Ezekiel 6:8-10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Yet will I leave a remnant “A gracious exception that often occurs in the prophets when they denounce general judgments against the Jews; implying that God will still preserve a remnant of that people; to whom he will fulfil the promises made to their fathers.” And they that escape of you shall remember me, &c. Your afflictions shall bring you to the knowledge of yourselves, and a sense of your duty to me. Because I am broken with their whorish hearts I am much grieved, and my patience is tired out with this people's idolatries, called in Scripture spiritual whoredom. God is here introduced as speaking after the manner of men, whose patience is tired out by the repeated provocations of others, especially when they see no hopes of amendment. And with their eyes go a whoring after their idols The eyes are the seat of lascivious inclinations: see 2 Peter 2:14. So, in pursuit of the same metaphor, the eyes are said to go a whoring after idols, the people being often tempted to idolatrous worship by the costliness of the images, and the fine show they made. And they shall loathe themselves, &c. With a mixture of grief toward God, of indignation against themselves, and abhorrence of the offence. And they shall know I have not said in vain, &c. Without cause, as the word חנם is more significantly translated Ezekiel 14:22; the sufferers had given him just cause to pronounce that evil. Or, without effect: their sins were the cause, and their destruction is the effect of their sufferings.