Yehezkiel 6:7

6:7 The slain will fall among you and then you will know that I am the Lord. ¹ 

Yehezkiel 6:10

6:10 They will know that I am the Lord; my threats to bring this catastrophe on them were not empty.’ ² 

Yehezkiel 6:13-14

6:13 Then you will know that I am the Lord – when their dead lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill and all the mountaintops, under every green tree and every leafy oak, ³  the places where they have offered fragrant incense to all their idols. 6:14 I will stretch out my hand against them ⁴  and make the land a desolate waste from the wilderness to Riblah, ⁵  in all the places where they live. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

¹ sn The phrase you will know that I am the Lord concludes over sixty oracles in the book of Ezekiel and indicates the ultimate goal of God’s action. The phrase is often used in the book of Exodus as well (Exod 7:5; 14:4, 18). By Ezekiel’s day the people had forgotten that the Lord (Yahweh) was their covenant God and had turned to other gods. They had to be reminded that Yahweh alone deserved to be worshiped because only he possessed the power to meet their needs. Through judgment and eventually deliverance, Israel would be reminded that Yahweh alone held their destiny in his hands.

² tn Heb “not in vain did I speak to do to them this catastrophe.” The wording of the last half of v. 10 parallels God’s declaration after the sin of the golden calf (Exod 32:14).

³ sn By referring to every high hill…all the mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; 2 Chr 28:4).

⁴ sn I will stretch out my hand against them is a common expression in the book of Ezekiel (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7; 35:3).

⁵ tc The Vulgate reads the name as “Riblah,” a city north of Damascus. The MT reads Diblah, a city otherwise unknown. The letters resh (ר) and dalet (ד) may have been confused in the Hebrew text. The town of Riblah was in the land of Hamath (2 Kgs 23:33) which represented the northern border of Israel (Ezek 47:14).