“In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate, that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your incense altars may be hewn down, and your works may be blotted out, and the slain will fall in the midst of you, and you will know that I am Yahweh.”
The reason for the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah is now laid bare. It was in order to destroy the high places, the altars, the idols and the incense altars, and the behaviour that resulted from them. There was no other way. For over four hundred years they had clung to these and refused to give them up. Now the very things that they had given their hearts to would destroy them. For this would necessitate the destruction of their cities and the death of many of their inhabitants.
By all this they would be faced up with the fact of the living God, of Yahweh. And they would know what He really is, a hater of idolatry and the evil that springs from it.