EXPOSITION
Set thy face toward the mountains, etc. The formula is eminently characteristic of Ezekiel. We have had it with a different verb in the Hebrew, in Ezekiel 4:3. It will meet us again in Ezekiel 20:46; Ezekiel 21:2; Ezekiel 25:2; Ezekiel 28:21; Ezekiel 29:2; Ezekiel 35:2; Ezekiel 38:2. In this case it probably implied an outward act, like that of Daniel, when he, with a very different purpose, looked towards Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10). In contrast with the widespread plains of Mesopotamia in which Ezekiel found himself, this was the chief characteristic of the land which he had left. The mountains represent the whole country, including the rivers (Revised Version, here and throughout, renders the Hebrew "water courses," to distinguish it from the "river" (nahar) of Ezekiel 1:1, Ezekiel 1:3, et al; and the "river" (nachal) of Ezekiel 47:5. Its strict meaning is that of a "ravine" or "gorge," the wady of modern Arabic, through which a stream rushes in the winter, but is dried up in the summer). All the localities are named as having been alike polluted by the worship of idols For mountains and hills as the scenes of such worship, see Deuteronomy 12:2; 2 Kings 17:10, 2 Kings 17:11; Jeremiah 2:20; Jeremiah 3:6; Hosea 4:13; for the ravines and valleys, 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 7:31 (the Valley of Hinnom); and more generally, Isaiah 57:5, Isaiah 57:6. The same combination meets us in Isaiah 35:8; Isaiah 36:5, Isaiah 36:6. In his address to the mountains, Ezekiel follows in the footsteps of Micah 6:2. I will destroy your high places. The words point to the most persistent, though not the worst, of all the idolatries by which the worship of Jehovah as the God of Israel had been overshadowed. The words of Ezekiel are identical with those of Leo, 26:30. The Bamoth, or high places, of Baal, are mentioned in Numbers 22:41 and Joshua 13:17, and are probably identical with the high places of Arnon in Numbers 21:28. There they are named only incidentally, not in the way of prohibition or condemnation. So, in like manner, in Deuteronomy 32:13 and Deuteronomy 33:29, if the technical sense exists at all, it is referred to only as included in the triumph of the worship of Jehovah over the hill fortresses as the sanctuaries of other gods. The absence of the word from the Book of Judges is difficult to explain, as it was precisely in that period of the history of Israel, irregular and unsettled, that we should have expected to find the people adopting the cultus of their neighbours. A probable solution of the problem is that, so long as the tabernacle and the ark were at Shiloh, that was so pre-eminently the centre of the worship of Jehovah, that the people were not tempted to forsake it, or to set up the worship upon the high places side by side with it. When, after the capture of the ark, Shiloh was a deserted sanctuary, we meet for the first time with the worship of the high places, not as a thing forbidden, but as sanctioned by the presence of Samuel, as the judge and prophet of the people (1 Samuel 9:12-14; 1 Samuel 10:5), the "high place" in the last passage being, apparently, the same as "the hill of God." In 2 Samuel 1:19, possibly from the Book of Jashar, we have the elder, less technical sense of Deuteronomy 32:12 and Deuteronomy 33:19. It would seem, accordingly, as if Samuel had acted on a policy like that of the counsel which Gregory I gave Augustine. He found the worship of the high places adopted by the Israelites from the neighbouring nations. He sought to turn them to the worship of Jehovah. So the writer of 1 Kings 3:2 records the fact that "the people sacrificed in high places," because as yet, though the ark had been brought to Jerusalem, "there was no house built unto the Name of Jehovah until those days," and that Solomon himself also "sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places." At the chief of these, the great high place of Gibeon, Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings, and had the memorable vision in which he made choice of wisdom rather than length of days, or riches and honour, returning from it, as though the cultus of the two places stood nearly on an equal footing, to offer other burnt offerings before the ark of God at Jerusalem (1 Kings 3:3-15). With the erection of the temple the state of things was, in some measure, altered, and the temple was the one legitimate sanctuary. When the ten tribes revolted under Jeroboam, they were, of course, cut off from the temple services, and the king accordingly, besides the calves at Bethel and Dan, set up high places, with priests not of the sons of Aaron, in the cities of Samaria (1 Kings 12:31; 1 Kings 13:32). From that time forward the high places are always mentioned by both historians and prophets in a tone of condemnation, whether they were in Israel or Judah (1 Kings 14:4), but they had become so deeply rooted in the reverence of the people that even the better kings of Judah, who warred against open idolatry, like Asa (1 Kings 15:14), Jehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:43), Jehoash (2 Kings 12:3), Amaziah (2 Kings 14:4), Azariah (2 Kings 15:4), left them undisturbed; while in the history of the northern kingdom the cultus of the Bamoth reigned paramount (2 Kings 17:1-41; passim). It was not till Hezekiah, presumably under Isaiah's influence, removed the "high places" (2 Kings 18:4) that we find any serious attempt to put them down. They had been tolerated, apparently, because, as in Rabshakeh's taunt (2 Kings 18:22), they were nominally connected with the worship of Jehovah. Under the confluent polytheism of Manasseh they naturally reappeared (2 Kings 21:3: 2 Chronicles 33:3). The reformation of Josiah was more thorough (2 Kings 23:1-37; passim; 2 Chronicles 34:3), and was probably stimulated by Hilkiah and Huldah. The discovery of the book of the Law (probably Deuteronomy), with its condemnations of mountain sanctuaries, though, as we have seen, the Bamoth were not prohibited by name, roused the zeal of the prophets, especially of the priest prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and when the Bamoth-cultus revived, after the death of Josiah, the former was strong in his protests (Jeremiah 7:31, et al.), all the more so because now, as in the earlier stages of their history, they had become high places of Baal (Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:1-44:55), and were associated with abominations like those of the worship of Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom. So it was that Ezekiel, writing on the banks of the Chebar, is now led to place them in the forefront of the sins of his people.