Images - See the margin and margin reference, and the Ezekiel 8:16 note.

Idols - The Phoenicians were in the habit of setting up "heaps" or "pillars" of stone in honor of their gods, which renders the use of the word more appropriate.

Your images shall be broken - Literally, your sun images; representations of the sun, which they worshipped. See the margin.

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" (b). 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" (c); 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.

(b) "simulacra vestra solis", Pagninus; "solaria vestra", Vatablus; "subdiales statuae vestrae", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus. (c) "coram stercoreis diis vestris", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus; "coram stercoribus vestris", Cocceius.

And your altars shall be desolate, and your {b} images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

(b) Read 2Ki 23:14.

6:4 Cast down - Before the altars of your idols, which you fly to for refuge.

images: or, sun images

4. images-called so from a Hebrew root, "to wax hot," implying the mad ardor of Israel after idolatry [Calvin]. Others translate it, "sun images"; and so in Eze 6:6 (see 2Ki 23:11; 2Ch 34:4; Isa 17:8, Margin).

cast your slain men before your idols-The foolish objects of their trust in the day of evil should witness their ruin.

6:1-7. War desolates persons, places, and things esteemed most sacred. God ruins idolatries even by the hands of idolaters. It is just with God to make that a desolation, which we make an idol. The superstitions to which many trust for safety, often cause their ruin. And the day is at hand, when idols and idolatry will be as thoroughly destroyed from the professedly Christian church as they were from among the Jews.