Charles Ellicott Commentary Ezekiel 6:4

"And your altars shall become desolate, and your sun-images shall be broken; and I will cast down your slain men before your idols." — Ezekiel 6:4 (ASV)

Your images. —The original word indicates, as the margin shows, that these were images used in connection with the worship of the sun. The whole verse is taken from Leviticus 26:30. The same woes were foretold there by Moses in the contingency of the people’s disobedience; that contingency had now come to pass, the promised judgments had already begun, and Ezekiel declares that their fulfillment was close at hand.

Your slain men before your idols. —Their idols should no longer be worshipped by the living, but by the prostrate bodies of their dead worshippers. In this and the following verse, a kind of poetic justice is described. There was nothing so utterly defiling under the Mosaic law as the touch of a dead body (2 Kings 23:14; 2 Kings 23:16). The Israelites had defiled the land with idols; now the idols themselves should be defiled with their dead bodies.