Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
What is the high place whereunto ye go?—What is the meaning of this name? For My altar is not so called. What excellence do ye see in it, that ye go there, rather than to My temple, the only lawful place of sacrificing? The very name, "high place," convicts you of sinning, not from ignorance but perverse rebellion.
is called . . . unto this day—whereas this name ought to have been long since laid aside, along with the custom of sacrificing on high places which it represents, being borrowed from the heathen, who so called their places of sacrifice (the Greeks, for instance, called them by a cognate term, Bomoi), whereas I call mine Mizbeaach, "altar." The very name implies the place is not that sanctioned by Me, and therefore your sacrifices even to ME there (much more those you offer to idols) are only a "provocation" to Me (Ezekiel 20:28; Deuteronomy 12:1-5). David and others, it is true, sacrificed to God on high places, but it was under exceptional circumstances, and before the altar was set up on Mount Moriah.
The next period, namely, that which followed the settlement in Canaan: the fathers of the generation existing in Ezekiel's time walked in the same steps of apostasy as the generation in the wilderness.
Yet in this—Not content with past rebellions, and not moved with gratitude for God's goodness, "yet in this," still further they rebelled.
blasphemed—"have insulted me" [CALVIN]. Even those who did not sacrifice to heathen gods have offered "their sacrifices" (Ezekiel 20:28) in forbidden places.
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