Against the Mountains of Israel
1 Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy to them, 3 and say, ‘You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh! The Lord Yahweh says to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys: “Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places. 4 Your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be broken. I will cast down your slain men before your idols. 5 I will lay the dead bodies of the children of Israel before their idols. I will scatter your bones around your altars. 6 In all your dwelling places, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be desolate, so that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be abolished. 7 The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am Yahweh. 8 “‘“Yet I will leave a remnant, in that you will have some that escape the sword among the nations, when you are scattered through the countries. 9 Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. 10 They will know that I am Yahweh. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them.”’ 11 “The Lord Yahweh says: ‘Strike with your hand, and stamp with your foot, and say, “Alas!”, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel; for they will fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. 12 He who is far off will die of the pestilence. He who is near will fall by the sword. He who remains and is besieged will die by the famine. Thus I will accomplish my wrath on them. 13 You will know that I am Yahweh when their slain men are among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the tops of the mountains, under every green tree, and under every thick oak—the places where they offered pleasant aroma to all their idols. 14 I will stretch out my hand on them and make the land desolate and waste, from the wilderness toward Diblah, throughout all their habitations. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.’”
The oracle is addressed to the landscape rather than to the people, because the high places were built on it and the bones will be scattered around them.
The address is unusual and deliberate. Ezekiel is told to set his face toward the mountains of Israel and speak to them — to the mountains and the hills, the watercourses and the valleys. A prophet is preaching at geography. The reason is in the next line. The high places were on the hills, and the shrines were under the trees in the valleys, so the terrain itself had been enlisted, and a country's own contours had become its liturgy.
What follows is destruction described in a very specific order. The altars go desolate. The incense stands are broken. And then the detail that makes the judgment fit the offense: I will cast down your slain men before your idols. Bodies are laid in front of the images and bones are scattered around the altars. Nothing defiled a sanctuary in that world like a corpse, so the shrines are not merely demolished. They are permanently unusable, and by the people who worshiped at them.
The refrain that dominates this book appears four times in these fourteen verses, and its placement is the thing to watch: you will know that I am Yahweh. It is attached to the slain falling, to the remnant remembering, to the bodies among the idols, and to the desolate land. The judgment is not presented as an end in itself. Something is being made known by it, and the book will say the same about every mercy later on.
And in the middle of the destruction the survivors are described, in a sentence that reverses the direction of everything around it. Those who escape will remember God among the nations. They will understand how he I have been broken with their lewd heart — a startling verb, applied to God, describing what their unfaithfulness had done to him. And then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for what they have done. The remembering comes after the exile, not before, and the self-loathing is presented as a symptom of recovery rather than of despair. That order will govern the rest of the book.
settled What this mark means