Ezekiel 6:11-14 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Smite with thy hand, and stamp with thy foot Join to thy words the gestures which are proper to express grief and concern at the wickedness of thy people, and for their calamities that will ensue. For they shall fall by the sword, &c. See note on Ezekiel 5:12. He that is far off And thinks himself out of danger, because he is out of the reach of the enemy; shall die of the pestilence The arrow that I will shoot at him. And he that is near Who stays in his own country, or who is near a place of strength, which he hopes will be to him a place of safety, yet shall fall by the sword before he can retreat to it. And he that remaineth Who is so cautious as not to venture out, but remains in the city; shall die by the famine The most miserable death of all: thus will I accomplish my fury I will satisfy my just displeasure, and give them full measure of punishment: I will do all that against them which I had purposed to do. Then shall ye know See note on Ezekiel 6:10. When their slain men shall be among their idols As was threatened before, Ezekiel 6:5-7. Upon every high hill, &c. There, where they had prostrated themselves in honour of their idols, God will lay them dead to their own reproach, and the reproach of their idols: they lived among them, and shall die among them: they had offered sweet odours to their idols, but there shall their dead carcasses send forth an offensive smell, as it were, to atone for that misplaced incense. So will I stretch out my hand Put forth my almighty power; and make the land desolate שׁממה, a desolation, a Hebraism, for most desolate: that fruitful, pleasant, populous country, which has been as the garden of Eden, the glory of all lands; shall be more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath Or Diblathaim, as it is called Numbers 33:46; the desert in the borders of Moab, part of that great and terrible wilderness, described Deuteronomy 8:15.