Ezekiel 6:4

4 And your altars will be made waste, and your sun-images will be broken: and I will have your dead men placed before your images.

Ezekiel 6:4 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 6:4

And your altars shall be desolate
Being pulled down; or because the priests and worshippers would now be slain, and there would be none to attend them: and your images shall be broken;
the "images of the sun" ^F2. The word for images has its derivation from heat; and were so called, either from the heat of the sun, to whose worship they were devoted, or from the heat of the love and affections of their worshippers: and I will cast down your slain [men] before your idols;
before your dung, or your "dunghill gods" ^F3; for the word used has the signification of dung, ( Ezekiel 4:12 ) . The Targum renders it,

``before the carcass of your idols;''

where they committed idolatry, there they should be slain; which points at the cause of their punishment.

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FOOTNOTES:

F2 (Mkynmx) "simulacra vestra solis", Pagninus; "solaria vestra", Vatablus; "subdiales statuae vestrae", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus.
F3 (Mkylwlg ynpl) "coram stercoreis diis vestris", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus; "coram stercoribus vestris", Cocceius.

Ezekiel 6:4 In-Context

2 Son of man, let your face be turned to the mountains of Israel, and be a prophet to them, and say,

3 You mountains of Israel, give ear to the words of the Lord: this is what the Lord has said to the mountains and the hills, to the waterways and the valleys: See, I, even I, am sending on you a sword for the destruction of your high places.

4 And your altars will be made waste, and your sun-images will be broken: and I will have your dead men placed before your images.

5 And I will put the dead bodies of the children of Israel in front of their images, sending your bones in all directions about your altars.

6 In all your living-places the towns will become broken walls, and the high places made waste; so that your altars may be broken down and made waste, and your images broken and ended, and so that your sun-images may be cut down and your works rubbed out.