfeit holy places. He will scatter their bones around the very altars where they committed spiritual adultery. The language is graphic and unrelenting. The judgment is a direct, talionic response to their sin: because they littered the land with idols, God will litter the land with their corpses. It is in this context of total, deserved destruction that the promise of verses 8-10 shines so brightly. It is a shaft of light in a very dark chapter, showing that God's ultimate purpose even in His fiercest wrath is not annihilation but purification and redemption for His chosen people.

Key Issues

Grace in the Midst of the Rubble

It is a central biblical truth that God never leaves Himself without a witness. Even when His visible, covenant people fall into deep apostasy and merit total destruction, God in His sovereign grace always preserves a remnant. This is not because some Israelites were clever enough to escape the Babylonians, or because they were morally superior to those who perished. The text is plain: "I will leave a remnant." This is a divine accomplishment. God's grace is not a blanket amnesty program; it is a targeted, discriminating, and effectual rescue operation. He reaches into the wreckage of His own just judgment and pulls out those whom He has chosen for Himself. This remnant principle runs from Noah's family in the flood, to Lot in Sodom, to the seven thousand who did not bow the knee to Baal, all the way to the Church, which is the ultimate remnant, saved out of a world under judgment.

The purpose of this preservation is not to give them a free pass. It is to bring them to the end of themselves. The grace that saves them is the same grace that will crush them in repentance. The goal of the scattering is to produce a remembering. The goal of judgment is to reveal the true nature of their sin and the holiness of the God they have offended.

Verse by Verse Commentary

8 “However, I will leave a remnant, for you will have those who escaped the sword among the nations when you are scattered among the lands.

The word "However" is a massive pivot in this chapter. After seven verses of unmitigated judgment, God announces an exception. But the exception is not based on human merit; it is based on divine will. "I will leave a remnant." God is the actor. The escape from the sword is not a matter of luck, but of divine appointment. Notice the interplay of divine sovereignty and human experience. From God's perspective, He leaves a remnant. From their perspective, they are "those who escaped." Both are true. God's sovereign decree is worked out in the rough and tumble of history. The scattering is His judgment, but the survival of the few is His grace. He is Lord over both the scattering and the saving.

9 Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been broken over their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols; and they will loathe themselves to their own faces for the evils which they have done, for all their abominations.

This verse unpacks the purpose and process of the remnant's restoration. First, in their captivity, they will "remember Me." This is the beginning of all true repentance. Sin is fundamentally a state of forgetting God. In the comfort of their homeland, they forgot Him. In the misery of exile, surrounded by pagan filth, the memory of the true God will be stirred in them by the Spirit. Second, they will remember something specific: God's heartbreak. The language here is astonishing. God says He has been "broken over their adulterous hearts." This is the language of a faithful husband whose wife has been unfaithful. God is not an impassive deity; He is a jealous God, a covenant husband who is grieved and angered by the treachery of His people. Their idolatry was not a mere theological mistake; it was adultery. Their hearts were the source of the infidelity, and their eyes were the instruments, "playing the harlot" after idols. Third, this realization of God's grief and their own treachery will produce a profound and personal repentance. They will "loathe themselves to their own faces." This is not just feeling bad about getting caught. This is a deep, internal revulsion at what they have become. They will see their sin not as a slip-up but as an "abomination," and they will hate themselves for it. This is the mark of a work of the Holy Spirit.

10 Then they will know that I am Yahweh; I have not said in vain that I would do this calamitous evil against them.”

This is the ultimate goal. The whole terrible process of judgment and the gracious process of repentance are designed to bring them to a true knowledge of God. "Then they will know that I am Yahweh." To know that He is Yahweh is to know Him as the God who is utterly faithful to His covenant word. He promised curses for disobedience (Deut. 28), and He delivered. This "calamitous evil" was not a random tragedy; it was the outworking of His stated word. His threats are not bluffs. But by the same token, His promises of mercy are also not in vain. The God who was faithful to judge is the God who will be faithful to save the remnant. True knowledge of God, therefore, is not just knowing facts about Him. It is the experiential understanding that He is a holy God who must punish sin, and a gracious God who delights to save sinners, and that both His justice and His mercy serve to magnify His glorious name.

Application

This passage from Ezekiel ought to search our hearts. We live in a time of great spiritual adultery in the West. The church is shot through with idols of comfort, entertainment, political power, and self-fulfillment. We have hearts that are prone to wander and eyes that are quick to play the harlot. We must hear the warning that God's covenant curses are real. He is a jealous God and will not tolerate rivals.

At the same time, this passage is filled with immense comfort for the believer. Our salvation does not depend on our faithfulness, but on His. We are part of the remnant because He has sovereignly chosen to leave a remnant. If we have come to a place of true repentance, where we genuinely loathe our sin and see how it has grieved the heart of our God, this is not something we have worked up on our own. It is a gift of grace, a sign that God is at work in us, just as He was in the exiles in Babylon.

The application, then, is to lean fully into this process. We must ask God to show us our "adulterous hearts" and our "harlot eyes." We must not run from the grief that this revelation causes, either in God or in ourselves. We must allow the Spirit to produce in us a genuine loathing for our sin. And through it all, we must come to know our God better. He is Yahweh. He did not say in vain that He would pour out His wrath on His own Son at the cross for our abominations. And He did not say in vain that all who are in Christ are a new creation, a holy remnant, saved by His grace alone, for His glory alone.