Ezekiel 11:6

Eze 11:6 Ye have multiplied your slain in this city, and ye have filled the streets thereof with the slain.

Ver. 6. Ye have multiplied your slain in this city.] Called therefore a bloody city, {Eze 22:2; Eze 9:9; Eze 7:23} and it shall therefore despume you; Vos sicut spumae eieciemini. Evil counsellors are cruel and bloody-minded; their craft is never but accompanied with cruelty, and their cruelty seldom without craft. "None of them wanteth their mate," as the Scripture speaks of those birds of prey and desolation. {Isa 34:16}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eze 11:6-7. Ye have multiplied your slain in this city — Ye have, without law or justice, shed the blood of many in your streets. From this, and many other expressions in the Scripture, we may conclude that not only private murders were extremely frequent among them, but that they also frequently put to death, under colour of justice, those who were innocent of every crime deserving of death, but whom, for some wicked purposes, they wanted to be removed out of the way. And ye have filled the streets thereof with the slain — You have not only committed many murders yourselves, but you are accountable to God for all those whom the Chaldeans have slain, seeing you persuaded your people thus obstinately to stand out. Your slain, they are the flesh, &c. — You yourselves, therefore, have made your city, as it were, a caldron, by the murdered bodies with which you have filled the streets of it; many of them cut in pieces, so that they seem like flesh cut for the caldron. And this city may properly be called the caldron, into which their flesh has been thrown. But I will bring you forth out of the midst of it — Not in mercy, but in wrath, by the conquering hand of the king of Babylon. You shall not die there, but I will reserve you for another punishment: see Eze 11:9; Eze 11:11.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

your slain--those on whom you have brought ruin by your wicked counsels. Bloody crimes within the city brought on it a bloody foe from without (Eze 7:23-24). They had made it a caldron in which to boil the flesh of God's people (Mic 3:1-3), and eat it by unrighteous oppression; therefore God will make it a caldron in a different sense, one not wherein they may be safe in their guilt, but "out of the midst of" which they shall be "brought forth" (Jer 34:4-5).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Now Ezekiel attacks, as it were, in close combat, the buffoons who trifled with God by their jests, and brings forward that; sense which I have just before touched on, and of which the prophecy of Jeremiah was full, in a different manner to that. which they imagined. Ye, says he, have slain many; the city was full of many slaughters: therefore the pot was full of flesh; this flesh was cooked: there is no longer any room in the vessel. You must therefore of necessity be cast forth as froth, or as foul flesh, for which no vessel is found for cooking it. We see, then, that the Prophet here treats them wittily, and plays off jests in answer to them; meanwhile he strikes a deadly wound, when he shows that they joked so petulantly to their own destruction, and boasted that Jeremiah was their adversary. Hence he confirms the prophecy of Jeremiah, and yet he does not interpret it, because Jeremiah had spoken properly and clearly, when he said that they were flesh. The meaning was the same as if God were to pronounce that he would consume them in the midst of the city. It happened as we have formerly seen; for he scattered some of the people, and slew some with the sword, and some with hunger. Whatever it is, the prophecy of Jeremiah will always be found true, namely, that God had cooked the Jews with the fire of the Chaldees. (Jeremiah 1:13.) But since they had perverted that doctrine, the Prophet does not regard the meaning of Jeremiah, but shows that they never profited while they turned their backs on God. Ye shall not be flesh, says he, but your slain were flesh: ye have refilled the caldron, that is the city with the slain; now there is no room for you. What therefore remains, but that God should cast you out as foul flesh? Neither will he cook you, says he, nor will he consume you in a caldron, but where he has stretched you at full length on the earth, there will he consume you. Now, therefore, we see how great a destruction the Jews had brought upon themselves, when they took the liberty of joking and jesting at the Prophets. Hence he says, they had filled the city with the slain He does not mean that men had been openly put to death in Jerusalem, but this form of speech embraces all forms of injustice; for we know that God esteems those homicides who oppress miserable men, overturn their fortunes, and suck innocent blood. Since, then, God esteems all violence as slaughter, he properly says, that the city was filled with the slain The Jews might object that no one had brought violence upon them; they could not be convicted in the sight of men; but when their wickedness was so gross among themselves, that they did not spare the wretched, but cruelly afflicted them, he says that the city was filled with the slain He now adds, when the city was full of flesh there was no more place for them, and he now shows that although Jeremiah had predicted that they should be cooked with the fire of the Chaldeans, yet they had advanced so far in wickedness, that they were unworthy of being cooked within the city. Hence, says he, a greater vengeance from God awaits you, since ye proceed to provoke his anger more and more. It follows —

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(6) Ye have multiplied your slain.—Crimes of violence, as well as of licentiousness, are always the fruit of defection from God. In this case the apostacy of the people had produced its natural result; and the abundant crimes against life formed a prominent feature of the terrible indictment against the city.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

6. Comp. ch. Eze_22:25, Eze_7:23. Those opposed to the schemes of the ruling party, or suspected of opposition, were openly or on various pretexts cut off.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye have multiplied your slain in this city,.... Had killed many of the prophets of the Lord that had been sent unto them, and had shed much innocent blood; and not only had unjustly condemned many to die, and had put them to death without a cause; but also the death of all those that were slain while the city was besieging, and when it was taken, were owing to their advice and counsel, in encouraging them to hold out, and not deliver up the city; fancying they should be able to defend it, contrary to the declarations of the Lord by the prophet; wherefore their death is laid to such advisers, and they are called their slain:

and ye have filled the streets thereof with the slain; such numbers of innocent persons being put to death, as in the times of Manasseh, Kg2 21:16; or so many dying of the famine, pestilence, and sword, during the siege, and at the taking of Jerusalem.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Slain, under Manasses, &c. (Tirinus)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Many murders, and great ones, (for the Hebrew includeth both,) have you committed, either with frauds or violence, and sometimes with colour and pretence of law.

Your slain; so called because they were such as God had not commanded to be cut off, but the Jews did it without warrant from God.

Filled the streets; either left them murdered in the streets; or rather, by an hyperbole, the streets are full, every where some or other in every street you have condemned and killed. It is an expression the Scripture much useth to set forth the bloody effects of the Jewish rage, and of others.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

6. Ye have multiplied your slain — This shows how the captains and leaders of the war party had been accustomed to deal with those whose opinions differed from theirs (Eze_7:23; Eze_22:25).

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye - Many murders have you committed yourselves, and you are accountable to God for all those whom the Chaldeans have slain, seeing you persuaded them, thus obstinately to stand out.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.