In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, the Lord Yahweh’s hand fell on me there.
Parallel Translations
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In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, the Lord Yahweh’s hand fell on me there.
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And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.
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And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.
Cross-references (18)
Passages linked to Ezekiel 8:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ezekiel 20:1 In the seventh year, in the fifth month, the tenth day of the month, some of the elders of Israel came to inquire of Yahweh, and sat before me.
- Ezekiel 1:2-3 In the fifth of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity, Yahweh’s word came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and Yahweh’s hand was there on him.
- Ezekiel 14:1 Then some of the elders of Israel came to me, and sat before me.
- Ezekiel 33:31 They come to you as the people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but don’t do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain.
- Ezekiel 14:4 Therefore speak to them, and tell them, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Every man of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart, and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and comes to the prophet; I Yahweh will answer him therein according to the multitude of his idols;
- Ezekiel 3:12 Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great rushing, saying, “Blessed be Yahweh’s glory from his place.”
- Ezekiel 3:14 So the Spirit lifted me up, and took me away; and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; and Yahweh’s hand was strong on me.
- Ezekiel 3:22 Yahweh’s hand was there on me; and he said to me, “Arise, go out into the plain, and I will talk with you there.”
- Ezekiel 24:1 Again, in the ninth year, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 26:1 In the eleventh year, in the first of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 29:1 In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 29:17 It came to pass in the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 31:1 In the eleventh year, in the third month, in the first day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 32:17 Also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 37:1 Yahweh’s hand was on me, and he brought me out in Yahweh’s Spirit, and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones.
- Ezekiel 40:1 In the twenty-fifth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was struck, in the same day, Yahweh’s hand was on me, and he brought me there.
- Malachi 2:7 For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of Yahweh of Armies.
- Acts 20:33 I coveted no one’s silver, gold, or clothing.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain There is no doubt that a prophetic vision is…
There is no doubt that a prophetic vision is here narrated; for the Prophet was not carried to Jerusalem, nor had he changed his place, nor were the elders of Judah before him, but he seemed to himself to be seized by the Spirit of God, that he might perceive the pollutions by which the Jews had profaned the temple. For he says, that he was at home when this vision occurred to him, and yet it was possible for him to be walking in the field. He does not, therefore, relate the thing as done, but simply teaches how God appeared, and adds the circumstances. By elders of Judah I do not understand captives, but those who were then dwelling at Jerusalem, that they should be witnesses of this prophecy, and so all excuse and pretense of mistake was taken away from them. He also expresses the time at which this vision happened, namely the sixth year, which he numbers from the exile of Jechoniah, as we saw in the first chapter. Hence an interval of a year and two months has elapsed since the first vision which was then unfolded, and the present which is now to be treated. Since, therefore, fourteen months had elapsed, God appeared again to his Prophet. This circumstance of the time is by no means superfluous, for this shows the great obstinacy of the people. The Prophet, as I have said, numbers the years from the exile of the king. But they were accustomed to count from the jubilee year; but he now renews the grief for that slaughter, when the king was treated ignominiously as a vile captive, and was harassed as a slave by the enemy. Since, therefore, the Prophet humbles the Jews by this computation of years, hence it appears how hardened was their obstinacy, as they did not grow wise though so severely chastened. But we shall see that they were seized with a prodigious madness, so that they cast aside the worship of God, they heaped together on every side new idolatries, and infected the temple with their abominations. We saw in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:17, and Jeremiah 44:17-19) that the worship of God was overthrown in the city Jerusalem, and in the temple itself; for they poured out libations to the workmanship of heaven — others translate, the queen of heaven, but we have shown that those places ought to be understood of all the stars — since, therefore, they offered incense to the workmanship of heaven, then they afterwards took to themselves idols and polluted themselves with the superstitions of all the nations. Our Prophet shows that they were not touched with any sense of their punishment, but that they became worse from the time when God began to raise his hand against them; for it was just as if he had begun to show himself from heaven the avenger of their superstitions. Hence we have a reason why the Prophet here mentions years and months, and even the fifth day of the month, namely, that the Jews may be held more convicted of their obstinacy, since no punishments recalled them into the way, but they wrestled with diabolical obstinacy against God. He says, the hand of God fell; by hand I do not simply understand prophecy as some do, but strength; for the sense seems too restricted to say, God’s prophecy fell — the phrase is too cold. But this is properly said of the power of God. It is just as if he professed that he did not bring forward anything of his own, because he put off, as it were, the man whilst Gods power reigned in him. Thus the power of God is opposed to all human faculties. 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.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Which contained part of August, and part of September.
Which contained part of August, and part of September.
Of the captivity of Jeconiah.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Eze 8:1 And it came to pass in the…
Eze 8:1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth [month], in the fifth [day] of the month, [as] I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.
Ver. 1. In the sixth year.] Of Jeconiah’s captivity.
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In the sixth month.] Elul, answerable to our August.
In the fifth day.] Which was Sabbath day, saith Junius.
As I sat in mine house.] In Mesopotamia, among the captives.
And the elders of Judah sat before me.] {a} As their wont was, upon the Sabbath day. {2Ki 4:23} These Jews were ever learning, but never came to the knowledge of the truth. Yet God still bore with them, and taught them better. {b}
That the hand of the Lord God fell there upon me,] i.e., The Spirit (the spirit of prophecy, saith the Chaldee), to whom the absolving and perfecting of God’s work is congruously attributed. He is fitly said to brood the waters, {Gen 1:2} to overshadow the Virgin Mary, {Luk 1:35} to seal the elect, {Eph 4:30} to add ultimam manum; for God the Father doth all by the Son, through the Holy Ghost. Ezekiel had here a mighty impulse of the Spirit, which fell upon him quasi fulgur efficax et penetrans, as lightning.
{a} Sedentes et quiescentes apti sunt ad percipiendam S. S. gratiam.
{b} Hinc apparet μακροθυμια Dei. - Lavat.
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Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain In the sixth year of Jeconiah’s captivity. In the…
In the sixth year of Jeconiah’s captivity. In the sixth month; they had been almost seven years in captivity, it was Elul, or our August.
In the fifth day of the month; the sabbath day, as Eze 1:2.
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As I sat in my house; abode in my house, probably he lay on his side, the three hundred and ninety days not yet expired.
The elders of Judah, the chief of those that were now in captivity, sat before me; they were come either to spend the sabbath in religious exercises, such as the present state of affairs permitted, to hear somewhat from the prophet’s mouth, expounding the law or declaring their duty, or to inquire what would become of their brethren in Jerusalem, whether they should be subdued and captivated, or whether there were any good news for them from heaven, and how they should behave themselves in these sad times.
The hand of the Lord; the Spirit of prophecy exerted itself with a mighty Divine power, which enlightened me at that very time, and in that very place: see Eze 1:8.
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Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Ezekiel was now in Babylon; but the messages of…
Ezekiel was now in Babylon; but the messages of wrath he had delivered in the foregoing chapters related to Jerusalem, for in the peace or trouble thereof the captives looked upon themselves to have peace or trouble, and therefore here he has a vision of what was done at Jerusalem, and this vision is continued to the close of the 11th chapter.
I. Here is the date of this vision. The first vision he had was in the fifth year of the captivity, in the fourth month and the fifth day of the month, Eze 1:1, Eze 1:2. This was just fourteen months after. Perhaps it was after he had lain 390 days on his left side, to bear the iniquity of Israel, and before he began the forty days on his right side, to bear the iniquity of Judah; for now he was sitting in the house, not lying. Note, God keeps a particular account of the messages he sends to us, because he will shortly call us to account about them.
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II. The opportunity is taken notice of, as well as the time. 1. The prophet was himself sitting in his house, in a sedate composed frame, deep perhaps in contemplation. Note, The more we retreat from the world, and retire into our own hearts, the better frame we are in for communion with God: those that sit down to consider what they have learned shall be taught more. Or, he sat in his house, ready to preach to the company that resorted to him, but waiting for instructions what to say. God will communicate more knowledge to those who are communicative of what they do know. 2. The elders of Judah, that were now in captivity with him, sat before him. It is probable that it was on the sabbath day, and that it was usual for them to attend on the prophet every sabbath day, both to hear the word from him and to join with him and prayer and praise: and how could they spend the sabbath better, now that they had neither temple nor synagogue, neither priest nor altar? It was a great mercy that they had opportunity to spend it so well, as the good people in Elisha's time, Kg2 4:23. But some think it was on some extraordinary occasion that they attended him, to enquire of the Lord, and sat down at his feet to hear his word. Observe here, (1.) When the law had perished from the priests at Jerusalem, whose lips should keep knowledge (Eze 7:26), those in Babylon had a prophet to consult. God is not tied to places or persons. (2.) Now that the elders of Judah were in captivity they paid more respect to God's prophets, and his word in their mouth, than they did when they lived in peace in their own land. When God brings men into the cords of affliction, then he opens their ears to discipline, Job 36:8, Job 36:10; Psa 141:6. Those that despised vision in the valley of vision prized it now that the word of the Lord precious and there was no open vision. (3.) When our teachers are driven into corners, and are forced to preach in private houses, we must diligently attend them there. A minister's house should be a church for all his neighbours. Paul preached in his own hired house at Rome, and God owned him there, and no man forbad him.
III. The divine influence and impression that the prophet was now under: The hand of the Lord fell there upon me. God's hand took hold of him, and arrested him, as it were, to employ him in this vision, but at the same time supported him to bear it.
IV. The vision that the prophet saw, Eze 8:2. He beheld a likeness, of a man we may suppose, for that was the likeness he saw before, but it was all brightness above the girdle and all fire below, fire and flame. This agrees with the description we had before of the apparition he saw, Eze 1:27. It is probably that it was the same person, the man Christ Jesus. It is probable that the elders that sat with him (as the men that journeyed with Paul) saw a light and were afraid, and this happy sight they gained by attending the prophet in a private meeting, but they had no distinct view of him that spoke to him, Act 22:9.
V. The prophet's remove, in vision, to Jerusalem. The apparition he saw put forth the form of a hand, which took him by a lock of his head, and the Spirit was that hand which was put forth, for the Spirit of God is called the finger of God. Or, The spirit within him lifted him up, so that he was borne up and carried on by an internal principle, not an external violence. A faithful ready servant of God will be drawn by a hair, by the least intimation of the divine will, to his duty; for he has that within him which inclines him to a compliance with it, Psa 27:8. He was miraculously lifted up between heaven and earth, as if he were to fly away upon eagles' wings. This, it is probable (so Grotius thinks), the elders that sat with him saw; they were witnesses of the hand taking him by the lock of hair, and lifting him up, and then perhaps laying him down again in a trance of ecstasy, while he had the following visions, whether in the body or out of the body, we may suppose, he could not tell, any more than Paul in a like case, much less can we. Note, Those are best prepared for communion with God and the communications of divine light that by divine grace are raised up above the earth and the things of it, to be out of their attractive force. But, being lifted up towards heaven, he was carried in vision to Jerusalem, and to God's sanctuary there; for those that would go to heaven must take that in their way. The Spirit represented to his mind the city and temple as plainly as if he had been there in person. O that by faith we could thus enter into the Jerusalem, the holy city, above, and see the things that are invisible!
VI. The discoveries that were made to him there.
1. There he saw the glory of God (Eze 8:4): Behold, the glory of the god of Israel was there, the same appearance of the living creatures, and the wheels, and the throne, that he had seen, ch. 1. Note, God's servants, wherever they are and whithersoever they go, ought to carry about with them a believing regard to the glory of God and to set that always before them; and those that have seen God's power and glory in the sanctuary should desire to see them again, so as they have seen them, Psa 63:2. Ezekiel has this repeated vision of the glory of God both to give credit to and to put honour upon the following discoveries. But it seems to have a further intention here; it was to aggravate this sin of Israel, in changing their own God, the God of Israel (who is a God of so much glory as here he appears to be), for dunghill gods, scandalous gods, false gods, and indeed no gods. Note, The more glorious we see God to be the more odious we shall see sin to be, especially idolatry, which turns his truth into a lie, his glory into shame. It was also to aggravate their approaching misery, when this glory of the Lord should remove from them (Eze 11:23) and leave the house and city desolate.
2. There he saw the reproach of Israel - and that was the image of jealousy, set northward, at the gate of the altar, Eze 8:3, Eze 8:5. What image this was is uncertain, probably an image of Baal, or of the grove, which Manasseh made and set in the temple (Kg2 21:7, Ch2 33:3), which Josiah removed, but his successors, it seems, replace there, as probably they did the chariots of the sun which he found at the entering in of the house of the Lord (Kg2 23:11), and this is here said to be in the entry. But the prophet, instead of telling us what image it was, which might gratify our curiosity, tells us that it was the image of jealousy, to convince our consciences that, whatever image it was, it was in the highest degree offensive to God and provoked him to jealousy. he resented it as a husband would resent the whoredoms of his wife, and would certainly revenge it; for God is jealous, and the Lord revenges, Nah 1:2.
(1.) The very setting up of this image in the house of the Lord was enough to provoke him to jealousy; for it is in the matters of his worship that we are particularly told, I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. Those that placed this image at the door of the inner gate, where the people assembled, called the gate of the altar (Eze 8:5), thereby plainly intended, [1.] To affront God, to provoke him to his face, by advancing an idol to be a rival with him for the adoration of his people, in contempt of his law and in defiance of his justice. [2.] To debauch the people, and pick them up as they were entering into the courts of the Lord's house to bring their offerings to him, and to tempt them to offer them to this image; like the adulteress Solomon describes, that sits at the door of her house, to call passengers who go right on their ways, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither, Pro 9:14-16. With good reason therefore is this called the image of jealousy.
(2.) We may well imagine what a surprise and what a grief it was to Ezekiel to see this image in the house of God, when he was in hopes that the judgments they were under had, by this time, wrought some reformation among them; but there is more wickedness in the world, in the church, than good men think there is. And now, [1.] God appeals to him whether this was not bad enough, and a sufficient ground for God to go upon in casting off this people and abandoning them to ruin. Could he, or any one else, expect any other than that God should go far from his sanctuary, when there were such abominations committed there, in that very place; nay, was he not perfectly driven thence? They did these things designedly, and on purpose that he should leave his sanctuary, and so shall their doom be; they have hereby, in effect, like the Gadarenes, desired him to depart out of their coasts, and therefore he will depart; he will no more dignify and protect his sanctuary, as he has done, but will give it up to reproach and ruin. But, [2.] Though this is bad enough, and serves abundantly to justify God in all that he brings upon them, yet the matter will appear to be much worse: But turn thyself yet again, and thou wilt be amazed to see greater abominations than these. Where there is one abomination it will be found that there are many more. Sins do not go alone.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And it came to pass in the sixth year,…
And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month,.... This was the sixth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin; the sixth month was the month Elul, which answers to part of August, and part of September. The Septuagint and Arabic versions wrongly render it, the fifth month. The fifth day of the month is thought to have been the sabbath day, which seems probable by what follows; this was just a year and two months from the first vision, Eze 1:1;
as I sat in mine house; in Chaldea, by the river Chebar; he was now sitting, the time of lying on his side, both right and left, being now up, even four hundred and thirty days. It was in the fifth year, and on the fifth of Tammuz, that the first vision was; seven days the prophet sat with them of the captivity at Telabib; at the end of which he was ordered to lie on his side; first on his left side three hundred ninety days, and then on his right side forty days: now reckoning from the middle of Tammuz, to the fifth of Elul in the sixth year, were but, as Kimchi observes, four hundred days; but this being, as another Jewish writer says (r), an intercalated year, by the intercalation of a month, which consisted of thirty days, the whole number was completed, and the prophet was now sitting: or it may be this position is observed, because he was now teaching and instructing the people, which was frequently done sitting; See Gill on Mat 5:1; and this in his own private house, being now in captivity, and having neither temple nor synagogue to teach in;
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and the elders of Judah sat before me; to hear the word of the Lord from his mouth, the law explained, or any fresh prophecy delivered by him; or to have his advice and counsel in their present circumstances. These were the elders of Judah that were carried captive along with Jehoiachin; though some think they were those that were at Jerusalem, and that all this was only in a visionary way; but the former sense seems most agreeable; seeing this was previous to the vision, and with what goes before describes the time, place, and witnesses of the vision;
that the hand of the Lord fell there upon me; which the Targum interprets of the spirit of prophecy, which came with power upon him: it denotes the energy and efficacy of the Spirit of God in throwing him into an ecstasy, and acting upon him, and revealing to him the things he did; which are related in the following verses.
(r) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 26. p. 73. Vid. Kimchi in loc.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain God in vision brings Ezekiel to Jerusalem, ver. 1-4.…
God in vision brings Ezekiel to Jerusalem, ver. 1-4. There he sees the image of jealousy, ver. 5, 6. The elders of Israel worshipping all manner of images, ver. 7-12. The women weeping for Tammuz, ver. 13, 14. The men worshiping the sun, ver. 15, 16. Threatenings against them, ver. 17, 18.
Sixth year - Of Jeconiah's captivity. Sixth month - Elul or our August. The elders - The chief of those that were now in captivity. They were come either to spend the sabbath in religious exercises, or to inquire what would become of their brethren in Jerusalem. The hand - The spirit of prophecy.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Here begins a section of prophecy extending to the…
CHAPTER VIII
Here begins a section of prophecy extending to the twelfth
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chapter. In this chapter the prophet is carried in vision to
Jerusalem, 1-4;
and there shown the idolatries committed by the rulers of the
Jews, even within the temple. In the beginning of this vision,
by the noblest stretch of an inspired imagination, idolatry
itself is personified, and made an idol; and the image
sublimely called, from the provocation it gave God, the
IMAGE OF JEALOUSY, 5.
The prophet then proceeds to describe the three principal
superstitions of this unhappy people: the Egyptian, 6-12,
the Phoenician, 13, 14,
and the Persian, 15, 16;
giving the striking features of each, and concluding with a
declaration of the heinousness of their sins in the sight of
God, and the consequent greatness of their punishment, 17, 18.
NOTES ON CHAP. VIII
Verse 1. In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month] This, according to Abp. Usher, was the sixth year of Ezekiel's captivity. The sixth day of the fifth month of the ecclesiastical year, which answers to August A.M. 3410.
This chapter and the three following contain but one vision, of which I judge it necessary, with Calmet, to give a general idea, that the attention of the reader may not be too much divided.
The prophet, in the visions of God, is carried to Jerusalem, to the northern gate of the temple, which leads by the north side to the court of the priests. There he sees the glory of the Lord in the same manner as he did by the river Chebar. At one side he sees the image of jealousy. Going thence to the court of the people, he sees through an opening in the wall seventy elders of the people, who were worshipping all sorts of beasts and reptiles, which were painted on the wall. Being brought thence to the gate of the door of the house, he saw women weeping for Tammuz or Adonis. As he returned to the court of the priests, between the porch and the altar, he saw twenty-five men with their backs to the sanctuary and their faces towards the east, worshipping the rising sun. This is the substance of the vision contained in the eighth chapter.
About the same time he saw six men come from the higher gate with swords in their hands; and among them, one with an ink-horn. Then the Divine Presence left the cherubim, and took post at the entrance of the temple, and gave orders to the man with the ink-horn to put a mark on the foreheads of those who sighed and prayed because of the abominations of the land; and then commanded the men with the swords to go forward, and slay every person who had not this mark. The prophet, being left alone among the dead, fell on his face, and made intercession for the people. The Lord gives him the reason of his conduct; and the man with the ink-horn returns, and reports to the Lord what was done. These are the general contents of the ninth chapter.
The Lord commands the same person to go in between the wheels of the cherubim, and take his hand full of live coals, and scatter them over the city. He went as commanded, and one of the cherubim gave him the coals; at the same time the glory of the Lord, that had removed to the threshold of the house, now returned, and stood over the cherubim. The cherubim, wheels, wings, c., are here described as in the first chapter. This is the substance of the tenth chapter.
The prophet then finds himself transported to the east gate of the temple, where he saw twenty-five men, and among them Jaazaniah the son of Azur, and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people, against whom the Lord commands him to prophesy, and to threaten them with the utmost calamities, because of their crimes. Afterwards God himself speaks, and shows that the Jews who should be left in the land should be driven out because of their iniquities, and that those who had been led captive, and who acknowledged their sins and repented of them, should be restored to their own land. Then the glory of the Lord arose out of the city, and rested for a time on one of the mountains on the east of Jerusalem, and the prophet being carried in vision by the Spirit to Chaldea, lost sight of the chariot of the Divine glory, and began to show to the captivity what the Lord had shown to him. This is the substance of the eleventh chapter.
We may see from all this what induced the Lord to abandon his people, his city, and his temple the abominations of the people in public and in private. But because those carried away captives with Jeconiah acknowledged their sins, and their hearts turned to the Lord, God informs them that they shall be brought back and restored to a happy state both in temporal and spiritual matters, while the others, who had filled up the measure of their iniquities, should be speedily brought into a state of desolation and ruin. This is the sum and intent of the vision in these four chapters.
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Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Eze 8:1. And it came to pass in the…
Eze 8:1. And it came to pass in the sixth year — Namely, of Jehoiachin’s captivity. In the sixth month — The LXX. read, in the fifth month. As I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah — Men of note for their age or authority, or the chief of those who had been made captives with Jehoiachin, sat before me — Having come, probably, to inquire of the Lord concerning their present state of affairs, what the issue would be; or what would become of their brethren who remained in Judea and Jerusalem. It must be observed, “that in Eze 4:4-6, the prophet is commanded to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days, and on his right side forty days; to which must be added the seven days mentioned Eze 3:15. But the interval between this vision, and Eze 1:1, is only one year and two months, or four hundred and twenty days, reckoning thirty days in a month. It would seem, therefore, that this revelation was made to the prophet during his typical siege. ‘But Vignoles, 5. 2:447, thinks, that the year was a lunar one, with an intercalation of thirty days.’ — Secker. And, according to Michaelis, the Jews, and in general the people of Asia, were used to lunar years of three hundred and fifty-four days. Add to them two months, or fifty-nine days, and you have four hundred and thirteen days. A whole month was intercalated from time to time into the lunar year, to make it agree with the harvest year. Add twenty-nine days, and you have four hundred and forty-two days.” — Newcome.
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Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain The elders of Judah - The prophet’s fellow-exiles are…
The elders of Judah - The prophet’s fellow-exiles are no longer unwilling to hear him Eze 2:1-10. They sat as mourners. The message here is not as in Eze 6:2, but distinctly to Judah, that portion of the people whose exile Ezekiel shared.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Sixth of the prophet’s captivity, (Calmet) in August, the…
Sixth of the prophet’s captivity, (Calmet) in August, the year of the world 3411. (Usher) --- He had rested on his left or right side, whenever he slept during 430 days, and on the following had this vision. (Worthington) --- He was stationed in spirit at the northern gate leading to the court of the priests, and beheld the glory of God and the idol of jealousy. He saw the people, men and women, adoring idols, and priests worshipping the sun, chap. ix. God rests on the gate of the temple, and orders a man to sign those who were to live, and six others to destroy the rest. The prophet prays, chap. x. God orders the man clothed in linen to take coals from the cherubim, and sprinkle them through the city. The throne goes to receive the Lord, chap. xi. Ezechiel prophesies against many, at the eastern gate; and God informs him that the former captives shall return, but that the wicked at Jerusalem shall perish. His chariot then rests on the mountain to the east of the city. Thus his reasons for punishing the people become evident.
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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain III. THE SUBSEQUENT EXECUTION OF DIVINE COMMISSIONS.—Ch. 8–24
III. THE SUBSEQUENT EXECUTION OF DIVINE COMMISSIONS.—Ch. 8–24
1. The Vision (Ch. 8–11)
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1. The Abominations in the Temple (Ch. 8)
1And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth [month], on the fifth of the month—I was in my house, and the elders of Judah were before me, and there 2fell upon me the hand of the Lord Jehovah. And I saw, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of His loins and downwards, fire; and from His loins and upwards, as the appearance of brightness, as the look of the 3brightness of gold. And He stretched out the form of a hand, and took hold of me by the front hair of my head, and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me to Jerusalem in visions of God, to the opening of the door of the inner [court] that points toward the north, where is the seat of the [idol-] image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. 4And, behold, there the 5glory of the God of Israel, like the vision which I saw in the valley. And He said unto me: Son of man, lift up now thine eyes toward the north. And I lifted up mine eyes toward the north, and behold on the north at [northward of] the gate of 6the altar that [idol-] image of jealousy at the entrance. And He said unto me: Son of man, seest thou what they are doing? great abominations that the house of Israel doeth here, in order to be far from My sanctuary! And yet again shalt thou see great abominations. 7And He brought me to the opening of the court, 8and I saw, and behold a hole in the wall. And He said unto me: Son of man, break now through the wall. And I broke through the wall, and behold an opening. 9And He said unto me: Come and see the wicked abominations that they 10are doing here. And I came and saw; and behold every (every kind of) form of creeping things and beasts, abomination, and of all the (all kinds of the) dung-gods of the house of Israel, portrayed (painted) upon the wall round and round. 11And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing in their midst, and every one his censer 12in his hand, and vapour of the cloud of the incense rising up. And He said unto me: Hast thou seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each one in his chambers of imagery? for they say, Jehovah 13seeth us not; Jehovah hath forsaken the land. And He said unto me: Yet again 14shalt thou see great abominations that they are doing. And He brought me to the opening of the gate of the house of Jehovah which was toward the north; 15and, behold, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz. And He said unto me: Hast thou seen, son of man? Yet again shalt thou see abominations greater than these. 16And He brought me to the court of the house of Jehovah, the inner one, and, behold, at the opening of the temple of Jehovah between the porch and the altar about five-and-twenty men, their backs to the temple of Jehovah and their faces toward the east, and they bowing themselves toward the east 17before the sun. And He said unto me: Hast thou seen, son of man? Was it [viz. Eze_8:16] a lighter thing for the house of Judah than to do the abominations which they [Eze_8:5-15] have done here? for they filled the land with violence, and returned to provoke Me to anger, and [there], lo, they stretch out the vine-branch 18to their nose. And [but] I also will deal in fury; Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I show pity; and if they cry in Mine ears with loud voice, then I will not hear.
Eze_8:1. Sept.: ... ἐν τ πεμπτω μηνι—
Eze_8:2. Sept. and Arab. read: במראה־איש.—Anoth. read.: ולמטה במראה אש.
Eze_8:3. ... του ζηλους του κτωμεςου (Sept. and Arab. from קנה).—Anoth. read.: במראת, in visione. Sept, Vulg., Syr., Chald., Ar.
Eze_8:6. ... κ. ἐτι ὀψη ἁμαρτιας μειζονας.
Eze_8:9. ... ὡδε σημερον.
Eze_8:12. ... ποιουσι ὡδε, ἑκαστος—
Eze_8:14. Vulg.: plangentes Adonidem.
Eze_8:16. Anoth. read.: משתחוים.
Eze_8:17. ... μη μικρα τω οἰκω 'Ιουδα του ποιειν τας ἀςομιας ἁς πεποιηκασιν ὡδε, διοτι ἐπλησαν... ; κ. ἰδου... ἰκτεινουσιν τ. κλημα ὡς μυκτηριζοντες.
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
Of the abominations which come to be represented in this vision of our prophet there are four: (1) after an introduction (Eze_8:1-4), the image of jealousy, Eze_8:5-6; (2) the idolatry in the secret place of the chambers of imagery, Eze_8:7-13; (3) the mourning for Tammuz, Eze_8:14-15; (4) the worship of the sun, with a closing threatening of God, Eze_8:16-18. The common feature is the localizing of these abominations at the temple. That in this way a really existing state of things connected with the temple (Ewald) is meant to be reproduced—according to Häv. a feast of Adonis, which had been held in the 4th month (!) at Jerusalem in the temple—is just as little to be granted as it is to be denied that this or that allusion to the real state of matters may find a place here (2Ch_36:14). Disobedience toward Jehovah, in common with all Israel’s idolatry, could not, at all events, find a more suitable symbolical expression. For sin is a profanation of the Holy One of Israel, and therefore since He has in the temple His palace in the midst of Israel, so much the more is it a profanation of this dwelling of Jehovah, if Israel’s sin is idolatry, since the only place of worship for Israel was to be that connected with the worship of Jehovah in His temple-palace. Hengst. lays emphasis on the circumstance that the temple is “the ideal dwelling-place of the people” (Lev_16:16), and thus “every sin polluted the sanctuary.” “So, then, here also all that was present in the land of an idolatrous character is united in a single comprehensive picture, and placed in the temple, to cry thence to God and call forth His vengeance.” Neteler admits also “four idolatrous symbols” as “a figurative delineation of the yet much more dangerous, more subtle idolatry: the first picture a representation of pride, from which the passions spring, which are reflected in the animal forms of the second picture.” “As pride lays waste the soul, so sensuality lays waste the body—represented by the mourning of the women for Tammuz; and this lordship of nature over the spirit is completed in materialism, which holds lifeless matter to be the Absolute, and worships it accordingly.” Hengst. thinks “not so much of idolatry springing from aberration of the religious instinct, as rather of a homage which was paid to the world-powers, for the purpose of attaining to safety through their help without God, nay, even against God.” At all events it corresponds to the symbolical character of the whole, to recognise as symbolized in the number four the realm of heathenism as that of the natural world outside the kingdom of God. (Klief.: “that Israel has brought together its religious rites from all parts of the world, and spread them throughout the whole land.”) The connection of our chapter with the two discourses of rebuke, in Ezekiel 6, 7, is clear, especially from the comparison with Eze_7:20 sqq.
Additional Note on Ch. 8
[A new stage of the prophetic agency of Ezekiel, and of his spirit-stirring communications to the captives on the banks of the Chebar, opens with this chapter, and proceeds onwards in an uninterrupted strain to the end of the eleventh. These four chapters form one discourse (as the preceding portion had also done, from Eze_3:12 to the close of Ezekiel 7), and a discourse somewhat more specific in its character and bearing, than the revelations previously made. The vision of the siege, and of the iniquity-bearing, described in Ezekiel 4, had respect to the covenant-people generally—including, indeed, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, yet so as also to comprehend the scattered portions of Judah and Israel. This, too, was the case with the vision of the shaven hair, and its foreshadowing desolations, contained in ch, 5–7. The burden there delivered was an utterance of divine judgments against the whole covenant-people on account of sin; because, having been planted as the witnesses and heralds of God’s truth in the midst of the nations, they had themselves fallen before the heathen corruptions, which it was their special calling to have resisted to the uttermost. Therefore, in just retribution for the betrayal of God’s cause into the enemies’ hands, the heathen were become His instruments of vengeance, to inflict on the whole house of Israel the various forms of a severe and prolonged chastisement. But now, in the section of prophecy which commences with Ezekiel 8, the people of Jerusalem, and the small remnant of Judah, who, under Zedekiah, continued to hold a flickering existence in Canaan, form the immediate object of the prophet’s message, not only as apart from the Babylonish exiles, but even as standing in a kind of contrast to them. And it is of essential moment to a proper understanding of the purport of the vision that we rightly apprehend and estimate the circumstances which led to so partial and specific a direction in the message now delivered.—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp. 81, 82.—W. F.]
Eze_8:1-4. The Introduction.
The date in Eze_8:1 : in the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month. (August—September.) The year is that after the captivity of King Jehoiachin; comp. Eze_1:2. (“By means of such a reckoning He humbles the Jews,” Calv.) The year of Israel (Winer, Realw. i. 530 sq.) is reckoned at 354⅓ days, each of the twelve months at 29–30 days. From Eze_1:1 sqq. to Eze_8:1 there are 14 months = 413 days, as a medium between 406 and 420. But we need according to Eze 4, 390 plus 40 days, to which, according to Eze_3:15, seven days more are to be added, thus in all 437 days. As it is inconceivable (so also Hitz.) that with a date so precise Ezekiel should have been guilty of an inaccuracy so easily avoided, a fourfold solution is possible. (1) Either the symbolical actions in Ezekiel 4, 5 are subjective, or a mere rhetorical turn (Häv., Hengst., Hitz., Keil): in this case every difficulty disappears. (2) Or we may include the 40 days for Judah in the 390 (comp. on Eze_4:6; Eze_4:9), and get in this way the necessary days. (3) Or the fifth year of Jehoiachin was an intercalary year of 13 months, as such usually occurred every 3 years, sometimes also even with the 2d year (J. D. Mich.); and then there are reckoned for it (Relandi, Ant. Sacr. 4. § 2.) 381–385 days plus 2 months (58–60 days), in all, 439–445 days. (4) Or, lastly, our vision falls into the 40 days for Judah (comp. on Eze_4:12), as Kliefoth’s view is, against which Keil’s objections have no force. And not only the contents, but also the circumstances accord there-with. First of all the place: in my house; comp. on Eze_3:24. יושׁב does not necessarily indicate the posture as one of sitting, in contrast with lying in Ezekiel 4, since ׳שב means radically: to be fixed somewhere (hence: to dwell, to tarry, to remain) and somehow; hence: to sit, also: to lie, as well as: to stand (מושב, Eze_8:3). Then, farther, the representatives of the parties addressed, to whom the prophetic vision is directed (Eze_8:17), correspond: the elders of Judah, of the captivity. That it took place on the Sabbath, that they had come to hear a sermon, is not said. Comp. rather on Eze_3:24. According to Ewald, they were seeking comfort and advice, especially on account of the bitter contempt of the poor exiles on the part of the proud, intoxicated capital.
Additional Note on Ch. 8
[No express reason is assigned for their sitting there, though we can have little doubt that it was for the purpose of receiving from his lips some communication of the divine will. The Lord also was present, to impart suitable aid to His servant; but, lo! instead of prompting him to address his speech directly to those before him, the Spirit carried him away in the visions of God to the temple at Jerusalem, that he might obtain an insight into the state of corruption prevalent there, and might learn the mind of God respecting it. The message delivered to the elders who sat around him consisted mainly in the report of what he witnessed and heard in those divine visions; and it falls into two parts,—the account given of the reigning abominations contained in Ezekiel 8, and the dealings of judgment and of mercy which were to be pursued toward the respective parties in Israel, as unfolded in the three succeeding chapters.
Now, what should have led the prophet to throw his message into such a form as this, but that some connection existed between the exiles of Chebar and the remnant in Jerusalem, which made the report of what more immediately belonged to the one a seasonable and instructive communication to the other? We formerly had occasion to notice, that among the exiled portion there were some who still looked hopefully toward Jerusalem, and, so far from believing things there to be on the verge of ruin, were persuaded that ere long the way would be opened up for their own return thither in peace and comfort. Among those also who were still resident in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, it appears, there were some who not only looked upon themselves as secure in their position, but eyed their exiled brethren with a kind of haughty indifference or contempt, as if these had no longer anything in common with them! That it was this latter state of feeling which more immediately led to the present interview between the elders and the prophet, and the revelations which ensued, we may not doubtfully gather from the allusion made to it near the close of the vision (Eze_11:15)—where the inhabitants of Jerusalem are represented as saying to the exiles, “Get you far (rather, Be ye far, continue in your state of separation and distance) from the Lord; unto us is this land given in possession.” As much as to say, “It may well befit you to be entertaining thoughts of evil and dark forebodings of the future; your outcast condition cuts you off from any proper interest in God, and renders such sad anticipations natural and just. Abide as you are—but as for us, we dwell near to God, and by His good hand upon us have the city and land of our fathers in sure possession. It is not improbable that this taunting declaration of their own fancied superiority and assured feeling of safety had been called forth by the tidings reaching Jerusalem of the awful judgments announced in Ezekiel’s earlier predictions; as, on the other hand, the express and pointed reference made here to that declaration leaves little room to doubt that the rumour of it had been heard on the banks of the Chebar, and had led the elders of Judah to present themselves in the house of the prophet. For, in their unhappy circumstances, the knowledge of such thoughts and feelings being entertained toward them at Jerusalem must have exercised a most depressing influence on their minds, and could not but seem an adequate occasion for their endeavouring to ascertain the mind of the Lord as between them and their countrymen in Judea.—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp. 82–84.—W. F.]
According to Hengst., the “rousing political intelligence” had arrived, that Elam and Media have joined the coalition! As to the rest, comp. on Eze_1:3; Eze_3:22; Eze_3:14. Klief.: “the hand, etc., because, again, the matter in hand was not revelation in word, but action.”
Eze_8:2. The vision, going back and attaching itself to what goes before, begins, like Ezekiel 1, 3, with a theophany. Comp. on Eze_1:4-5. אש, from Ezekiel 1 onwards, characteristic, hence also the first impression which Ezekiel receives; comp. Eze_1:27. The Sept. read, or gave as an explanation, איש, of course from the mention of the loins, etc. It looked for the most part like (במראה) fire, yet there was not wanting upwards זהר, the brighter splendour (Dan_12:3). (Eze_9:4.) As to the rest, comp. on Eze_1:4; Eze_1:27.—החשמלה (Ewald, Gram. § 173, h, 1).
Eze_8:3. From the fire-picture there is stretched the תבנית (from בנה, to build, to form) of a hand. As always, the figurative expression emphasized as contrasted with the spirituality of God. (Junius: the hand is the Spirit, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; comp. Mat_12:28 with Luk_11:20.) Hence not in a corporeal sense (therefore רוח, not “wind” [Klief., Kl.]; comp. on Eze_3:12); Eze_11:24; as also במראות אלהים, comp. on Eze_1:1. Clarius notices the difference between this passage and Eze_40:1 sqq. Thus far the manner of the occurrence, now the direction taken: in general to Jerusalem, in particular to the spot where the gate of the inner court of the temple (the court of the priests, for which the “priest” Ezekiel uses merely הפנימית, viz. חצר, Eze_8:7; Eze_8:16; the fem. gen. would agree neither with פתח nor with שער, whereas חצר is com. gen.) opened (פתח), looking toward the north. This court of the priests was (Jer_36:10) on a higher level than the great court or the court of the people. The partition-wall between the two was (in order to allow of the people looking on) of so little consequence, that in 2Ch_4:9 there is no mention of the gates in it. The opening of the gate is not toward the court of the people, so that the position of the spectator, as was also suitable for the priest, is taken from the inner court. צפונה (comp. on Eze_1:4), in this direction, hence northward we are to understand אשר־שם. Hengst.: “from the north the punishment was to come; this position was an actual summons to the north to send forth its avenging hosts; possibly also a reference to the sin already committed, the political adulteries of Jerusalem with the northern power Babylon, against which they alternately conspired and then again sought to gain it over, as Zedekiah, in the same year in which he had treated with Edom, Moab, etc., against Babylon, suddenly made off again to Babylon, Jer_51:59.” Or the expression northwards points out the principal tendency of Jewish idolatry (Hos_2:18 [16]), viz. towards Bel (Baal) of the Babylonians, who were, of course, in the north, or properly in the north-east. The image of jealousy, which, perhaps, on this very account is mentioned just here (comp. Eze_8:5), is, on the one hand, particularized by means of םמל (something covered over, an idol-image of that description, Deu_4:16), and, on the other hand, explained more generally by means of המקנה. The latter expression stands for הַמַּקְנִיא (from קנא), as is usually understood. Lightfoot thought of an image of Moloch. In the reign of Manasseh (2Ki_21:7) we meet with the image of Astarte, which Ewald conjectures here, from the circumstance that love is allied to jealousy. Although with an allusion to an existing state of things (2Ch_36:14), yet, in accordance with the symbolic character of the whole vision, resting much more on the basis of Deu_32:16; Deu_32:21, Exo_20:5 (comp. Eze_5:13; Eze_16:38; Eze_23:25), and agreeably to the all-pervading representation of the relation of Jehovah and Israel, we may perhaps with Hengst. (Warburton) have to think of an “ideal concentration of all idolatrous practices,” and these as they were in vogue, in the first place, among the people in general; hence the image in the court of the people. With this also corresponds admirably in Eze_8:4 the so characteristic antithesis of the glory, etc. Comp. Eze_3:22-23; Eze_1:4, as well as in our chapter Eze_8:2; Eze_8:5; farther, Eze_1:28; Eze_9:3; Eze_43:3. שם, as before אשר־שם. The God of Israel He is called, in contrast with “the gods of the nations of the earth, the work of men’s hands,” 2Ch_32:19.
Eze_8:5-6. The Image of Jealousy
In addition to the foregoing virtual description of the image, we have the description in so many words in Eze_8:5; but so expressive is the thing of itself, that Jehovah needs only to summon the prophet to look. The direction repeatedly given is too plain to admit of there being any obscurity with respect to the gate of the altar. Because of this being named, the expression מִ׳ לְ׳ is used. For, coming from the north, as the “glory” (Eze_8:4) is to be supposed to do (Eze_1:4), this gate led into the court of the priests, where Ezekiel has taken up his position (Eze_8:3), and where the brazen altar of burnt-offering was, in reference to which (Eze_9:2) the name “gate of the altar” (perhaps with an allusion to 2Ki_16:14) is explained; wherewith, at the same time, an antithesis of the image of jealousy might again be hinted at. Others (e.g. Kimchi) have thought of the altar of the image (2Ki_21:4-5). At the entrance of the gate, thus in the outer court.
Eze_8:6. מהם, an emphatic contraction in running interrogatory speech: מָה־הֵם (Qeri), sufficiently explained by what immediately follows (the house of Israel, etc.), so that there is no necessity for maintaining that some were actually engaged in worship.—Great abominations, Eze_5:11; Eze_6:9, is the motto, the ever-recurring refrain of the chapter, Eze_8:9; Eze_8:13; Eze_8:15; Eze_8:17.—לרחקה, Ewald, Häv., like most of the ancients, supply the Speaker Jehovah: “in order that I may go far off from My sanctuary,” may turn away from disgust (Eze_11:23). Hengst.: “that they (those formerly mentioned) may be removed, as unworthy of dwelling with the Lord, may be driven out, as Adam once was from Paradise.” Hitzig: “what ought to be far away.” As רחק means “to be far off,” why not render it by the bare infinitive: merely in order to be far off from My sanctuary? The construction with מֵעַל (Eze_11:15; Jer_2:5) makes them appear as former members of the family, who in going away elevate themselves above Him who is enthroned in the sanctuary.
Eze_8:7-13. The Idolatry in the Secrecy of the Chambers of Imagery
Although at תתע׳ נד׳ in the preceding verse we cannot exactly carry out the comparison by supplying a מֵאֵלֵּה (as in Eze_8:15), yet there lies in the ועוד תשוב תר׳ the preparation for, the intention, the beginning of a climax in the thought. In the preceding section: the house of Israel, in this: its elders; this would be a climax. Comp., however, on Eze_8:11. Here: in secret, there: openly; this, at all events, is no climax.
Eze_8:7. Where the court opens, the inner one into the outer, for אל־פתח החצר is manifestly the same as אל־פתח שער הפנימית׳ in Eze_8:3; thus neither the eastern principal door (Lightf., Ewald, Hengst.) of the court of the priests, nor the northern exit of the court of the people (Häv., Hitz., Klief., Kl.), in which case mention is made by some holding the latter view of porches with cells (2Ki_23:11; 1Ch_28:12; Jer_35:4). In favour of the former view, the absence of any farther definition cannot be used as an argument; for while, after enough had been said in Eze_8:3; Eze_8:5, there was no need of any farther definition for the well-known פתח, there would certainly have been need of it, if all at once the intention was to speak of the eastern door, as is also expressly done in Eze_10:19; Eze_11:1. But as regards the other view, the and He brought me is no support, as the prophet certainly, who is in the inner court, is brought also farther (of course in vision) when he now gets to see the hole (Neteler translates: “a hole for one”) in the wall, viz. the gate portion of the wall which divided the courts. As he is to go still farther, he is commanded in Eze_8:8 to break through, to enlarge the hole which shows him the way (is not “as it were a model,” Hengst.), so that his own person may get through. When this has been done, an opening shows itself, a door or window, or what opens up to him the glimpse which follows. When
Eze_8:9—he has approached at the divine summons, idolatry once more reveals itself, and that the so peculiar animal-worship of the Egyptians, a fact which Klief. disputes without cause. According to him, the hole was in the wall of the outer court, and he makes the prophet break through and discover the pictures, etc., on the outside. In that case what was secret about it, as it is certainly represented to be? Hitzig maintains that the worship was in the interior of the gate-building, which contained chambers, but Eze_40:36 is no proof for this temple. The entrance, Hitzig supposes, was built up during Josiah’s reformation in worship.
Eze_8:10. Comp. Gen_1:24; Gen_9:3; Deu_4:17-18; Rom_1:23. שקץ (Eze_5:11) is construed by Ewald, Hitz., Hengst. in apposition with ובהמה: “beasts of abomination,” “abominable beasts,” since to them was paid the honour due to the Creator—according to Hitz., e.g. dogs, cats, etc.; Kl. takes it as in apposition with רמש also (according to Hitzig, beetles especially), inasmuch as the representation of both was made for the purpose of paying religious honours to the pictures. Best of all Bunsen: “every form of abominable creeping things and beasts.” What follows might stand by way of explanation: and, in fact, of all, etc., or all idols of this sort are meant, as also birds, etc. (Hitz.: calves [Apis and Mnevis] and he-goats.) Klief., Kl. maintain that in this way all other possible varieties of idol-worship which had spread in Israel are subjoined co-ordinately with נל תב׳. But the delineation or painting (מחקה, neut. sing.) of all upon the wall of the apartment into which Ezekiel looks through the opening is so characteristically Egyptian, that for one who is unprejudiced anything else is inconceivable. Eze_23:14 is not to be brought into comparison as against this view. As to the גל׳, so common with our prophet, see on Eze_6:4; in Lev_26:30 first, in Deu_29:17 expressly of the idols of Egypt. The seventy in Eze_8:11, according to Ewald, “a round number to express the great strength of the Egyptian party among the nobles, which according to Jeremiah then existed”; according to others: the Great Sanhedrim, an institution, however, which first arose after the exile. According to our text, they figure either as a representation of the collective body of the elders, a committee (council of elders) drawn from (מ) these official persons, or they represent the house of Israel, are a representation of the people. [By mentioning precisely this number of elders, the prophet sets before us a representation of the whole people,—an ideal representation, and of such a kind as to indicate the strong contrast that existed between former and present times—the original seventy (Exodus 24) being employed in immediate connection with God’s glory and covenant, while these here were engaged in an act which bespoke the dishonouring of God’s name, and the virtual dissolution of His covenant.—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel.—W. F.] The number 70 is chosen for symbolical reasons, 10 times 7 (Bähr, Mos. Kult. 2. p. 660) resting on Exodus 24, Numbers 11, in reference to the covenant between God and Israel. In favour of the symbolical character of this number there is also the circumstance that Jaazaniah, the 71st, is not counted among them. The individual named as son of Shaphan is a different person from יאזניהו in Eze_11:1. The name Shaphan we read also in 2 Kings 22; Jeremiah 29, 36, 39. He appears to have had a good reputation, so that for the symbolical meaning by the mention of him the contrast in conduct on the part of his son here might be rendered the more emphatic. Similarly Bunsen, Hengst.: “who probably filled the same post as his father (as chancellor), was perhaps the soul of the negotiations with Egypt; partly on this account, partly because of his ominous name: the Lord hears, which involved the judgment on this procedure, introduced as a historical personality into this ideal company.” Is the expression: standing in their midst, meant to indicate an official superiority as president, or his social consequence among them, or the circumstance that even the son of such a father, with whose name the memory of the pious destroyer of idolatry, Josiah, was united, could be found in the midst of such a company (Psa_1:1)? לפניהם, i.e. the idol-pictures on the wall round about. עתר, according to Hengst.: “the prayer of the cloud of incense, because it was an embodied prayer, Psa_141:2; Rev_5:8; Rev_8:3-4.” “They say by the offering of incense before those miserable figures: Deliver me, for thou art my god (Isa_44:17).” The Hebrew word means certainly: to press on any one with requests, but also: to press together so that there is a large quantity, to heap up, so that that which swells up, the vapour, may be indicated here. So richly that there was a cloud; comp. besides, Lev_16:13. After Ezekiel has seen it, the interpretation is given him in Eze_8:12. In the dark, every one in his chambers of imagery, contains everything necessary for understanding it. First of all, the darkness may certainly be regarded as a symbol of the darkened knowledge of God, but means still more that the procedure of the nobles of the people shuns the light, has its being in secret. In this way we have a complete explanation of the hole in the gate portion of the wall, in the wall of the court (Eze_8:7), of the clandestine manner in which the prophet gets access (Eze_8:8), etc. (“They had in Egypt, in the rocks on the banks of the Nile, deep underground passages, sometimes labyrinths, which led to underground vaults, whose walls were covered over and over with hieroglyphs, and, in fact, the entrance to them is, just as here, only a hole, at which no one imagines there is anything of consequence behind,” etc.—J. D. Mich.) That every one does so proves the representative character of the 71 in Eze_8:11. חדר is that which is shut up, the interior of a tent, of a house; hence, a chamber. The chambers of imagery have idolatrous pictures painted on the walls. As it is represented (Eze_8:9-10) in the wall of the court between the higher and the lower court, so it is done within the walls of their own dwellings by the elders of the people, who approached the priests in virtue of their official character. The domestic heathenism, as distinguished from the public in Eze_8:5-6. Hengst. makes the direct participation in Egyptian idolatry step into the background. (“The people relied at that time on the help of the Egyptians, and looked to them as their saviours.”—Cocc.) Ewald maintains that Egyptian animal-worship was at the time really practised in deeply concealed apartments of the temple area, inasmuch as every idolater of that sort offered incense as his own priest, and prayed in a separate apartment (and hence so many of them are found in Egypt), comp. Amm. Marc. Eze_17:7, Eze_22:15. He points in proof of this to the Egyptian vassalage of King Jehoiachim. The pressure of the Chaldean party at the time upon the Egyptian explains, according to him, the expression, repeated in Eze_9:9, of their deep despair of the affairs of the fatherland. Hengst. speaks in a predominantly political sense of the Egyptian fancies wherewith they occupied themselves in their inner man; the revolt from Babylon, undertaken in concert with Egypt, was still, he alleges, “a public secret.” For they say: אין י׳. This is their so-called right to do it, not meant as an excuse, perhaps. Jehovah shall have the blame. That He seeth not can hardly imply (Isa_29:15) a dogmatic denial of His omniscient (Psalms 139; Psa_94:7) Godhead (Psa_14:1), just as little as His having forsaken the land is meant to deny in so many words His omnipresent omnipotence; but their speech is practical ungodliness: when He has turned away His eye and presence from us and from the land, when we are no longer anything to Him, then nothing is left for us but to look out for the gods of other nations and lands, that they may dwell with us.
Eze_8:13. Comp. Eze_8:6.
Eze_8:14-15. The Mourning for Tammuz
In Eze_8:7 Ezekiel was between the inner and outer court; in Eze_8:14 he is brought to the opening of the gate of the house of Jehovah. Comp. to the opening of the gate of the house of Jehovah which is toward the north with Eze_8:3 : to the opening of the gate of the inner [court] that looketh toward the north; thus the gate of the house and the gate of the inner [court] correspond with each other, the one as applying to the whole, the other as referring only to a part of the same. The house of Jehovah is the whole of the temple, consequently the opening of the gate of it can hardly be anything else than the place where the outer court of the temple opens to the outside altogether. The northerly direction of the gate also corresponds best with the movement of the prophet hitherto. There, then, are the women, viz. those who are weeping for Tammuz, for this reason sitting on the ground, as was the custom of mourners (Mat_27:61). [According to Hitzig: the female population represented in the individuals, who are exactly at the place assigned to the women.] First, the people in general; then, the elders of the people; now, the female sex. This is like a climax. The publicity also of the proceedings of the women (as distinguished from the elders) makes the occurrence in so far parallel with the first in Eze_8:5-6. Meier: the name probably signifies: possessor of power, mighty one, ruler; Tammuz = dominus, properly: tamer, lord. יהוה and תמוז, a contrast! According to Häv., a contraction from תַּמְזוּז (מזז=מםם to melt away), or from תַּנְמוּז (נָפז), of persons or things in reference to the “disappearance” (dying, the ἀφανισμός in contrast with the εὕρεσις) of the Greek “Adonis,” who (אָדוֹן, i.e. “lord” with the Phœnicians) is the Syrian Tammuz (Θαμμούζ. Θαμμούς). According to the fable, the beautiful favourite of Venus, killed by a boar in the chase, but afterwards rising to life again, in whose honour the fourth month (June—July) was called “Tammuz.” At his feast the kinnor (a sort of lyre) was played; hence Cinyras, the father of Adonis, just as Myrrha, from the incense (מֹר) usual thereat, was his mother among the Greeks. It was a funeral-feast in the East, for it celebrated the death of the beautiful life of nature about the time of the greatest summer-heat (תקופת תמוז). Byblos in Syria, where the swollen waters of the river Adonis assumed a red colour about this time, when the snow melted on Lebanon, was the principal seat of the god. (Comp. Häv. against Movers, who makes the oriental celebration of the festival approach nearly to the Greek, in autumn. But comp. also Hitz. on the passage, and Winer, ii. 601 sqq.; Herzog, Realencycl. xv. 667 sqq.) According to Preller (Griech. Mythol. 1. p. 219), the disappearance of Adonis was at first expressed allegorically (ἀφανισμός), after which they sought him (ζήτησις), until at length they found him (εὕρεσις), and now bewailed him as dead, by means of the exhibition of his picture, with gloomy elegies and the usages of a funeral. The solemnity ended with the cry: Adonis lives and has risen; hence with the comfort of his return. Pain for the lost beauty of the year, dread of winter, the ray of hope connected with spring. Sappho already sang of the death of Adonis and of the lamentation for him. Bunsen: “seven days long the women gave themselves up to their lamentations, and were obliged to shave their hair or to sacrifice their chastity” (J. D. Mich.). Hävernick, as no trace of the worship of Adonis can be found in earlier times among the Hebrews, brings forward the view: that under Josiah’s successors such idolatrous worship obtained a footing, especially through Zedekiah’s political alliance with the Phœnicians against Babylon; that the seductive charm of this worship, which is attested by its wide diffusion, is to be taken into account; and that the gloomy direction of the popular consciousness at the time (Eze_8:12, Eze_9:9) was in sympathy with nature’s mournful mood. “The Adonis myth was thus a picture of the history of the people, as the natural consciousness arranged it for itself and arbitrarily interpreted it (Eze_11:2-3).” Hengst. lays emphasis on the northern origin (between Tripolis and Berytus) of the worship, the characteristic wailing women, and finds the real import in the seeking of political aid among the Phœnicians. (Others have thought of a kindred Egyptian worship. Hitzig makes the worship of Adonis come from Egypt; Adonis = Osiris.)
Eze_8:15. Comp. Eze_8:12-13. The climax, up till now merely hinted at, is plainly expressed with respect to what follows. Eze_8:6; Eze_8:13 keep what goes before in a co-ordinate relation.
Eze_8:16-18. The Sun-Worship (Eze_8:16-17); the Closing Threatening of God (Eze_8:18)
Now comes in conclusion the culminating point of the abominations, introduced by the locality, viz. the court of the priests. It takes place in the inner part of Jehovah’s house,—thereby placed in contrast with the publicity going before, and parallel with the actings of the elders in Eze_8:7 sqq.,—and in fact (והנה) where the temple (the holy place) opens into the inner court, indicated still more minutely because of the significance of the locality. The porch, 1Ki_6:3. The altar, the brazen altar of burnt-offering. Comp. Joe_2:17. (Mat_23:35; 2Ch_24:20-21.) Accordingly there can be no doubt that the persons, the 25 men,—as most expositors along with Lightfoot believe, the presidents of the 24 orders of priests (1 Chronicles 24.) with the high priest at their head,—represent the priesthood. ´בְּ “asserts the fact expressly, but only in a subjective way” (Hitz.), as what appeared to be the case, the prophet, as it were, not trusting his own eyes. In this way the abomination to be described is greater than what has hitherto been related of the kind. But then, farther, the description of the posture assumed (comp. 1Ki_7:25; 1Ki_14:9; 2Ch_29:6; the antithesis of their backs and their faces, the contrast of אל־חיכל י׳ with קדמה, “toward sunrise”) sets forth what is abominable in the highest degree. The sanctuary of the Eternal is a thing going down behind them; they turn to the new light. For מִשְׁתַּחְַוִיתֶם, which is probably an error in transcription, almost all read מִשְׁתַחְַוִים (partic. from שחה, Ges. Gram. § 74, 18), as an abbreviation of אַתֶּם, “ye,” could not tally with הֵמָּה. According to Häv. an ironical alteration of the usual form, with an allusion to שָׁחַת in the Hiphil (to destroy, to do evil). Hengst.: an anomalous form, just as the abnormal certainly cannot surprise us in Ezekiel; the form a quid pro quo, like the conduct indicated by it; by inserting ת, the prophet gives a criticism after the manner of a quotation from Exo_24:1; Deu_11:16; as much as to say: they worship, whereas it is said in the law of God: Ye shall not worship. If Tammuz is the sun-god, then an easy transition from what goes before is accomplished, without our being obliged here also on that account to look with favour on Hävernick’s worship of Adonis. It is the primitive Sabœism; comp. Deu_4:19; Deu_17:3. (2Ki_23:5; 2Ki_23:11.) Ewald: sun-worship in accordance with Zoroastrian superstition (Job_31:26). Hengst. takes the 25 as princes of the people (Eze_11:1), an ideal representation of the ruling class,—2 from each of the 12 tribes, besides a president (!). Because of the absence of the definite basis in the Mosaic books, which in contradistinction the LXX in Eze_8:11 had, בְּ stands here, “nearly,” “about” (!). The gradation in Eze_8:15 points to the sin, at present just in full bloom (?). The project of a league with Medo-Persia (already mentioned in Isaiah as the destroyer of the Chaldean universal monarchy, Eze_13:17; Eze_21:2) had perhaps called forth the inquiry of the elders in Eze_8:1, especially as the Diaspora was the appropriate instrument for such a coalition, etc.
Eze_8:17 : Eze_8:15; Eze_8:12; Eze_8:6. Hitherto the question was followed by something else of a different kind, i.e. of a worse kind. This time a new question winds up: was it a light thing (a small thing—Niph. of קלל, comp. 1Ki_16:31) for Judah more than (מעֲשׂ׳) = was that which thou hast seen a lighter (smaller) thing than the committing of the abominations? i.e. embracing in one Eze_8:5-15. A negative answer is supposed, since, according to Eze_8:15, what is seen in Eze_8:16 is to be the culminating point of all, more burdensome than all else. And as in Eze_8:12 a בִּי introduced the alleged justification (in a parallel case) of the elders of the people in their acting by God’s mode of procedure, so God furnishes the reason (בִּי) of the negative answer expected to His question, so that Judah can have nothing more heinous to be put in the opposite scale from what they have done: for they, etc.; comp. Eze_7:23. (It looks quite like a parallel to the “for they,” etc. of Eze_8:12.) And instead of turning to the Eternal, they have returned merely for the purpose of provoking Him to anger. The thought taken in connection with Eze_8:12 would accordingly be: the land of which they say that Jehovah has forsaken it, they have filled with violence, so that there remained no room in it for the Holy One; but their acting in the temple shows (a climax) that, as regards the Eternal, they are seeking not the expiation for their guilt, but His wrath. He seeth not, say they,—and, lo, they, etc. (the highest point of the climax), so that שלחים את׳ is either to be understood of a specially provoking gesture in idolatrous worship, or must be interpreted from the context as a proverbial mode of speaking. [Ewald translates: “is it too small a thing for the house of Judah to practise the abominations which they practised here, that they filled the land with injustice and exasperated Me repeatedly, and that now they even put the twig to their nose?” having in view the twig of the sacred tree held before the mouth during prayer (so already J. D. Mich, and many expositors), “as if there were not yet enough in the more ancient revolting idolatries as well as in the already depicted (Eze_7:23) roughness of their everyday life, and as if, besides, this most recent superstition must now be added.”] The climax in the thought and the reference to Parseeism lies in the context, but the “Barsom” (a bundle of different kinds of twigs) does not correspond with הזמורה (a vine branch, Eze_15:2; Isa_17:10), neither does the solemn holding before the mouth with the left hand correspond much with שלח אל־אפם. Hengst. assigns as a reason for “the vine-branch” its being “a quite pre-eminent product of the sun”; and, according to him, the nose is mentioned ironically instead of the mouth. A gesture in worship is demanded by the expression והנם. Klief. confesses himself unable to explain the idolatrous custom. The thyrsus-staff of the worshippers of Bacchus has also been suggested. Keil finds the climax in the acts of violence as compared with the abominations,—the moral corruption shows the full measure of their guilt; but the proverbial mode of speaking has not yet been sufficiently cleared up. Israel himself has been suggested here as the vine-stock (Jer_2:21), אף, translated by “anger” (their anger, viz. which they have provoked on God’s part, or which they cherish towards God and His prophets), and the interpretation given as if the meaning were: to pour oil into the fire, to bring brushwood to the flames. Häv.: “and, lo! they send forth the mournful ditty (about Adonis, זמורה for זִמְרָה ,זְמִיר) to their anger” (that which falls upon them). Hitzig renders זמורה: pruning-knife (“they put the pruning-bill to their nose”), wishing to provoke Me, they provoke themselves (Jer_7:19; Hab_2:10; Pro_23:2), in connection with which he quotes the scene in Auerbach’s cellar from Faust, etc.
Eze_8:18. Comp. Eze_5:11; Eze_7:4; Eze_7:9; Eze_9:5; Eze_9:10, threatening with corresponding retribution on the part of God. (Eze_11:13; Isa_1:15; Jer_11:11).
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
1. As the idea of salvation is especially dominant in the history of Israel, and draws from it the most manifold types, so in a pre-eminent degree prophecy is ruled by the idea. In verbal prophecy the idea, and especially the Christian idea, of the future, clothes itself at one time in accordance with what is peculiar to the prophets as individuals, at another by making use of allusion to the form of the present, and of the forces, persons, occurrences, etc. moving it, but in general entirely within the sphere of the Old Testament mode of representation; so that what is meant to be just the most striking expression for the idea shows itself, through the later realization of the idea exactly in this form, to be at the same time a prediction, apart from the express predictions of the prophets. (Comp. on this subject Tholuck, die Propheten, ff. p. 105 sqq.) Now what the figurative word accomplishes as regards the object aimed at, that, as regards deepening our views of the truth, appears to be the task of symbol in prophetic action, in dramatic vision. The vision of the abominations in the temple here in Ezekiel is a theologizing one of the apostasy of Israel, now ripe for judgment.
2. The living God of revelation is the measure of the dead idols of the heathen, alike as regards the pantheistic slumping of them in the world, and as regards their polytheistic separation according to the different lands and peoples. He is, and whatever wanders to those others and is falsely attributed to them belongs to Him. On the same deep basis of truth theologically, our vision brings the idolatry of Israel into view in the temple of Jehovah, and therewith into condemnation. The temple becomes the standard for judgment of every heathen worship.
3. It was condescension in the sphere of history on the part of the idea of revelation, that for so long a period a fixed nation, like Israel, was to be the bearer of it, and that, after the general analogy of heathen nations, church and state covered each other. Only with the expansion of the church into its ideal, i.e. into the kingdom of God among mankind as a whole (Rev_21:3), have: “state religion” and “state church” as ideas become effete. They are merely existing realities of a wretched kind; their ideas, if one chooses to speak of them, are antiquated; they are reproductions of the past, Judaism, if not heathenisms. Progress, and by no means “radical” progress merely, but much more still religious, i.e. Christian progress, points away beyond them.
4. The distinction made between “abominations” and “violence” recalls the difference between the two tables of the law,—sins against God and sins against men. Over against violence in the latter respect, there makes its appearance what God must abhor. As the former fills the land and becomes the fashion, so the latter provokes the anger of God. Ungodliness and immorality in their connection here bear witness to the connection between faith and morals.
5. Superstition and unbelief—the one acting, the other speaking—present themselves together in Eze_8:12 in one sentence, just as these forms of the self-originated theology of the sensuous self-consciousness touch each other from opposite sides. Unbelief, which Holy Scripture never knows absolutely, since to it faith is the original godliness in the nature of man, appears here also as one that “speaks” (Psalms 14, 53) and has gods. Superstition draws its reason from unbelief. As Nitzsch describes the process: “in the depraved working of passive piety man attempts first of all to deny the facts of the religious conscience, wholly or in part; but yet, in so far as the consciousness of God compels him, he leaps over from unbelief into superstition, i.e. he defines for himself the divine as a thing that is human, sensuous, worldly, analyzes for himself the feeling of God into the sensuous, out of which, in the next place, arise fanatical imaginations, sometimes slavish, sometimes audacious, Rom_1:21-25.” When Plutarch, in his well-known treatise περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, gives the preference to unbelief, he underestimated it as a source of superstition; he winds up, moreover, with the converse, viz. that many fall from superstition into unbelief. Jean Paul, on the contrary, who calls superstition “faith with a but,” would “rather live in the densest malarious atmosphere of superstition than under the air-pump of unbelief,” where in the former case one breathes with difficulty, in the latter he is suffocated.
6. Augustine raises the question: why should the Romans, who paid divine honour to all the gods of all nations, as they showed by having a Pantheon, yet have continually refused to honour the God of Israel? and found the reason in the exclusiveness wherewith Jehovah claims to be honoured alone, as being the true God in contrast with the false gods.
7. The mourning for Tammuz reminds us of the sorrow “of the world” in 2 Corinthians 7. Is it unintentional that only this side of this idolatry is indicated in Ezekiel? It worketh death, says the apostle of the sorrow of the world. Over against the pleasure of life in the rites of Tammuz on its mere natural basis, the prophet has to take his stand on the divine sentence of death of the spirit; as there is no repentance on the part of any one, the other side in the worship of Tammuz cannot possibly prophesy of salvation. (As against Bauer, Rel. d. A: T. ii. p. 234 sq.)
8. The front of the temple looked to the east, the back, therefore, to the west. And such is the case, moreover, with most of the ancient nations; and so it meets us again also, for the most part, in Catholic church architecture. But a universal rule it is not (according to Vitruvius, the opposite is the rule for heathen temple-architecture), just as little as the turning of the face toward the east in Christian prayer is a universal rule; sometimes the front, sometimes the apsis, is turned to the east. Some have wished to find the reason for the holy of holies being turned toward the west in the antithesis to heathenism. Maimonides, More Neb. iii. Ezekiel 45 : “Superstition generally at that time worshipped the sun; therefore Abraham turns to the west on Moriah, so that he turned his back to the sun.” Comp. on the other hand, Bähr, Symb. i. 212. “When the Catholic church architecture built the choir towards the east, the alleged anti-heathenish design of the opposite course was set aside, inasmuch as Christ, as the Sun of Righteousness, now determines the direction; it was imagined also that paradise was there, etc. etc.
9. There is a gradation in wickedness, for there is a development towards ripeness for judgment. And as the greatness of the sin is determined according to the person and circumstances, so the corresponding greatness of the punishment is determined according to the knowledge of and opportunity for what is good. But the Judge and Avenger is God.
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze_8:1. “We may be assured everywhere, whether at home or from home, of the presence of God; hence also we have to fear God everywhere” (Stck.).—The pulpit for the exiles in the house of the prophet.—“Elders also ought to hear and learn God’s word” (Stck.).
Eze_8:2. Comp. on Eze_1:27 sq.
Eze_8:3. “The saints in mortal flesh are between heaven and earth, for they are not yet indeed completely above, but still they have already forsaken what is below” (Gregory).—“As here by the hair, so by the smallest thing the pious are lifted upwards by God” (Jun.).—“God’s children and servants are led and guided not by the spirit of the world, but by the Spirit of God” (St.).—“Yea, if this body could follow the spirit, it would lead it into heaven with itself.”—“God was Master of the house at Jerusalem, and they brought in to Him another idol: that displeased Him justly” (Randgl.).—See how jealous love can be! the jealousy of Israel’s Husband.—“So God is provoked also by all who admit into their heart passion, pride, arrogance, debauchery, avarice, and other idols” (B. B.).
Eze_8:4. Christ and Belial.—God in His jealousy is likewise God in His glory.—“In another way also God lets His glory be seen, when He causes a peculiarly powerful testimony to be borne in His Church, by means of which He unveils the abominations in all ranks, and causes them to be punished through His witnesses, since there also, as here, public worship especially is wont to be assailed.”—To perceive God’s glory in spite of all abominations is the privilege of His faithful servants, of His children, who do not cast away their confidence. Our faith is the victory which hath overcome the world.—“Such a strengthening was needed by the prophet, in order that he might fearlessly withstand the raging audacity and stubbornness of the people; God equipped him in this way with a suit of armour” (C).
Eze_8:5. “God places our sins before His eyes, and in like manner also before ours” (Stck.).—“So sits the envious Pharisee also, who has merely an outward righteousness, like an image of jealousy in the doorway, and will not let the simple people enter through the fear of the Lord into the faith and love of Christ, and thus takes away the key of knowledge (Mat_23:13)” (B. B.).
Eze_8:6. “Whoever opens door and gate to sin, falls from sin to sin” (St.).—“Whatever man does, he does it before God’s face, although the blinded sinner thinks God blind” (Stck.).—“God’s people also may fall into great darkness and blindness” (St.).
Eze_8:7 sqq. God’s eye sees also through the wall, and He can give His servants a hole in the wall as well as eyes, so as to see what is between the walls.—“Guilty consciences love what is concealed” (Stck.).—Occasionally an Ezekiel comes across those concealed ones.—“Thy heart is to be God’s temple. But how does the Lord find this temple? Just as here. Only dig through the white-washed wall of thy self-love and hypocrisy, then shalt thou perceive in the light of God all sorts of monsters and abominations, which the enemy has gathered together in thee, to the disgust of the Master of the house. Enough of unclean reptiles shalt thou find behind the wall of thy flesh, only dig through!” (B. B.)—“Assuredly, as soon as the true worship of God is forsaken, men have no longer any limit; from one they pass to a myriad” (C).—Idolatry is not merely of the gross kind; nor is that which Christians practise merely of the refined kind.—Yea, everything which is on earth may become an idol to man.—I count everything but dung, Paul testifies in Philippians 3.
Eze_8:11. “Those who ought in this way to take the lead of others in showing a good example, are often the worst” (St.).—“The elders before the idols, men before beasts, the living before mere pictures!” (B. B.)—May all assemblies of church-wardens take an example by them!
Eze_8:12. God is to blame for our guilt!—Thus many make for themselves a blind God, like Fortune.
Eze_8:13 sqq. What a corruption must be among a, people where the old and the female sex are infected!—On ordinary days, the lust of the flesh; on fast-days, repentance and sorrow.
Eze_8:15 sq. “Nothing is so absurd as that a man might hot be brought to it, Romans 1.” (St.)—“Daniel turned in his prayer toward Jerusalem” (B. B.).—“All the ungodly turn their back on God” (St.).—“But who will count those who in our time turn their back on God?” (B. B.)
Eze_8:18. They turned their back on God, and so He turns His back on them.—The eye and ear of God shut, what a picture!
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain THIRD “VISION OF GOD” (IN JERUSALEM), Eze_8:1-4.
THIRD “VISION OF GOD” (IN JERUSALEM), Eze_8:1-4.
The dates at which the “word of the Lord” came to Ezekiel are not always given; but when the vision of God’s glory appears the time is carefully mentioned (Eze_1:1; Eze_3:16; Eze_3:22, etc.). This date shows that a little more than a year has passed since he for the first time looked upon the glorious manifestation of Jehovah. He has now finished his symbolical representation of the siege of Jerusalem and the years of captivity (Eze_4:5). He is now sitting in his house instead of lying upon his side. The heaviest task of his life, so far, has been accomplished and once more there is granted him the vision of glory to comfort him for his past trials and prepare him for the fearful vision of his people’s guilt, which was so closely to accompany it. And now the “elders of Judah” visit him. The prophet’s picture-sermon has not been without its influence. The elders, some of them at least (Eze_14:1), now look upon the silent prophet as a true seer of Jehovah, and sit before him waiting for a revelation from the prophet’s Lord.
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1. The hand of the Lord God fell there upon me — This is not only Ezekiel’s ordinary name for the prophetic ecstasy, but it involves the thought of divine control and compulsion. Whenever this expression is used it is evident that some heavy task is laid upon the prophet against which the natural man revolts. (See Eze_1:3; Eze_3:22.) The expression being stronger here than elsewhere shows how impossible it would have been for Ezekiel of his own will to report the awful crimes and abominations of his countrymen, with the equally awful penalties which he is now compelled to picture to the elders.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. the sixth month] The first vision of the…
1. the sixth month] The first vision of the prophet was in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity and in the fourth month (Eze_1:1); the present one a year and two months later. LXX. reads fifth month, and many modern scholars accept this reading, arguing that the Heb. date is due to some copyist or reader who wished to leave room for the number of days during which the prophet had to lie on his side (ch. Eze_4:5; Eze_4:9). The copyist must have been an indifferent arithmetician, for 7 (Eze_3:15) + 390 + 40 (ch. Eze_4:5-6) = 437, while a lunar year and two months, 354 + 59 = 413 days. The discrepancies between the Heb. and LXX. dates are not easy to explain.
elders of Judah] Ch. Eze_14:1. “Certain of the elders of Israel.” The meaning appears from ch. Eze_11:25, “So I spake to them of the captivity all the things which the Lord had shewed me.” The community at Tel Abib were probably permitted to have a certain internal government of their own. In the “elders” before him the prophet sees represented not so much the captivity as the whole “house of Israel.” On “hand of the Lord,” cf. ch. Eze_1:3.
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1–3. The trance in presence of the elders. The prophet, abiding in his house (ch. Eze_3:25), was visited by the elders of the captivity among whom he dwelt. They probably came to consult him regarding the affairs at home and the prospects of the city. Thrown into a state of excitation by their words or by their presence he fell into a trance. The vision of the God of Israel again appeared to him, for this thought of Jehovah chiefly occupied his mind and led to all his other thoughts, and he was carried away in the spirit to Jerusalem; and there the manifold idolatries of the people were shewn him. Two chief thoughts appear expressed by the symbolism; first, by making the “glory” of Jehovah appear in Jerusalem the prophet points the contrast between the glorious God whom the people had abandoned and the debased forms of worship to which they had addicted themselves, and also implies that this worship was done in the face of Jehovah, “to provoke the eyes of his glory” (Isa_3:8); and secondly, when Jehovah himself shews the idolatrous practices of the people, we see, what is characteristic of the prophet, the effort to throw himself into the consciousness, so to speak, of Jehovah, and look out at things from his mind, he being who he is. It would be a mistake to regard the details here given as due entirely to literary artifice; there is no doubt a foundation of reality under them, though when in after years the prophet reflected on the facts and recorded them he gave them great expansion and embellishment.
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.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) The elders of Judah sat before me.—It is…
(1) The elders of Judah sat before me.—It is plain from this that Ezekiel, as a priest, and now already known as a prophet, was held in consideration among the captives. It also appears that he lived in his own house. Judah is not used in contradistinction to Israel; but as the captives were chiefly of the tribe of Judah, so their elders were known as “the elders of Judah.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And it came to pass, etc. We begin with…
And it came to pass, etc. We begin with a fresh date. One year and one month had passed since the vision of Chebar, and had been occupied partly by the acted, partly by the spoken, prophecies of the preceding chapters. In the mean time, things had gone from bad to worse in Jerusalem. In the absence of the higher priests, idolatry was more rampant, and had found its way even into the temple. It is probable that tidings of this had reached Ezekiel, as we know that frequent communications passed between the exiles and those they had left behind. (Jer_29:1-3, Jer_29:9, Jer_29:25) Directly or indirectly, Elasah the son of Shaphan, and Genesisariah the son of Hilkiah. may have conveyed a message, orally or written, from Jeremiah himself. Some such report may have led to the visit from the elders of Judah, if we understand by that term the exiles of Tel-Abib. I venture, however, on the conjecture that possibly those who came to the prophet were actually visitors who had come from Judah. Elsewhere, as in Eze_14:1 and Eze_20:1, those who thus came are described as "elders of Israel," or the captives, (Eze_1:1) "they of the Captivity". (Eze_3:15) In either case, the visions that follow gain a special significance. The prophet becomes the seer. It is given to him to know, in a manner which finds a spurious analogue in the alleged mental travelling of the clairvoyant of modern psychology, what is passing in the city from which the messengers had come and to show that he knows it. With such facts before his eyes, what other answer can there be than that evil must meet its doom? And so we pass into the second series of prophecies which ends with Eze_13:23. It would seem as if the enquirers had kept silent as well as the prophet. We are not told that they asked anything. His look and manner, perhaps also attitude and gesture, forbade utterance. The hand of the Lord the trance state was in the act to fall on him. (see notes on Eze_3:14, Eze_3:22) When the trance state was over, we may think of him as reporting and recording what he had thus seen in vision..
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES Vers. 1-16. Gradual disclosure of human sin.
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The prophet notes the exact date of the vision, so that, if any doubt arose, the circumstance could be verified, so long as any one of these elders survived. These details of day and month may seem to many readers needless and tedious; yet, in an earlier day, they probably served an important purpose, and may be again useful in a future age. Even now they demonstrate with what diligent care the prophet preserved the records of Divine manifestations. The three hundred and ninety days during which Ezekiel was to be a living sign were now fulfilled.
I THE OCCASION. The occasion arose out of a visit made to Ezekiel by the elders of Israel. Genuine inquiry on the part of men is always pleasing to God. If men ask after truth from righteous motive, God is prepared to meet them. The response from heaven may not be in the mode men expect, yet some response there will be. On this occasion, too, God was honoured in the person of his messenger. It becomes us to use those channels for information which God has opened. If we are at our Sovereign"s footstool, we shall not have long to wait.
II GOD"S GRACIOUS MANIFESTATION. It was an act of grace that God should reveal himself to his prophet, so that through the prophet he might reveal himself to the elders. In every age God has chosen the most fitting agencies through which to manifest himself to men.
1. It was an exact repetition of a former appearance. This was to intimate that God"s designs had in no respect changed. There were the same splendours of majesty the unchangeable glory of Jehovah; there was the same appearance of radiant fire in the loins and feet, to indicate that he was about to march through the land in righteous indignation. "Verily, a fire goeth before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about." "For he cometh to judge the earth.
2. A mighty energy was put forth. There was the form of a hand, by which the prophet was lifted up. From first to last we need Divine assistance. So feeble is human nature, that at every step we need gracious succour, both to learn and to do God"s will. We must be separated from earthly scenes have elevation of mind if we would see things as God sees them.
3. Personal effort. There was place and scope for the prophet"s exertion. Man must cooperate with God. "I beheld." Ezekiel must use his eyes. In that state of ecstasy to which he had been raised there is need for special activity. Human nature at present cannot long endure the ecstatic state. Golden opportunities such as these are brief. Therefore note well the precious lessons.
III THE GRADUAL DISCLOSURES OF ISRAEL"S GUILT. The glory of God was manifest in the temple.
1. In the clear light of Jehovahs presence we see the real character of sin. The eye of man needs the medium of light through which to discern objects; and a special revelation of God is required in which to discover the turpitude of sin. It was when God came near to Job that this exemplary man exclaimed, "I abhor myself." It was when Christ first revealed his glory to Peter that he put up the prayer, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
2. All forms of idolatry provoke God"s jealous anger. We take this "image of jealousy" as an allegorical representation of the many sided idolatry of Israel. Whatever forms their idolatries assumed, they all had this in common they usurped Jehovah"s place; they supplanted his authority. In stupendous condescension, God speaks to us after the manner of a man. As the strongest passion which fallen man knows is jealousy, so God represents this as the picture of indignant sentiment in his own breast. He sets high value on our human love. It is the most precious thing we can give him. Hence, we wound him in the tenderest part when we erect a rival in his place. This is a root sin.
3. Sin becomes most heinous of all sin when committed in the temple. God"s dwelling place on earth is designed to be a fount, whence streams of blessing may flow to every province of our human life. To defile this fount is to send a stream of pollution into the domestic, commercial, and political life of the nation. If there be idolatry in the temple, there will be idolatry in the home; there will be disorder everywhere. The sanctuary will always be a source of life or of death to the whole empire.
4. God"s disclosures of our sin are gradual. This method has two advantages:
(1) It gives us a clearer conception of the magnitude and the degrees of sin.
(2) It serves to deepen impression, while it does not overwhelm us with despair. If we desire to know the truth respecting our sin, God"s Spirit will lead us from point to point, so that we may have an ever-deepening sense of our iniquity.
IV THE HEINOUSNESS OF ISRAEL"S OFFENCE.
1. Its secrecy. The prophet had to break through the wall in order to discover it. Men will often indulge secretly in sins which they are ashamed to commit openly. The censure of our fellow men is often a useful deterrent. The opinion of others is a mirror, in which we see ourselves. Every man has his "chamber of imagery" within. Idolatry in the heart precedes the idolatry of temple worship. Can we not find some image of evil painted on the wails of our imagination some form of mammon, or pleasure, or self? Therefore "keep thy heart with all diligence.
2. The deceitfulness of sin. It had blinded men"s eyes to the fact of God"s presence to the fact of certain discovery and certain retribution. A growing acquaintance with sin convinces us of its many wiles to deceive. Few men venture to sin until they forget God"s omniscience; and the habit of forgetfulness leads swiftly to atheism.
3. The sin was spread by most pernicious example. The men who ought to have been beacons and bulwarks against idolatry were pioneers in iniquity. Men holding high rank, whether in Church or in state, cannot sin as others do. Their influence is enormous, and it is inevitable that they lead others to heaven or to hell. Every station has its responsibilities. If, in Israel, the princes and elders had set a high example of pious obedience, in all likelihood the fortunes of the nation had been retrieved. If the helmsman be blind, there is small chance for the safety of the ship.
4. This sin is seminal; it soon produces a brood of other sins. Idolatry blossomed into sensual lust into vice, disorder, and violence. The idolatries of the heathen suited the popular taste, because they did not curb natural inclination; gave a dangerous licence to every sensual and selfish passion. They who have driven from the heart the love of God are soon filled with every vile affection. They who have ceased to fear God soon cease to have any regard for others" weal. Sin rapidly generates a swarm noxious vices. The women who wept for Tammuz at the door of the temple were, without doubt, living in shameless prostitution. To depart from God is to run into every excess of iniquity. The more we examine the matter, the more flagrant and aggravated human sin appears. Superficial observers may talk of sin as a mere bagatelle; but they who search out the matter conclude that language is too poor to describe the cursed thing. It is the heaviest calamity that can rest on a human being; worse than poverty, or pain, or ill-repute, or desertion, or death: He is in danger of eternal sin. D.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES Vers. 1-6. The vision of the image of jealousy.
it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month," etc. This and the following three chapters are one discourse, or the record of one vision. In this chapter we see how the prophet was transported in spirit to the temple at Jerusalem, and caused to behold the open and the secret idolatrous abominations of which the people of Israel were guilty. Several portions of these verses have already engaged our attention in other connections. Moreover, vers. 1-4 are merely introductory to the vision; but the following points may perhaps be considered by us with advantage.
I THE ELDERS SEEKING COUNSEL OF THE PROPHET OF THE LORD. "I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me." It has been suggested that this was on the sabbath day, and that the elders were accustomed to meet thus on that day to hear the Word of the Lord from Ezekiel, and to unite in the worship of the Lord their God. But others are of opinion that the occasion was an extraordinary one, and that they were assembled to seek counsel or comfort from the prophet. Whatever the occasion might have been, there can be but little doubt that they were endeavoring to obtain some communication of the Divine will. Thus in the troubles of their captivity, when removed from their temple, and deprived of the regular ordinances of religion, these elders of Judah seem to have been more attentive to the prophet of Jehovah than they were when they had their religious privileges in fall. When the vision had become rare, it was prized. It is our sin and loss that our blessings are often not justly and adequately valued until we have lost them wholly or in part.
What we have we prize not to the worth, Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack"d and lost, Why, thee we rack the value; then we find The virtue, that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours. (Shakespeare. )
Wise and blessed are they who duly prize their good and perfect gifts while in the possession and enjoyment of them.
II THE DIVINE INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHET OF THE LORD. Ezekiel had been inspired previously. The Spirit of God had moved him mightily before; but now the hand of the Lord came again upon him. New services require new inspirations. Fresh duties demand for their worthy discharge fresh impartations of strength. Each day we need the renewal of grace and strength from above. We discover in the prophet a triple effect of Divine inspiration.
1. Strengthening him. "The hand of the Lord God fell there upon me." (We have spoken of this in our remarks on Eze_1:3)
2. Exalting him. "And he put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem." While Ezekiel was sitting there amidst the elders of Judah, his spirit was exalted and carried away to Jerusalem. The inspiration of God raises the human spirit above its ordinary level, stimulates it into greater and nobler activities, and renders it more capable of receiving Divine impressions and communications.
3. Enlightening him. The Spirit enlightened the prophet by quickening his spirit to perceive Divine visions, and by unfolding those visions unto him. (See our remarks on Eze_1:1, "The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
III THE SPIRITUAL VISIONS GRANTED UNTO THE PROPHET OF THE LORD.
1. A Vision of the glory of the Lord God. "Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance as the colour of amber Aria, behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain." Thus the prophet himself informs us that this vision of the glory of God corresponds with one which he saw before, and which we have already noticed. (on Eze_1:26-28)
2. A vision of the dishonour done to the Lord God. The prophet was transported in spirit "to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry." Many have thought that this was an image of Baal. Lightfoot concluded that it was an image of Moloch. Others are of opinion that it was an image of Asherah or Astarte, which is mentioned in 2Ki_21:7 2Ki_23:4, 2Ki_23:7, and incorrectly translated in the Authorized Version "grove." It has been suggested that it was an image of the Tammuz or Adonis mentioned in ver. 14, "and called "the image that provoked to jealousy," with special reference to the yonthful and attractive beauty of the object it represented." The view of Fairbairn seems to us the most probable. "We are disposed to think," he says, "from the ideal character of the representation, that it should not be limited to any specific deity. The prophet, we are persuaded, purposely made the expression general, as it was not so much the particular idol placed on a level with Jehovah, as the idol worship itself, which he meant to designate and condemn. So sunk and rooted were the people in the idolatrous feeling, that where Jehovah had an altar, there some idol form must have its seat a fixed residence, to denote that it was no occasional thing its being found there, but a regular and stated arrangement. And whatever it might for the time be whether it was Baal, or Moloch, or Astarte, that the image represented as it was necessarily set up for a rival of Jehovah, to share with him in the worship to which he alone was entitled, it might justly be denominated "the image of jealousy," as it provoked that jealousy, and called for that visitation of wrath, against which the Lord had so solemnly warned his people in the second commandment." "The image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy," is an expression which looks back to Deu_32:16, 21: "They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominationsprovoked they him to anger." Thus Ezekiel beheld the Lord Jehovah dishonoured by his own people, and at the gate of his own altar. And being thus dishonoured, Jehovah abandons his temple. "He said unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary?" When that sanctuary has been grossly polluted with idols he will no longer dwell there. And this is applicable to the Church of Jesus Christ. If a spirit of pride, worldliness, or selfishness become predominant in any Christian community, he departs far off from it. If any idol of creed, or ritual, or fashion, or popularity be established therein, he will go far away. And this is applicable also to the human heart. If we give the devotion of our hearts to another object or objects, he will leave us. He claims our supreme affection. He will not have any rival for our love. W.J.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel.
Eze_8:1-4
And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel.
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Gods presence a reproof to His idolatrous people
Two chief thoughts appear expressed by the symbolism; first, by making the glory of Jehovah appear in Jerusalem, the prophet points the contrast between the glorious God whom the people had abandoned and the debased forms of worship to which they had addicted themselves, and also implies that this worship was done in the face of Jehovah, to provoke the eyes of His glory (Isa_3:8): and secondly, when Jehovah Himself shows the idolatrous practices of the people, we see, what is characteristic of the prophet, the effort to throw himself into the consciousness, so to speck, of Jehovah, and look out at things from His mind, He being who He is. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Ezekiel 8-11
YOUR HOUSE IS LEFT UNTO YOU DESOLATE
Ezekiel 8-11
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ONE of the most instructive phases of religious belief among the Israelites of the seventh century was the superstitious regard in which the Temple at Jerusalem was held. Its prestige as the metropolitan sanctuary had no doubt steadily increased from the time when it was built. But it was in the crisis of the Assyrian invasion that the popular sentiment in favour of its peculiar sanctity was transmuted into a fanatical faith in its inherent inviolability. It is well known that during the whole course of this invasion the prophet Isaiah had consistently taught that the enemy should never set foot within the precincts of the Holy City-that, on the contrary, the attempt to seize it would prove to be the signal for his annihilation. The striking fulfilment of this prediction in the sudden destruction of Sennacheribs army had an immense effect on the religion of the time. It restored the faith in Jehovahs omnipotence which was already giving way, and it granted a new lease of life to the very errors which it ought to have extinguished. For here, as in so many other cases, what was a spiritual faith in one generation became a superstition in the next. Indifferent to the divine truths which gave meaning to Isaiahs prophecy, the people changed his sublime faith in the living God working in history into a crass confidence in the material symbol which had been the means of expressing it to their minds. Henceforth it became a fundamental tenet of the current creed that the Temple and the city which guarded it could never fall into the hands of an enemy; and any teaching which assailed that belief was felt to undermine confidence in the national deity. In the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel this superstition existed in unabated vigour, and formed one of the greatest hindrances to the acceptance of their teaching. "The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these!" was the cry of the benighted worshippers as they thronged to its courts to seek the favour of Jehovah. {Jer_7:4} The same state of feeling must have prevailed among Ezekiels fellow exiles. To the prophet himself, attached as he was to the worship of the Temple, it may have been a thought almost too hard to bear that Jehovah should abandon the only place of His legitimate worship. Amongst the rest of the captives the faith in its infallibility was one of the illusions which must be overthrown before their minds could perceive the true drift of his teaching. In his first prophecy the fact had just been touched on, but merely as an incident in the fall of Jerusalem. About a year later, however, he received a new revelation, in which he learned that the destruction of the Temple was no mere incidental consequence of the capture of the city, but a main object of the calamity. The time was come when judgment must begin at the house of God.
The weird vision in which this truth was conveyed to the prophet is said to have occurred during a visit of the elders to Ezekiel in his own house. In their presence he fell into a trance, in which the events now to be considered passed before him; and after the trance was removed he recounted the substance of the vision to the exiles. This statement has been somewhat needlessly called in question, on the ground that after so protracted an ecstasy the prophet would not be likely to find his visitors still in their places. But this matter-of-fact criticism overreaches itself. We have no means of determining how long it would take for this series of events to be realised. If we may trust anything to the analogy of dreams-and of all conditions to which ordinary men are subject the dream is surely the closest analogy to the prophetic ecstasy-the whole may have passed in an incredibly short space of time. If the statement were untrue, it is difficult to see what Ezekiel would have gained by making it. If the whole vision were a fiction, this must of course be fictitious too; but even so it seems a very superfluous piece of invention.
We prefer, therefore, to regard the vision as real, and the assigned situation as historical; and the fact that it is recorded suggests that there must be some connection between the object of the visit and the burden of the revelation which was then communicated. It is not difficult to imagine points of contact between them. Ewald has conjectured that the occasion of the visit may have been some recent tidings from Jerusalem which had opened the eyes of the "elders" to the real relation that existed between them and their brethren at home. If they had ever cherished any illusions on the point, they had certainly been disabused of them before Ezekiel had this vision. They were aware, whether the information was recent or not, that they were absolutely disowned by the new authorities in Jerusalem, and that it was impossible that they should ever come back peaceably to their old place in the state. This created a problem which they could not solve, and the fact that Ezekiel had announced the fall of Jerusalem may have formed a bond of sympathy between him and his brethren in exile which drew them to him in their perplexity. Some such hypothesis gives at all events a fuller significance to the closing part of the vision, where the attitude of the men in Jerusalem is described, and where the exiles are taught that the hope of Israels future lies with them. It is the first time that Ezekiel has distinguished between the fates in store for the two sections of the people, and it would almost appear as if the promotion of the exiles to the first place in the true Israel was a new revelation to him. Twice during this vision he is moved to intercede for the "remnant of Israel," as if the only hope of a new people of God lay in sparing at least some of those who were left in the land. But the burden of the message that now comes to him is that in the spiritual sense the true remnant of Israel is not in Judaea, but among the exiles in Babylon. It was there that the new Israel was to be formed, and the land was to be the heritage, not of those who clung to it and exulted in the misfortunes of their banished brethren, but of those who under the discipline of exile were first prepared to use the land as Jehovahs holiness demanded.
The vision is interesting, in the first place, on account of the glimpse it affords of the state of mind prevailing in influential circles in Jerusalem at this time. There is no reason whatever to doubt that here in the form of a vision we have reliable information regarding the actual state of matters when Ezekiel wrote. It has been supposed by some critics that the description of the idolatries in the Temple does not refer to contemporary practices, but to abuses that had been rife in the days of Manasseh and had been put a stop to by Josiahs reformation. But the vision loses half its meaning if it is taken as merely an idealised representation of all the sins that had polluted the Temple in the course of its history. The names of those who are seen must be names of living men known to Ezekiel and his contemporaries, and the sentiments put in their mouth, especially in the latter part of the vision, are suitable only to the age in which he lived. It is very probable that the description in its general features would also apply to the days of Manasseh; but the revival of idolatry which followed the death of Josiah would naturally take the form of a restoration of the illegal cults which had flourished unchecked under his grandfather. Ezekiels own experience before his captivity, and the steady intercourse which had been maintained since, would supply him with the material which in the ecstatic condition is wrought up into this powerful picture.
The thing that surprises us most is the prevailing conviction amongst the ruling classes that "Jehovah had forsaken the land." These men seem to have partly emancipated themselves, as politicians in Israel were apt to do, from the restraints and narrowness of the popular religion. To them it was a conceivable thing that Jehovah should abandon His people. And yet life was worth living and fighting for apart from Jehovah. It was of course a merely selfish life, not inspired by national ideals, but simply a clinging to place and power. The wish was father to the thought; men who so readily yielded to the belief in Jehovahs absence were very willing to be persuaded of its truth. The religion of Jehovah had always imposed a check on social and civic wrong, and men whose power rested on violence and oppression could not but rejoice to be rid of it. So they seem to have acquiesced readily enough in the conclusion to which so many circumstances seemed to point, that Jehovah had ceased to interest Himself either for good or evil in them and their affairs. Still, the wide acceptance of a belief like this, so repugnant to all the religious ideas of the ancient world, seems to require for its explanation some fact of contemporary history. It has been thought that it arose from the disappearance of the ark of Jehovah from the Temple. It seems from the third chapter of Jeremiah that the ark was no longer in existence in Josiahs reign, and that the want of it was felt as a grave religious loss. It is not improbable that this circumstance, in connection with the disasters which had marked the last days of the kingdom, led in many minds to the fear and in some to the hope that along with His most venerable symbol Jehovah Himself had Vanished from their midst.
It should be noticed that the feeling described was only one of several currents that ran in the divided society of Jerusalem. It is quite a different point of view that is presented in the taunt quoted in Eze_11:15, that the exiles were far from Jehovah, and had therefore lost their right to their possessions. But the religious despair is not only the most startling fact that we have to look at; it is also the one that is made most prominent in the vision. And the Divine answer to it given through Ezekiel is that the conviction is true; Jehovah has forsaken the land. But in the first place the cause of His departure is found in those very practices for which it was made the excuse: and in the second, although He has ceased to dwell in the midst of His people, He has lost neither the power nor the will to punish their iniquities. To impress these truths first on his fellow-exiles and then on the whole nation is the chief object of the chapter before us.
Now we find that the general sense of God-forsakenness expressed itself principally in two directions. On the one hand it led to the multiplication of false objects of worship to supply the place of Him who was regarded as the proper tutelary Divinity of Israel; on the other hand, it produced a reckless, devil-may-care spirit of resistance against any odds, such as was natural to men who had only material interests to fight for, and nothing to trust in but their own right hand. Syncretism in religion and fatalism in politics-these were the twin symptoms of the decay of faith among the upper classes in Jerusalem. But these belong to two different parts of the vision which we must now distinguish.
I.
The first part deals with the departure of Jehovah as caused by religious offences perpetrated in the Temple, and with the return of Jehovah to destroy the city on account of these offences. The prophet is transported in "visions of God" to Jerusalem and placed in the outer court near the northern gate, outside of which was the site where the "image of Jealousy" had stood in the time of Manasseh. Near him stands the appearance which he had learned to recognise as the glory of Jehovah, signifying that Jehovah has, for a purpose not yet disclosed, revisited His Temple. But first Ezekiel must be made to see the state of things which exists in this Temple which had once been the seat of Gods presence. Looking through the gate to the north, he discovers that the image of Jealousy has been restored to its old place. This is the first and apparently the least heinous of the abominations that defiled the sanctuary.
The second scene is the only one of the four which represents a secret cult. Partly perhaps for that reason it strikes our minds as the most repulsive of all; but that was obviously not Ezekiels estimate of it. There are greater abominations to follow. It is difficult to understand the particulars of Ezekiels description, especially in the Hebrew text (the LXX is simpler); but it seems impossible to escape the impression that there was something obscene in a worship where idolatry appears as ashamed of itself. The essential fact, however, is that the very highest and most influential men in the land were addicted to a form of heathenism, whose objects of worship were pictures of "horrid creeping things, and cattle, and all the gods of the house of Israel." The name of one of these men, the leader in this superstition, is given, and is significant of the state of life in Jerusalem shortly before its fall. Jaazaniah was the son of Shaphan, who is probably identical with the chancellor of Josiahs reign whose sympathy with the prophetic teaching was evinced by his zeal in the cause of reform. We read of other members of the family who were faithful to the national religion, such as his son Ahikam, also a zealous reformer, and his grandson Gedaliah, Jeremiahs friend and patron, and the governor appointed over Judah by Nebuchadnezzar after the taking of the city. The family was thus divided both in religion and politics. While one branch was devoted to the worship of Jehovah and favoured submission to the king of Babylon, Jaazaniah belonged to the opposite party and was the ringleader in a peculiarly obnoxious form of idolatry.
The third "abomination" is a form of idolatry widely diffused over Western Asia-the annual mourning for Tammuz. Tammuz was originally a Babylonian deity (Dumuzi), but his worship is specially identified with Phoenicia, whence under the name Adonis it was introduced into Greece. The mourning celebrates the death of the god, which is an emblem of the decay of the earths productive powers, whether due to the scorching heat of the sin or to the cold of winter. It seems to have been a comparatively harmless rite of nature-religion, and its popularity among the women of Jerusalem at this time may be due to the prevailing mood of despondency which found vent in the sympathetic contemplation of that aspect of nature which most suggests decay and death.
The last and greatest of the abominations practised in and near the Temple is the worship of the sun. The peculiar enormity of this species of idolatry can hardly lie in the object of adoration; it is to be sought rather in the place where it was practised, and in the rank of those who took part in it, who were probably priests. Standing between the porch and the altar, with their backs to the Temple, these men unconsciously expressed the deliberate rejection of Jehovah which was involved in their idolatry. The worship of the heavenly bodies was probably imported into Israel from Assyria and Babylon, and its prevalence in the later years of the monarchy was due to political rather than religious influences. The gods of these imperial nations were esteemed more potent than those of the states which succumbed to their power, and hence men who were losing confidence in their national deity naturally sought to imitate the religions of the most powerful peoples known to them.
In the arrangement of the four specimens of the religious practices which prevailed in Jerusalem, Ezekiel seems to proceed from the most familiar and explicable to the more outlandish defections from the purity of the national faith. At the same time his description shows how different classes of society were implicated in the sin of idolatry-the elders, the women, and the priests. During all this time the glory of Jehovah has stood in the court, and there is something very impressive in the picture of these infatuated men and women preoccupied with their unholy devotions and all unconscious of the presence of Him whom they deemed to have forsaken the land. To the open eye of the prophet the meaning of the vision must be already clear, but the sentence comes from the mouth of Jehovah Himself: "Hast thou seen, Son of man? Is it too small a thing for the house of Judah to practise the abominations which they have here practised, that they must also fill the land with violence, and (so) provoke Me again to anger? So will I act towards them in anger: My eye shall not pity, nor will I spare." {Eze_8:17-18}
The last words introduce the account of the punishment or Jerusalem, which is given of course in the symbolic form suggested by the scenery of the vision. Jehovah has meanwhile risen from His throne near the cherubim, and stands on the threshold of the Temple. There He summons to His side the destroyers who are to execute His purpose-six angels, each with a weapon of destruction in his hand. A seventh of higher rank clothed in linen appears with the implements of a scribe in his girdle. These stand "beside the brasen altar," and await the commands of Jehovah. The first act of the judgment is a massacre of the inhabitants of the city, without distinction of age or rank or sex. But, in accordance with his strict view of the Divine righteousness, Ezekiel is led to conceive of this last judgment as discriminating carefully between the righteous and the wicked. All those who have inwardly separated themselves from the guilt of the city by hearty detestation of the iniquities perpetrated in its midst are distinguished by a mark on their foreheads before the work of slaughter begins. What became of this faithful remnant it does not belong to the vision to declare. Beginning with the twenty men before the porch, the destroying angels follow the man with the inkhorn through the streets of the city, and slay all on whom he has not set his mark. When the messengers have gone out on their dread errand, Ezekiel, realising the full horror of a scene which he dare not describe, falls prostrate before Jehovah, deprecating the outbreak of indignation which threatened to extinguish "the remnant of Israel." He is reassured by the declaration that the guilt of Judah and Israel demands no less a punishment than this, because the notion that Jehovah had forsaken the land had opened the floodgates of iniquity, and filled the land with bloodshed and the city with oppression. Then the man in the linen robes returns and announces, "It is done as Thou hast commanded."
The second act of the judgment is the destruction of Jerusalem by fire. This is symbolised by the scattering over the city of burning coals taken from the altar-hearth under the throne of God. The man with the linen garments is directed to step between the wheels and take out fire for this purpose. The description of the execution of this order is again carried no further than what actually takes place before the prophets eyes: the man took the fire and went out. In the place where we might have expected to have an account of the destruction of the city, we have a second description of the appearance and motions of the merkaba, the purpose of which it is difficult to divine. Although it deviates slightly from the account in chapter 1, the differences appear to have no significance, and indeed it is expressly said to be the same phenomenon. The whole passage is certainly superfluous, and might be omitted but for the difficulty of imagining any motive that would have tempted a scribe to insert it. We must keep in mind the possibility that this part of the book had been committed to writing before the final redaction of Ezekiels prophecies, and the description in Eze_8:8-17 may have served a purpose there which is superseded by the fuller narrative which we now possess in chapter 1.
In this way Ezekiel penetrates more deeply into the inner meaning of the judgment on city and people whose external form he had announced in his earlier prophecy. It must be admitted that Jehovahs strange work bears to our minds a more appalling aspect when thus presented in symbols than the actual calamity would bear when effected through the agency of second causes. Whether it had the same effect on the mind of a Hebrew, who hardly believed in second causes, is another question. In any case it gives no ground for the charge made against Ezekiel of dwelling with a malignant satisfaction on the most repulsive features of a terrible picture. He is indeed capable of a rigorous logic in exhibiting the incidence of the law of retribution which was to him the necessary expression of the Divine righteousness. That it included the death of every sinner and the overthrow of a city that had become a scene of violence and cruelty was to him a self-evident truth, and more than this the vision does not teach. On the contrary, it contains traits which tend to moderate the inevitable harshness of the truth conveyed. With great reticence it allows the execution of the judgment to take place behind the scenes, giving only those details which were necessary to suggest its nature. While it is being carried out the attention of the reader is engaged in the presence of Jehovah, or his mind is occupied with the principles which made the punishment a moral necessity. The prophets expostulations with Jehovah show that he was not insensible to the miseries of his people, although he saw them to be inevitable. Further, this vision shows as clearly as any passage in his writings the injustice of the view which represents him as more concerned for petty details of ceremonial than for the great moral interests of a nation. If any feeling expressed in the vision is to be regarded as Ezekiels own, then indignation against outrages on human life and liberty must be allowed to weigh more with him than offences against ritual purity. And, finally, it is clearly one object of the vision to show that in the destruction of Jerusalem no individual shall be involved who is not also implicated in the guilt which calls down wrath upon her.
II.
The second part of the vision (chapter 11) is hut loosely connected with the first. Here Jerusalem still exists, and men are alive who must certainly have perished in the "visitation of the city" if the writer had still kept himself within the limits of his previous conception. But in truth the two have little in common, except the Temple, which is the scene of both, and the cherubim, whose movements mark the transition from the one to the other. The glory of Jehovah is already departing from the house when it is stayed at the entrance of the east gate, to give the prophet his special message to the exiles.
Here we are introduced to the more political aspect of the situation in Jerusalem. The twenty-five men who are gathered in the east gate of the Temple are clearly the leading statesmen in the city; and two of them, whose names are given, are expressly designated as "princes of the people." They are apparently met in conclave to deliberate on public matters, and a word from Jehovah lays open to the prophet the nature of their projects. "These are the men that plan ruin, and hold evil counsel in this city." The evil counsel is undoubtedly the project of rebellion against the king of Babylon which must have been hatched at this time and which broke out into open revolt about three years later. The counsel was evil because directly opposed to that which Jeremiah was giving at the time in the name of Jehovah. But Ezekiel also throws invaluable light on the mood of the men who were urging the king along the path which led to ruin. "Are not the houses recently built?" they say, congratulating themselves on their success in repairing the damage done to the city in the time of Jehoiachin. The image of the pot and the flesh is generally taken to express the feeling of easy security in the fortifications of Jerusalem with which these light-hearted politicians embarked on a contest with Nebuchadnezzar. But their mood must be a gloomier one than that if there is any appropriateness in the language they use. To stew in their own juice, and over a fire of their own kindling, could hardly seem a desirable policy to sane men, however strong the pot might be. These councillors are well aware of the dangers they incur, and of the misery which their purpose must necessarily bring on the people. But they are determined to hazard everything and endure everything on the chance that the city may prove strong enough to baffle the resources of the king of Babylon. Once the fire is kindled, it will certainly be better to be in the pot than in the fire; and so long as Jerusalem holds out they will remain behind her walls. The answer which is put into the prophets mouth is that the issue will not be such as they hope for. The only "flesh" that will be left in the city will be the dead bodies of those who have been slain within her walls by the very men who hope that their lives will be given them for a prey. They themselves shall be dragged forth to meet their fate far away from Jerusalem on the "borders of Israel." It is not unlikely that these conspirators kept their word. Although the king and all the men of war fled from the city as soon as a breach was made, we read of certain high officials who allowed themselves to be taken in the city. {Jer_52:7} Ezekiels prophecy was in their case literally fulfilled; for these men and many others were brought to the king of Babylon at Riblah, "and he smote them and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath."
While Ezekiel was uttering this prophecy one of the councillors, named Pelatiah, suddenly fell down dead. Whether a man of this name had suddenly died in Jerusalem under circumstances that had deeply impressed the prophets mind, or whether the death belongs to the vision, it is impossible for us to tell. To Ezekiel the occurrence seemed an earnest of the complete destruction of the remnant of Israel by the wrath of God, and, as before, he fell on his face to intercede for them. It is then that he receives the message which seems to form the Divine answer to the perplexities which haunted the minds of the exiles in Babylon.
In their attitude towards the exiles the new leaders in Jerusalem took up a position as highly privileged religious persons, quite at variance with the scepticism which governed their conduct at home. When they were following the bent of their natural inclinations by practising idolatry and perpetrating judicial murders in the city, their cry was, "Jehovah hath forsaken the land; Jehovah seeth it not." When they were eager to justify their claim to the places and possessions left vacant by their banished countrymen, they said, "They are far from Jehovah: to us the land is given in possession." They were probably equally sincere and equally insincere in both professions. They had simply learned the art which comes easily to men of the world of using religion as a cloak for greed, and throwing it off when greed could be best gratified without it. The idea which lay under their religious attitude was that the exiles had gone into captivity because their sins had incurred Jehovahs anger, and that now His wrath was exhausted and the blessing of His favour would rest on those who had been left in the land. There was sufficient plausibility in the taunt to make it peculiarly galling to the mind of the exiles, who had hoped to exercise some influence over the government in Jerusalem, and to find their places kept for them when they should be permitted to return. It may well have been the resentment produced by tidings of this hostility towards them in Jerusalem that brought their elders to the house of Ezekiel to see if he had not some message from Jehovah to reassure them.
In the mind of Ezekiel, however, the problem took another form. To him a return to the old Jerusalem had no meaning; neither buyer nor seller should have cause to congratulate himself on his position. The possession of the land of Israel belonged to those in whom Jehovahs ideal of the new Israel was realised, and the only question of religious importance was, Where is the germ of this new Israel to be found? Amongst those who survive the judgment in the old land, or amongst those who have experienced it in the form of banishment? On this point the prophet receives an explicit revelation in answer to his intercession for "the remnant of Israel." "Son of man, thy brethren, thy brethren, thy fellow-captives, and the whole house of Israel of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, They are far from Jehovah: to us it is given-the land for an inheritance! Because I have removed them far among the nations, and have scattered them among the lands, and have been to them but little of a sanctuary in the lands where they have gone, therefore say, Thus saith Jehovah, so will I gather you from the peoples, and bring you from the lands where ye have been scattered, and will give you the land of Israel." The difficult expression "I have been but little of a sanctuary" refers to the curtailment of religious privileges and means of access to Jehovah which was a necessary consequence of exile. It implies, however, that Israel in banishment had learned in some measure to preserve that separation from other peoples and that peculiar relation to Jehovah which constituted its national holiness. Religion perhaps perishes sooner from the overgrowth of ritual than from its deficiency. It is a historical fact that the very meagreness of the religion which could be practised in exile was the means of strengthening the more spiritual and permanent elements which constitute the essence of religion. The observances which could be maintained apart from the Temple acquired an importance which they never afterwards lost; and although some of these, such as circumcision, the Passover, the abstinence from forbidden food, were purely ceremonial, others, such as prayer, reading of the Scriptures, and the common worship of the synagogue, represent the purest and most indispensable forms in which communion with God can find expression. That Jehovah Himself became even in small measure what the word "sanctuary" denotes indicates an enrichment of the religious consciousness of which perhaps Ezekiel himself did not perceive the full import.
The great lesson which Ezekiels message seeks to impress on his hearers is that the tenure of the land of Israel depends on religious conditions. The land is Jehovahs, and He bestows it on those who are prepared to use it as His holiness demands. A pure land inhabited by a pure people is the ideal that underlies all Ezekiels visions of the future. It is evident that in such a conception of the relation between God and His people ceremonial conditions must occupy a conspicuous place. The sanctity of the land is necessarily of a ceremonial order, and so the sanctity of the people must consist partly in a scrupulous regard for ceremonial requirements. But after all the condition of the land with respect to purity or uncleanness only reflects the character of the nation whose home it is. The things that defile a land are such things as idols and other emblems of heathenism, innocent blood unavenged, and unnatural crimes of various kinds. These things derive their whole significance from the state of mind and heart which they embody; they are the plain and palpable emblems of human sin. It is conceivable that to some minds the outward emblems may have seemed the true seat of evil, and their removal an end in itself apart from the direction of the will by which it was brought about. But it would be a mistake to charge Ezekiel with any such obliquity of moral vision. Although he conceives sin as a defilement that leaves its mark on the material world, he clearly teaches that its essence lies in the opposition of the human will to the will of God. The ceremonial purity required of every Israelite is only the expression of certain aspects of Jehovahs holy nature, the bearing of which on mans spiritual life may have been obscure to the prophet, and is still more obscure to us. And the truly valuable element in compliance with such rules was the obedience to Jehovahs expressed will which flowed from a nature in sympathy with His. Hence in this chapter, while the first thing that the restored exiles have to do is to cleanse the land of its abominations, this act will be the expression of a nature radically changed, doing the will of God from the heart. As the emblems of idolatry that defile the land were the outcome of an irresistible national tendency to evil, so the new and sensitive spirit, taking on the impress of Jehovahs holiness through the law, shall lead to the purification of the land from those things that had provoked the eyes of His glory. "They shall come thither, and remove thence all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them another heart, and put a new spirit within them. I will take away the stony heart from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh: that they may walk in My statutes, and keep My judgments, and do them: and so shall they be My people, and I will be their God". {Eze_11:18-20}
Thus in the mind of the prophet Jerusalem and its Temple are already virtually destroyed. He seemed to linger in the Temple court until he saw the chariot of Jehovah withdrawn from the city as a token that the glory had departed from Israel. Then the ecstasy passed away, and he found himself in the presence of the men to whom the hope of the future had been offered, but who were as yet unworthy to receive it.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Ezekiel has recorded the circumstances in which he received…
III.—FURTHER PROPHETIC ACTION IMPOSED ON EZEKIEL. CHAPS. 8–19
Ezekiel has recorded the circumstances in which he received his call to be a prophet, and then the signs and words by which he was to signify the doom that awaited the whole of his people, because of their clamant iniquities. Fourteen months pass over him, and no other communication from the Lord is related. At the end of that time the power of God once more affects him, and imparts to him a succession of experiences, which are all ranged under one date. As in the preceding, so in this cycle of his prophecies he begins with a vision and ends with a dirge. “Here also he strives against political dreams, represents the destruction as inevitable, and points to repentance as the only way of safety.”—Hengstenberg.
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1. VISION OF THE SINS AND JUDGMENT OF JERUSALEM (Chaps. 8–11)
Here we find not only a symbolical representation of the supreme glory and power of the God of Israel, but also of the procedure of the people. This is accomplished by putting Ezekiel in a kind of constraint, and that in the presence of onlookers. Did this visit of the elders cause an excitement in the sensitive prophet, and so prepare his mind for impressions from the Divine? Their visit is a significant fact. It shows that Ezekiel was no mere cipher among the units of banished Jews. Whatever had been their words and their looks respecting him, he became too much of a power amongst them to be insulted only. He was observed, and his confinement to his house was considered not as a result of ailment merely, but as a condition demanding general interest. Whether the people realised that he was “a messenger of the Lord of Hosts,” and the elders came sincerely to inquire “what saith the Lord?” may be doubted; but that this was the case after a few years is certified (chap. Eze_33:30).
The constraint imposed on Ezekiel by the action of the Lord was that in which the external senses are apparently cast into an unsusceptible state. He was thus withdrawn from the relation to his house and the elders in which he seemed to be, and was rendered capable of receiving impressions of things far remote from his physical environment. Involuntary on his part though his state might be, there was no abeyance in the action of his chief faculties. He could internally see, hear, speak; his spirit is liberated and strengthened instead of clogged. The overruling force directs his attention to the Jews who had not been deported, and especially to the procedure of the dwellers in Jerusalem.
No indication is given of the length of time passed in his ecstasy. The elders may not have remained so long as his perception of external things was in suspense; but they may, as visional events proceed more rapidly than external. They would have seen a rigid and sudden prostration of the prophet’s body, and heard his ominous cry (chaps. Eze_9:8, Eze_11:13), and the phraseology of chap. Eze_11:25, may be understood to mean that on his return to consciousness he described to them, as representing “them of the captivity,” all that had been shown to him. “The supernatural being once recognised as having a place in the dealing of God with man, we ought to be open to evidence as to facts in every individual case” (Campbell), and abide in the light of the messages.
(1.) A SURVEY OF THE FOUR ABOMINATIONS IN JERUSALEM (Chap. 8)
This experience of Ezekiel could be only an internal one, and was intended to make him perceptive of the ungodly ways of his contemporaries who were left in Judea.
Prelude to a view of the abominations (Eze_8:1-4)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Eze_8:1. “And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month.” Since his first vision, Ezekiel’s time had been divided into 7 days, 390 days, and 40 days, in all 437 days. Reckoning up to the date here given, 14 months had passed, and, us lunar months, they would make 413 days. Were we to consider that the prophet lay on his sides for 390 + 40 days in external appearance, we should be at a loss to explain the discrepancy between 413 and 430, or else we should conclude that this ecstasy happened to Ezekiel while he lay upon his right side for Judah; i.e., he would be disturbed in the process of executing one commission by the interruption of another. As this seems improbable, we suppose that he had fulfilled his appointment in some form, but not literally. The next expression supports that opinion. “I sat in my house,” as he had been commanded (chap. Eze_3:24). Keil says that the verb is “used in the more general sense of staying or living in the house.” We keep to the more restricted meaning, because the same verb is employed in reference to the elders. He and they were in the same posture in his house. He was not on his side; and though in seclusion, yet it was a seclusion which did not prevent his neighbours from observing him or conversing with him; “and the elders of Judah were sitting before me;” the civil organisation, which existed from the primitive times of Israel, was kept up among the captive Jews. The Babylonian government did not imperil its own quietness by nullifying the authority of the elders. That was allowed—no doubt to the advantage of captor and captive. Some special motive must have induced these head men of Judah to wait seated in the prophet’s house. Its nature is not mentioned; but the communications he makes to them offer the probable clue; “and the hand of the Lord fell there upon me:” a sudden and palpable change in Ezekiel’s aspect is intimated by the word fell—it is not used in the other two cases (chap. Eze_1:3, Eze_3:22)—one of those symptoms which are chiefly observed in persons of a high-strung, nervous temperament. He was rapt out of control of himself. Under this influence the people of Jerusalem chiefly became the objects of his study, and he afterwards communicated his descriptions and denunciations to the elders of the captives. It would seem that tidings of the prophecies of Ezekiel had reached the city, and produced in the minds of its inhabitants a despisal of those who were in exile. “They were separated from the privileges of worship in the Holy Temple; they must bear their troubles and not look for a return to their confiscated property; they should know that possession of the land was secured to the people remaining in Jerusalem, who were, in their own esteem, the favoured of the Lord” (chap. Eze_11:15). Reports of some such words had come to the ears of the captives. They felt aggrieved, and they presented themselves before the prophet to learn what he had to say in reference to that consequence of his prophecies, and also the course which should be taken in regard to this cynical treatment by their brethren. The answer is conveyed in the vision which Ezekiel narrates.
Eze_8:2. “And I beheld, and, lo, a likeness as the appearance of fire,” &c. The Sept. reads man instead of fire. It is a correction which is unnecessary, and may be regarded as a mistake. The earlier manifestation (chap. Eze_1:26-27) showed indeed the appearance of a man upon the throne. That was not visible now. What was visible was that part which displayed the fire of the lower members and the brightness of the upper glowing like ore. Thus Ezekiel sees at first, “below, towards the earth, the person on the throne appeared in the glowing ire of His function as judge and avenger, above in the pure splendour of His calm, untroubled heavenly majesty.”—Züllig.
Eze_8:3. “And He put forth the form of a hand.” He whose glory was present to the prophet was not materially acting—His hand was visionary; “and He took me by the front hair of my head,” as if to give an unimpeded view to him by holding him so as to make him look straight before him. It was not to carry him: another agency does that; “and a spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven;” or, a wind lifted me up, an interpretation which may be defended on the ground that the Hebrew word, which signifies both wind and spirit, is used with a distinction when Ezekiel tells of the cessation of his ecstasy (chap. Eze_11:24). Like Paul, he could not tell whether he was out of the body, or in the body. He knew this, that the power of the Mighty One was investing him with marvellous capabilities which needed no physical forces to sustain them. It is interesting to note that while Matthew reports our Lord as saying, “If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come upon you,” Luke reports Him as saying, “If I by the finger of God cast out,” &c., thus illustrating, as here, the varying aspects of spiritual influence. That spiritual domination over Ezekiel placed him not at his own point of view but at that of the Lord. He saw the evils of his people, not by the insight of his own nature, but by the revealing light of God, and he condemned them as from His righteous sentences: “and brought me to Jerusalem in visions of God;” in this rapt condition he seemed taken to the Temple, and “to the opening of the gate of the inner (court) that looks toward the north.” He was on the northern face of the Temple, and at that opening which made a communication between the outer court, that of the people, and the inner court, that of the priests. That entrance to the more sacred part of the building was in the face of “where is the seat of the image of jealousy:” this is meant to define Ezekiel’s standing-place, not to define the worshipped object. The reference to it follows in Eze_8:5. The position at the north side is indicative of the quarter from which both the sin and punishment of Jerusalem were chiefly derived, “which provoketh to jealousy.” Idols are an offence to “the jealous, energetic God, who, as such, gives not His honour to another, and calls forth His reaction against the wrong done to His honour” (Heng.). He cannot renounce His rights, and shows that He will not.
Eze_8:4. In the place He is dishonoured He gives tokens of His power and glory: “and, behold, there was the glory of the God of Israel, like the vision that I saw in the valley.” The appearance of fire which Ezekiel saw in his house seems not to have shown throne or cherubim or wheels. Now that he is in the Temple, the complete glory becomes manifest to him as he had already seen it in the valley near Tel-Abib. Its presence is a sign that the God of Israel will search into all the secrets of His people’s worship, and that whatever is inconsistent with the glory of His power, wisdom, holiness, love, among those who are left in Judea, will be laid bare and denounced. It cannot be said that the practices which were thus unveiled must have been confined to the precincts of the Temple. Those various forms of unhallowed worship could hardly be going on at the same time and within its comparatively limited space; and it may be questioned if certain of them were ever transacted therein. The vision is symbolical. The mere eye of flesh did not see what was done, but a spiritual imagination did. It recognised the Temple as the centre of the national life—the natural meeting-place for all Israelitish religious thought, and a focus for the abominations which were committed in the land. This idea is supported by the words of Jeremiah (Eze_7:10), “Ye come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations.” And yet he writes (Eze_8:17) as if they committed them elsewhere: “Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?” Ezekiel’s vision includes the four chief manifestations of evil among the people, in public and in the dark, and becomes a striking picture of the apostasy of the house of Israel.
First abomination (Eze_8:5-6)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Eze_8:5. The prophet, standing by the gate of the inner court, is commanded, by a voice from the glorious appearance, to consider the idolatrous figure confronting him. “And I lifted up my eyes … and behold northward of the gate of the altar,” standing in the outer court so that it was in the way of all who came in view of, or passed through that gate which was called the gate of the altar, probably because it led to the spot where sacrificial animals were slain, this image of jealousy at the entrance. Various conjectures are made as to the special object represented by this image—Baal, Moloch, Astarte. It is preferable to regard it as a figure which embodied in its shape the ever-working tendency to associate the worship of idols with that of the Lord God, and thus to idealise the opposition which was perceived by Him among those who trod His courts.
Eze_8:6. “Seest thou … the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here,” they seem to pay divine homage to images as often as they pay it to me. They may not purpose the certain result of such procedure, but it cannot fail to happen, and that is “in order to be far off from my sanctuary.” Who is meant—the people or the Lord? Not the former, but, what is unspeakably more terrific, the latter, as was illustrated at the close of this manifestation (chap. Eze_11:23). “My glory I will not give to another;” therefore He writes “Ichabod” on His Temple in Jerusalem: “and turn again, thou shalt see great abominations.”
HOMILETICS
GOD’S WAYS MADE KNOWN (Eze_8:1-4)
The methods by which the Father of spirits communicates with human hearts are wrapt in symbol and mystery. We do not know how the life in plants concurs in their growth; we know that it does by the effects on them. And a man may not be able to explain how he has obtained a consciousness of God, yet unhesitatingly premise that he has the witness in himself that God has come to him and given him power.
I. He receives this power amid the ordinary conditions of life; within the walls of his own house, a sufferer under ailments, with a few companions, he realises that the Lord has visited him. “He besets us behind and before, and lays His hand upon us” wheresoever He will. The idea that He may affect us is sometimes a source of fear and repulsion. This is to discredit God. Why should not the possibility of His power manifesting itself to us, anywhere and at any time, be esteemed as one of the highest privileges of our life? His visits may be made:
1. In seasons of trouble. The elders and exiles, flouted by their unbanished brethren, received good from the Lord by means of His word to Ezekiel. They learned that though far from their sacred Temple they were not forgotten by its Lord; that though despised as outcasts, they knew that His prophet was among them; that their iniquities had not taken away His truth and mercy from them. The needy cried to Him, and He sent from above to alleviate their need just where they felt it.
2. In personal associations. The power that came to Ezekiel and the elders came in private. It seems to be the usual course. Prophets and apostles were specially influenced by the Lord when they were away from ordinary stated worship. This was not meant to disparage assemblies for public religious services; it was rather to signify that, if we are to learn effectively that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, we must be alone, or with two or three gathered in His name. God honours not the service but the servants, and while public means have their own place among the ordinances of His kingdom, they must not be supposed to secure for us “power from on high.” From the Lord we must expect “grace to help in time of need”—not from any mere means even though called sacred. “Blessed is he that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.”
II. The Divine Spirit produces new experiences.
1. There are fresh impulses. The common routine of thought is broken through. The feeling of a new presence touching our inner man becomes definite. A prophet sees the brightness of a radiating glory; apostles behold “the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father;” any man who calls Jesus Lord has a revelation within of the light of the knowledge of His glory. All of them feel and know that they are brought into contact with a strength that is made perfect in weakness—the impelling of the Holy Spirit.
2. There is an exaltation of heart. Ezekiel felt lifted above the ground by a spirit. “Between earth and heaven” he sees wider views. He moves amidst rays from God. When we have a plainer and ampler sight given to us of the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, how differently we look upon our own needs and the needs of other men. We may sigh, we may lift up longing eyes, we may bend our heads and knees, but we do so because our hearts testify that they have “the Presence infinite” which makes its creatures blessed. Self and the world keep our spiritual life down; but the uplifting of the Holy Spirit enables us to “mount up with wings as eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint.” Evermore give us this power.
3. There is a clearer understanding of the religious condition of a people. The prophet saw the abominations which the house of Israel committed, by the penetrating power of the glory of God in the Temple. Nothing like a display of the character of God to make sin appear, and to make it appear “exceeding sinful.” Even if we be not addicted to the same iniquities as other men may be, our standing in the light of God’s countenance will enable us to discover their sins, and so to speak of them that they shall be convicted in their own consciences that we speak the truth, that the evils which we portray are their evils. So a motive may be given for repentance towards God. We learn to cherish:
1. A certitude that God will teach His ways. Faithfulness in little opens a way for the reception of much which will demand faithfulness. Obedience to many commandments of Christ prepares for learning commandments that are yet unrecognised. They who grow in grace grow in knowledge of Jesus Christ. The variety of forms which His teaching takes does not weaken but strengthens the conviction that He will teach. So it comes to pass that multitudes of persons can avow that He who was once an unknown God is now honoured as a Father; that the Christ who was once admired is now adored as a Saviour and King; that the persons with whom they are brought into association are regarded with a heightened and distinctive sympathy. They have learned from Him who gives rest to their soul, and they trust to Him to teach them still. Whereas they were blind now they see, and they are sure that He who has opened their eyes will point out their way and inform them of all its dangers and its provisions.
2. A hope of special teaching. Unlooked-for changes, perplexities, difficulties appear. Does one revelation, does a series of instructions for one’s common way of life, exhaust His supplies? No; “all things work together for good.” Let all things be against us, that does not show that God is unable to take us through them all. It only shows that we must not lose heart and hope; that we must wait for Him when He is not in view; that we must trust that the all-sufficiency of heavenly power and love is acting with steady force, though impalpable for a time. “Now we see in a mirror darkly,” but enough to satisfy us that all needed light will be shed, that human sins will not prevail against the rule of God.
VAIN WORSHIP (Eze_8:5-6)
The spirit and truth which are needful in serving the Holy One of Israel are often absent from those who profess to worship Him. Individual worship and common worship are equally faulty as to this, and call forth the stern appeal from the great King, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me.” He thus repels the worship because—
I. It is divided. The worshippers set up an image in His courts. They acknowledged Him, but He was not the only one regarded. They mingled up in what they did for Him a reference to some custom of other people, or some misapprehension of their own mind. They did not submit themselves to the inalienable rights of God. The rite or ceremony may be very attractive to the eye or ear, generation after generation may have found it agreeable, but the condemnation stamped on it is “God alone is not here!” Many prayers which seem earnest are not answered because they supplicate for gratification to some lust of the flesh or mind. Many a religious meeting dissolves as a vapour wherein no appearance of God is traceable, because they have not come to the Father only by Christ. Get a single eye, purify hearts by faith, search out all doublemindedness in private or public means of worship, lest God go far off, refusing to accept and hear. “Beside Him there is no God,” and a divided worship is worthless.
II. It belies His character. He is supreme. It is impossible for any created thing to share His sovereign authority, and any kind of worship which reverences an idol, or a form, or an idea of man’s heart, must, by its very nature, be repudiated as an abomination. Who dare presume to ascend the throne of the Almighty! He is righteous. Jealousy amongst men is tainted to a greater or less degree by selfish elements. We cannot bear a thing because it somehow shadows our contracted range of view, does not let us step easily on to our own comfort. In God’s jealousy there is no element but what is true, and holy, and kind. He cannot give up such principles if He is to continue to govern the world. He maintains “the integrity and dignity of His own position in the face of every free being.” It is the rights of God and with them the rights of every moral being which vibrate in the words, “The Lord shall be jealous for His great name;” and that He should be provoked by honour given to another is to be true to the claims which human nature makes upon Him who formed it to be good. He is accessible. The image of jealousy stood in the very face of the Lord’s altar, as if He were to be served only after an idol had been acknowledged; as if the first step towards Him must be taken by the help of that which is not God. In Christian service we too frequently fancy that if we first pray, or read the Scriptures, or fast, we shall find the Lord easier of access. Alas for us! if we do not learn that He is nigh to all that call upon Him, that between the High-priestly Son and them nothing should intervene, that to use any other mediator is to make a movement which tends to put Him far off. Not that He does not see, does not care for the worshippers He may forsake; but that they may learn that they have treated Him as if He were a retired or an absent God. Forms of worship thus become a mere ceremonial. Darkness and deadness cover the heart, and He cannot but count vain that which by act takes from His character its authority, justice, and immediate presence.
III. It is made obvious to God-fearing men. “Son of man, seest thou what they do?” Dare he consider the abominations? Yes; if in obedience to the Lord. Ezekiel lifted up his eyes to see the abominations, not because he wanted to look on evil, or because he thought his soul strong enough to venture without harm “among serpents;” but because the Lord told him to do so. We may look upon things which offend God—bad books, besotted men and women, unscriptural practices in worship—but we need to beware of the danger in such procedure. Many a youth has committed evil because he wanted to see what it was like. Many a worshipper has gone to look at forms of worship with which he was not familiar, and lost his power to distinguish between that mode of service which leads to Christ and that which draws away from Him—between a fruitful worship and a vain. And if at times there does not appear sufficient ground for judging whether or not a certain worship veils the glory of Christ, the true way in which it can be made clear is to give honest answer to the question, Shall I be obeying the Lord Jesus Christ in attending on this thing? The weak conscience is defiled, the strong in the Lord is made able to stand. One goes into the lion’s den and is safe, for Cod sends him; many go and are torn in pieces, for their own will moves them. We touch a great principle for our guidance in worship when we say that wrong against God is plain to those who fear His great name. Yes; if he is to be fit to act as a watchman. Ezekiel looked at the image of jealousy, but it was that he might say, “God will withdraw if that is honoured.” Jesus ate with publicans and sinners, but it was that He might call them to repentance. And if we be disposed to observe any unholy thing, it must be with the desire so to know it that we shall see its offensiveness to God, and shall warn the men who sanction it that they are sinning against the only true God.
GOD’S DISCLOSURE OF SIN (Eze_8:6; Eze_8:13; Eze_8:15)
The disclosure shows—
I. There are degrees of wickedness—“greater abominations.” The longer we look the more we see. There is a sin of ignorance like Paul’s—“I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—and sins of knowledge like those who “sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth.” Some sins withhold the honour which is due the Lord in worship; other sins act against His laws of conduct, and prostitute the powers of manhood and womanhood in brutal license.
II. Knowledge of the degrees of wickedness is not acquired all at once. “Thou shalt see greater.” The first conscious sin is no evidence of other sins which will be committed by an individual. He begins to court the will to be rich, and then comes the will to lie, cheat, steal; or the desire for power, and then come deeds of injustice, oppression, murder; or neglected worship, and then “they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” The evils in churches are gradually recognised. They may be indulged in by many, and who discovers at once that the stream is tending to the wrong quarter? They may be kept from honest probing, and how can we test their danger? They may be undetected because we have been accustomed always to see them, and where is the power to show their offensiveness to the Lord? Once brought to see one allowed course in its sinfulness, we may be brought to see others also. We need to have eyes opened that we may see, and we shall find that “in the lowest deep there is a lower deep still threatening to devour.”
III. The light of God alone unveils the amount of wickedness. He has a time and ways of discovering what is in our hearts, what in our societies. We must look by it, walk in it if we are to remember whence we are fallen and not have our candlestick moved out of its place. Let us wait on the Lord Jesus Christ, that in His light we may see the light for our own state and the state of others. “It is time for Thee to work, for men have made void Thy law.”
Second abomination (Eze_8:7-12)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Eze_8:7. The prophet having turned, he says, “He brought me to the opening of the court;” his position being changed, he must have been taken to some other door than that mentioned in Eze_8:3, most probably to the opening which led from the outer court into unwalled space; the worshippers would thus be less exposed to observation than if they had to cross the court to the inner gate. “and I saw and, behold, a hole in the wall,” but too small for him to pass through, and a mode of ingress must be made.
Eze_8:8. At the command of the Lord he dug out part of the wall, as Eastern robbers do, and, entering by the breach, “behold an opening” which the wall concealed, and so was known to the initiated alone. The seer has the key which opens it—the word of the Lord.
Eze_8:9. “Come and see the wicked abominations which they are doing here.” Ezekiel was moving in the region of symbols. The hole; the door walled in; a secret worship by elders; a large room, within the Temple-precincts, having its walls covered with the figures of various animals representing the visible powers of nature, are all tokens that it was not a real sight he was looking on—that it was a representation of the masked and wide-spread guilt of the mass of the people.
Eze_8:10. “And I came and saw; and, behold, every form of reptiles and cattle, abomination, and,” besides those animal figures, there were representatives “of all the refuse idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the wall round about.” Ancient writers, and tombs opened in recent times, show how common was the practice in Egypt of decorating their walls with painted figures, while the worship of animals in that country was long the popular form of worship. It seems as if this prominence given to Egyptian habits had reference to the leanings towards that government of many among the leading men of Jerusalem, and to their efforts to bring about an alliance offensive and defensive. Allusions, in the larger prophetical books especially, prove that there was a political party among the Jews whose cry was, “Let us go down to Egypt for help!” Now that the Babylonian power was in the ascendancy, that party was obliged to resort to underhand schemes, to secret meetings and proceedings, with the hope, no doubt, that they might contrive, with the aid of Egypt, to get rid of the Chaldean yoke. The Jewish people were not contented with their compromises with Egypt, they also adopted other varieties of idol-worship. The new forms did not prevail so as to extirpate the old, and overwhelming superstition spread over the covenanted land. Thus did created things become an abomination. Good in themselves, they were placed by the people alongside of the Lord God, if not above Him, and became objects of His loathing.
Eze_8:11. “And seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel.” The number is historical (Exo_24:1; Num_11:16). It is not to be understood here of a standing council of the people, but of an ideal representation of them as a whole. The contrast between the present provocation of the Lord and the honour paid to Him formerly by the seventy is also to be considered. “To render the contrast still more palpable between what was and what should have been,” it is added, “and Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing in their midst;” why he was so conspicuous is unknown. He was one of a family of Jewish statesmen. His father was the patriotic and God-fearing scribe—chancellor—of King Josiah during his reforming reign (2Ki_22:3, ff.). Another son was Abikam, who, as also his son Gedaliah, nobly stood for Jeremiah (Jer_26:24; Jer_39:14). Jaazaniah had apparently deserted the purer traditions of his family and become prominent among the idolatrous and Egyptian party. It is a sad but not an isolated spectacle. Righteousness does not run by a law of heredity. “were standing before them,’ i.e., before the figures drawn on the walls, “and each man with his censer in his hand,” thus assuming a prerogative of priesthood, and in the posture of performing an act of worship of the highest kind. “and a prayer of the cloud of incense was going up.” The A. V. has “a thick cloud.” The only other place where the Hebrew word is found gives in its translation “suppliants” (Zec_3:10). In biblical language, the ascending incense is symbolic of prayer—“the twenty-four elders having each one golden bowl full of incense which are the prayers of the saints” (Rev_5:8). On these grounds we prefer to read here “prayer.”
Eze_8:12. The interpretation comes. “Hast thou seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark:” that this abomination was to be sought for in such a secrecy, while the others were seen in the open daylight, supports the idea that the former was maintained for the furtherance of occult political aspirations—aspirations which the Providence of God would not sanction: “each man in the chambers of his imagery?”—rooms in which images were delineated. Each of the seventy had such a chamber for himself—a place in which he installed his own special favourite objects of worship. It is indicative of the addiction in private houses to the unhallowed ceremonies which the prophet beheld in the light of God. Proceedings like these gave practical expression to the thought, “the Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.” They did not deny the Lord’s existence, they used His name; but their conduct was tantamount to reducing Him to a nonentity in the world, for it denied His knowledge and mercy. To put a fact into the terms of a popular saying is one of the features of Ezekiel’s style, and is a mode of intimating that the thoughts so embodied in speech were not mere hasty and transient impressions, but were the outcome of habitual choosing their own ways and forsaking those of the Lord. When such notions about Him were cherished, apostasy from Him was, not probable only, but certain. Men might live as they liked, they might despise God, they might tempt and deceive their fellowmen, no account would be demanded. God saw not. They may degrade the worship of a people, they may corrupt the moral atmosphere of a city, they may strive to promote political ends, both at home and abroad, which shall be unworthy of a high-minded people. They allow no scrupulous afterthoughts to hold them back. God has forsaken the land—a nation has no God, no eternally righteous law to obey!
HOMILETICS
CORRUPTION OF TRUE WORSHIP
Account for it as philosophers may, the fact is patent that most men will worship. They are in the abyss of savagery, or they plume themselves on the summit of the highest civilisation of centuries, and at not one stage, from the lowest to the highest point of the long slope, is there a belt of which it can be said, “Worship was never made within its limits.” The object of such worship as is rendered may be a fetish, or a Spirit infinite, eternal, and unchangeable; but in each variation there is understood to be the existence of something in which power resides. The tendency thus universally observed, like all human tendencies, is susceptible to change of direction. As certain elements in nutritious food are adapted to build up a healthy body, so there are certain elements required in worship to meet the wants of a human being as he stands related to the Power which made him and fashioned him. As food may be used lavishly or sparingly and produce diseases incident to over-indulgence or insufficiency; or as good food may be refused and hurtful taken instead, so worship may be carried out to strengthen or weaken, to elevate or degrade the soul; or that worship which is right and true be forsaken for that which is false and destructive. The features of the latter delineated here are—
I. It takes a place among purer forms. The Jewish elders, burning incense before animal figures and other objects, stood within the area of the Temple dedicated to the honour of the only living and true God. They practised their dark rites under the shadow of a holy fane. The craving for worship seeks its appeasement not only in the pure and true, and a past enlightenment does not guarantee it against a present error. In all the ages during which men have walked among the revelations of God, some amongst them “have forsaken the fountain of living waters and hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water.” The churches, taught by men who had been with Jesus and had seen “the power of His resurrection,” included persons who held the teaching of Balaam, ate things sacrificed to idols, and committed fornication. The present Church of Rome boasts of its unbroken succession from the simple primitive Church, yet the walls of its buildings are often covered with pictures, lights are burned at the shrines of saints, Mary is worshipped more than Jesus, and a frail man is revered as infallible! Where, too, there has been a practical protest against Papal departures from purer worship, who dare to say that no heed is paid to seducing spirits, no “departure from the faith” has occurred? Called Christians, counted among those who profess belief in Jesus, how many have only a name to live! How many use their position to do that which is not seemly! And spiritual worship is made to provide a room for that which is earthly and sensual.
II. It needs a close search to perceive its obliquity. The hole in the wall could excite only suspicion, but an investigation made by the breaking through could expose the corruption which was festering. It is a suggestive omen for those who would discern the times, and learn the judgment of truth respecting them. We must wait and watch in the light which Jesus sheds, follow up the questions which the Holy Spirit may prompt in regard to the meaning of our forms of worship. There are “depths of Satan” into which no sounding-line will be let down without some impulse; there is a hating of the light of which no estimate can be made till the Divine word measures it. The external worship of a church may be associated with for years, and not a fear startle the soul lest there should not be spirit and truth in its observance. The forms may be appropriate; but beneath them there may be no loyalty to the Christ, only a care for personal satisfaction and comfort. The pens may be filled, and filled with anything but sheep! Only He who holds the seven stars in His right hand knows and can reveal the lurking sins which offend Him and hinder the Gospel of His Son. What right-hearted man will not pray, often and expectingly, “Lead me to where I can see, open mine eyes that I may see that which impinges against Thy truth and holiness and love, no matter by whom or by what numbers the evil thing is committed”?
III. It manifests a voracious appetite. Several animals do not satisfy, idols of other kinds are accepted as objects for worship. As in Jerusalem, so it was in the days of imperial Rome—a niche was provided for the gods of all nations. Corruption spreads by its own nature. One step is not much out of the narrow way, but the line which that step begins to trace will take to far-off regions. The mystery of lawlessness, with its power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness, started on its career from the bosom of apostolic churches; and the warning-note, needed by all seekers for God’s will, is, “Be not moved away from the true worship, lest you go from bad to worse, and weary the Lord.”
IV. It exercises varied influences. Over the higher ranks of society. Their position and their intelligence do not act as a safeguard against a deteriorated religiousness. They are most under the claims of worldly fashion, and a fashion in worship is most likely to be potent amongst them. At any rate, church history may be adduced to show that it is not the common people but the aristocracy of a country from whom a change from a simple to a complex and sensuous ritual finds its chief support. Over the aged. The elders of the house of Israel corrupted the statutes of the Lord. The lapse of years brings trial and failures. Men get weary of the God whose command is, “Be ye holy for I am holy,” who allows no illegitimate indulgence to the lusts of the flesh and mind, and they go into self-pleasing causes after a lifetime of hearing a voice behind them continually say, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” “There is no fool like an old fool!” Over family associations. The chief among the abettors of corrupted worship was a man of whom it would have been said, “The influences of his family will prevent him from going amongst the secret worshippers of idols.” But this saying is superficial and inconsistent with facts. Our generation has seen not a few out of the families of evangelical Protestants become enthusiastic Roman Catholics or Ritualists—ready to stand among them as leaders. They who should have been barriers against turning out of the way of the Lord go at the head of those who turn from it. They whose experience should have confirmed the younger in truth, encourage them to believe in lies. And this lesson is written clear to view, that subjects of the most religious instruction and the most patriotic procedure will not always be found to obey the will of God. Thus influential is the corruption of true worship.
V. It becomes paramount with its adherents. They overcome all scrupulosity in regard to the Lord’s Temple, and prostitute it to their debasing ceremonies. They expend money and time in maintaining them. They at length treat the living and holy God as if He paid no concern to what they did, and, having forsaken Him, speak as if He had forsaken them. They impute to Him an ignorance and a heartlessness which, if they did exist, would utterly disqualify Him from being God. So they are subjected to their own devices; they are filled with their own ways.
How strange it seems to leave the right way for the wrong! How unreasonable and unlikely it looks! But yet how familiar the case is! And it is so because men “did not like to retain God in their knowledge.” “They have gone away backward.” No eyes but God’s can detect the many forms of this apostasy, and point out the hole in the wall of religious profession which leads to abominations within hearts and within churches. His ears alone can catch the meaning of those who serve divers lusts and pleasures, who say virtually, “The Lord seeth us not.” “I say unto you, Fear Him.”
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY
“Then said He unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? For they say, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth” (chap. Eze_8:12).
A hall of imagery! No phrase could better describe the mind of man, and memory the painter. In colours bright or dark, in the very lineaments of joy or shame or grief, she paints every struggle of the soul; our very wishes and purposes, though unacted, are all there. We behold all the scenes of the past fixed immovably on the walls and silently smiling or frowning upon us.
What is upon the walls? Some spaces are blank, condemning our profitless days. Some, like the dark catacombs of Rome, have scenes of decay and death portrayed. Here the innocence of childhood is slowly dying; there honesty is bartered away for gain, or virtue for pleasure. It may be there are chambers in which are beheld a virtuous youth, a devout age, a divine faith triumphing over the powers of the world. But at the best there is only a mingled series of pictures. Each soul is a temple, each heart an altar, and often the unhallowed rites of another worship than that of the Lord of heaven are practised there.
We are apt to feel as if what was done in those chambers was unmarked. Darkness and thick walls gave concealment to the ancients of the house of Judah: “The Lord seeth us not.” Yet the angels were looking in; and to the prophet, his eyes touched with spiritual light, all became visible.
In our chambers of imagery there may be other witnesses than we think. Surely it is not a vain or unreasonable thought, that round us are spiritual beings to whose spiritual eyes the mind lies open as the scenes of the world lie open to the bodily eye. Happy if we suffer to abide in our mind only those thoughts and purposes which these spiritual beings may gladly look upon!
But if there be no other, there is one eye that looks through all the veils of time and sense. In the sight of God the mind is the seat and source of all good and evil. The purpose clothes the act with its own goodness or guilt. The same act may be disinterested or selfish; the same forms of worship a mockery or a devotion, according to the purpose. In those chambers is the real life of man, and the imaginations we indulge in take shape, and the hopes we cherish are audible prayers before the Lord who seeth, and who has not forsaken the earth.
We may enter those chambers of imagery for correction and improvement. The time comes when we must enter them for judgment. In that dread hour the memory must take a conspicuous part. In the midst of the awful congregation of the risen dead again must we pass through the halls of imagery. The silent walls shall need no voice—memory and conscience shall affirm the righteous judgment of God. For that day, when the strong shall bow and the most devout tremble, may we in mercy be prepared!
Our life is founded on what is past, and every year we live the past becomes more important in its steady influence; we live in the midst of its memorials. It is the home which we build around us day by day, and according to what we make it will there be liberty or imprisonment. Each day let your deeds and your purposes be such that a new picture shall take a place on the walls that you will be glad to see. The past is fixed on the walls, we cannot take it down, but we may correct and alter. The picture of the prodigal’s departure has added to it the picture of his return and the father’s enduring love. Over scenes of guilt there may be arched the rainbow of the Divine mercy. Repentance may not efface the past, but it transfigures it. While bygone sins remind us of our weakness, they bring us nearer to Him whose strength saves and whose mercy forgives.—Peabody (abridged).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain I. Think of the dark and painted chamber which…
Eze 8:12
I. Think of the dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our hearts.
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Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. For every man is no fixed somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. The walls of the chamber of the text were all painted with animal forms, to which the ancients were bowing down. By our memory, and by that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, and by our desires, we are for ever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. That is an awful power which we possess, and alas! too often used for foul idolatries.
II. Look at the idolatries of the dark chamber. All these seventy grey-bearded elders that were bowing down before the bestial gods which they had portrayed, had, no doubt, often stood in the courts of the Temple, and there made prayers to the God of Israel, with broad phylacteries, to be seen of men. Their true worship was the worship in the dark. The other was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. And the very chamber in which they were gathered, according to the ideal representation of our text, was a chamber in, and therefore partaking of the consecration of, the Temple. So their worship was doubly criminal, in that it was sacrilege as well as idolatry. Both things are true about us.
III. Look at the sudden crashing in upon the cowering worshippers of the revealing light. One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ. Let Christ come into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His beams, floods your soul, leaving no part dark, and turning all into a temple of the living God.
A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 217.
References: Eze 8:12.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 455. Eze 9:4.—S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 60. Eze 9:9.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 223.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Subdivision 2 (Eze 8:1-18; Eze 9:1-11; Eze 10:1-22; Eze…
Subdivision 2 (Eze 8:1-18; Eze 9:1-11; Eze 10:1-22; Eze 11:1-25; Eze 12:1-28; Eze 13:1-23; Eze 14:1-23; Eze 15:1-8; Eze 16:1-63; Eze 17:1-24; Eze 18:1-32; Eze 19:1-14).
Conviction of the sin for which the glory leaves the city.
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There yet remains to be given proof of the general charge which has been made as to the condition of the people, and this in view of all the privileges, all the mercies shown, and all the warnings given. Here it is Jerusalem, and those connected with it, that are especially before us, as those most conspicuous for the pride of heart which hardened itself against all warning. Proportionately to the mercy that had so far spared, so must their punishment be.
Section 1 (Eze 8:1-18; Eze 9:1-11; Eze 10:1-22; Eze 11:1-25).
The shepherd’s rod becomes a rod of iron.
Jehovah had been their Shepherd, as witnessed by the pillar of cloud and glory, of which Ezekiel speaks so much, which had guided and protected them. But it is this that has now become their adversary. Their Shepherd’s rod becomes thus to themselves -not to their enemies merely -a rod of iron; and God calls in the witness of man himself to the necessity of this. God calls to witness earth as well as heaven, in the judgment of His people; after which the glory finally leaves the city.
1. There are four examples given, all witnesses to their complete adoption of the idolatry around them. Question has been raised as to how far that which Ezekiel sees in vision answered to the facts. For instance, as to the actual defilement of the temple in the way that Ezekiel sees it, it being supposed by some that it is God Himself who connects their abominations with that holy house of His, which stamped its character upon the land. Yet, while it is true that all here is expressly stated to be in vision, it is clear that there must be in it, none the less, a true picture of the people’s state. It is the evidence upon which they are convicted; it must not be merely ideal, therefore, but the positive facts of the case -facts that could be appealed to as without possibility of question.
(1) The new division is marked, as we might expect, by a new date, although reckoned from the same significant period as before -that of Jehoiachin’s captivity. We have come now to the sixth year of this; and the sixth month of the sixth year emphasizes the thought of evil come to its head, but at the same time with God’s hand over it; while the fifth day, the day of the vision, links responsibility with judgment. On this day the prophet is in his own house, the place of family relationships, which could not be exempt from the invasion of that which, as judgment, brooded over the whole people; the shadow falling even where grace had wrought exemption from the actual judgment.
The presence of the elders of Judah prevents that which follows from being simply a private, personal communication. Nothing is said of the purpose for which they were there; it is therefore a matter of entire indifference. We need no speculations to explain what is manifestly unexplained. The elders are rulers of Judah, as is manifest -those who should have maintained judgment according to God, but who now were made the witness of judgment which was coming from God in place of that which they had failed to exercise. In their presence, then, the hand of the Lord Jehovah fell once more upon the prophet.
He beholds, and, first of all, there appears to him, as he has seen before, the likeness of a Man upon the throne of God. Again there is seen, "as the appearance of fire" -the holiness of God, which against unrepentant wickedness is wrath, and which takes this character especially "from the loins and downward:" that is, in that which speaks of the activities of the person seen, rather than of the personality itself. "From the loins upward" there is the appearance of brightness, as the look of gold and brass. Thus we are ever reminded that, whatever the work may be, the character of Him who is engaged in it cannot fail to be displayed; and there is for us the joy of this, the appearance of a brightness, which is in fact that of the divine glory itself, the glory of One who is in His own nature immutable, of which the brass speaks.
There is at first no vision of anything beside, not even of the throne upon which He sits, no living creatures, no wheels. We shall come to these directly, but we have to notice that here, first of all, we have the Lord Himself. It is He who puts forth the form of a hand, and taking the prophet by a lock of his head, the Spirit lifts him up between earth and heaven, and brings him in the visions of God to Jerusalem. Thus it is plain that all that follows here is a vision simply. It is a vision according to the truth, necessarily, because it is a vision of God; nevertheless, we have to remember that God looks forward as well as back, and that the judgments which are seen now to take place may be, in fact, as in the slaughter of those in the temple-courts and in the city, that which takes place afterwards, and not necessarily at the moment in which they are seen.
In Jerusalem, as the prophet is carried there, nothing is seen but its great dominant feature, the house of God which is in it. Here is the heart of the whole subject before us -the heart of God Himself; of Him who assumes for the prophet the "form of a Man," and of whom it could be said from of old that His "delights were with the sons of men." The temple is the symbol of this, for which David’s heart longed after as the abode of God among men; of which He, of whom David was but the mere shadow, "sware unto Jehovah and vowed unto the mighty One of Jacob, Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up to my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for Jehovah, a tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob" (Psa 132:2-5). And where did David himself find this? "Lo," he says, "we heard of it in Ephratah; we found it in the fields of the wood." Thus had man treated in those days the token of the Lord’s presence with them; what had characterized the preceding time was that the ark "had not been inquired of in the days of Saul" (1Ch 13:3).
Thus has man met again and again the wondrous grace that would draw man to God Himself; and here now, the place of such a testimony, is the very place of fullest abomination! Brought to the entrance of the inner gate that looked toward the north, there the prophet is confronted at the outset with the proof of this. It is the seat of the image of jealousy, "which provoketh to jealousy." And now, in full view of this, the glory of the God of Israel appears according to the appearance that the prophet had seen in the valley: "And he said unto me, Son of man, lift up now thine eyes towards the north." From the north, the place of darkness, from where the sun is absent, comes ever the opposition to God: "And I lifted up mine eyes toward the north, and behold, northward of the gate of the altar, this image of jealousy in the entry."
The image of jealousy presents, first, the general thought which underlies all that follows here. God will not give His glory to another. Hence any self-devised image of Him, which must of necessity be man’s imagination, must be a challenge of the One only to be known by revelation, otherwise unsearchable. It is impossible indeed for man’s thoughts to get beyond himself. Thus the image of God which he devises must be only in some way a reflection of himself; but this is the debasement of God to man’s own likeness. The question is asked in Job as an unanswerable one: "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" Whatever the witness of creation therefore (true witness as it is), God never really left man to that. He declared Himself, as Scripture assures us, at the beginning; and it was man who voluntarily got away from this, banished himself into the darkness and distortion of his own thoughts.
And still this image of jealousy is that which threatens us all. It stands, as it were, at the very entrance when we would approach God Himself. And it need not be a visible or open image to do this. What admonition there is for us in this endeavor, as it really is, to have a god after our own thoughts, which is always in opposition to the true God? Thus "covetousness," the apostle tells us, "is idolatry;" and this, as we know, may be amongst those who are in all other respects most orthodox. But the heart after its own object, seeking that which gratifies itself (although it never satisfies), will have a god according to its own thought; while in name He may abide just what He was, and all the points of orthodoxy be preserved.
Here, in Israel, their hearts had got away so manifestly from God that the image of jealousy stood in open sight at the very gate by which men approached God; appealing thus to all, and blocking the way of sacrifice (the way of the altar) which, while it is God’s only way, is just on that account what man’s heart naturally would put aside. The image was in the outer court, presenting itself thus to the multitude. It was indeed the common sin and snare.
And we need not speculate, as has been done, as to the form of the image, what false deity was represented by it. The less we define in this respect, if we could define, as we really cannot, the more significant will be what is before us. Any special false god the multitude might disclaim; for man’s thoughts are various, and their gods therefore multitudinous as their thoughts; but the trouble is with the thinking at all. God has revealed Himself. Blessed to know we have only to receive His revelation.
How careful we should be, therefore, that we add nothing to it, that there be no mere speculation even within the limits, as we may say, of revelation itself. God’s own Word is best; is all-sufficient. If we add to its perfection, we in reality subtract from it. We are right in inquiring into it, in seeking to know the depths that are there; and if we do so we shall find that indeed God has spoken to us in it, "not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth" even," but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Were we to say that the image here was the image of Baal or the image of Ashtaroth or any other specific form, the meaning for us at least would have largely died out of it. We would refer it to the past, to Israel, the rebellious nation, and we should escape entirely the warning which speaks to us today, as much as ever, of an image that provoketh to jealousy -the imagination of man, whatever form it may assume. But how blessed to know that we have indeed "the image of the invisible God," One in whom God has spoken to us, and met all true cravings of the heart after Him, the One in whom we find "the Word made flesh, the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and who hath declared Him."
(2) What follows, therefore, is but a further development of this fundamental thought; it shows whither it would carry those who commit themselves to it. The second proof of Israel’s condition is their open adoption, if we may call it open -for after all, the secrecy and darkness accompanying it betray the consciousness of the moral deformity attaching to it -their open adoption of beast-worship.
We shall find much suggestiveness here in the symbolism of the numerals. We are at the second step downwards, and the number indicates descent; but in its ideal form it is for service, as with the Lord Jesus. It is His number, as we have abundantly seen. But the heathen gods themselves came down to men. They had an interest in reference to the things of earth, but how essentially different! The descent of the heathen gods was almost always their real degradation, in which even bestial forms were assumed by them for base and lustful ends. There is no need to enter into this for those who have the slightest knowledge of the ancient idolatry which the Egyptian animal-worship made permanent, the worship of the animal forms themselves, which (whatever may be pleaded for its esoteric meaning) would necessarily be accompanied with the most debasing results, such as the epistle to the Romans witnesses. For a beast, no immorality is possible, and therefore where beasts are gods it may well drop out of common speech. Apart from the spirit which God has given him (which often, alas, is almost as if it were not) man is, in fact, but a beast; and thus he can find in the beast that which reflects and appeals to his lower nature; but become a beast, he cannot. He must carry with him into these bestial instincts the evidence of a higher nature, which in subjection to the lower must of necessity degrade itself. But let us not relegate what is here merely to the past, as something of old time which has been civilized out of existence, and which we may well forget, therefore, except as the evidence of the progress we have made since times like these. For Scripture at least the "natural" man is still the "psychical" man, the soul-led man; and his wisdom, which cometh not from above, is "earthly, sensual" (psychical, that is). And more, it is "devilish;" for, through all human departures, easily traceable is the subtlety and power of one who, with no beast nature in himself, yet has led man in this departure.
These things then characterized Israel in the awful days that we are contemplating. The people who had in their hands God’s revelation, the people separated from the nations around by multiplied interventions on God’s part and wondrous works of power by which He made Himself known, are a people now so completely gone from Him that it is precisely in this worship of the beast, in secrecy and darkness, that we find the seventy elders, and Jaazaniah, a son of Shaphan, in their midst. What was the condition of the nation whose elders were the leaders and instigators in such things as these! And the names here mark the rapid and complete departure that had been going on. Jaazaniah means "Jehovah hears," and this name came to him from a father whose own name signifies "one who is hidden" -the name of the hyrax or coney of our common version. The book of Proverbs speaks of it as one of the things "little upon the earth, but exceeding wise." "They are a feeble folk," says the wise man, "yet make they their houses in the rocks" (Pro 30:26). This is their wisdom: they know their weakness and hide themselves in their stronghold. And the record that we have of Shaphan in the history (2Ki 22:8-10) answers at least to this, connecting him as it does with the publication of the newly discovered book of the law which Hilkiah, the priest, gives first to Shaphan. How rapid then had been the movement towards apostasy! The father in the light, cleaving to God and His Word; the son in the midnight darkness, degrading himself into a worshiper of the beasts that perish! Such then was the condition of things in Israel.
(3) But we have still further proofs. The next account involves another class from that of the elders, and shows how all parts of the nation were infected now: "He brought me to the entry of the gate of Jehovah’s house toward the north, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz." Tammuz* is a word of difficult derivation, but the history of which is in measure plain. We have to identify him, no doubt, with one better known to us and to history in general as Adonis, who according to the legend, which is told in different ways, was beloved of Venus for his beauty. Slain in hunting by a boar, says the legend, he was, at her solicitation, permitted to return six months in the year from the under-world to her companionship. We need not go into it, as the general lesson is all that interests us. It is a nature picture in some way, no doubt; and faithfully represents the brief and lawless joys of earth under a heaven pictured as no less lawless, joys which soon end in lamentation; along with this longing for their recovery, which in one way or another makes men prophesy this for themselves, but with little comfort even in that which they prophesy: as to which there need be no wonder, no knowledge of sin being in it, and no repentance.
{*The derivation of "Tammuz" which is most accepted would make it a corruption of tammezuz, "melting away," and which they refer to the discoloration of the streams of Lebanon, among which is the river Adonis, by the mountain floods. This they connect with Adonis’ legendary death by the boar, but it seems nevertheless hardly possibly to justify the derivation. On the other hand, may it not be derived more simply as tam’uz from tamam, "to complete" (and thus "finish," "end"), and uz, "strength," thus giving the meaning of the exhaustion of strength? This seems, more directly than the other, to apply itself to the story of Adonis.
We find God setting before us here the one side only, the sorrow and not the joy; the weak and passionate wail over the shadow departing, which identifies itself, as the details of this Tammuz-worship show, with only the increase of the power of evil in the despair of good. Thus this weeping of the women was accompanied with utter self-abandonment to the grossest wickedness. It was the practical fulfilment of the motto of despair: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Yet after all this is not absolute. Man will cling to the poorest and vainest hopes; and in the case before us here we have the distorted, faint image of what is indeed God’s remedy for the sorrow of earth -not escape from death, but resurrection out of it. But this is indeed out of the power of man to accomplish; and has come to us -alone could come to us -in Him who has put His seal upon man’s sentence, Himself bearing it.
Thus the evil which has wrecked the world is judged, and we reach God’s side of it; finding not the mere restoration of the life wrecked, but, thank God, a new life in sanctification, and indeed with higher hopes than ever before. God is the God of resurrection, and this we have seen to be stamped upon the whole physical frame of things here, and to be especially that which is before Ezekiel, the revolution of the wheel: which indeed is so high as to be dreadful, out of man’s merely natural ken, yet which, as revealed, becomes with all its blessedness a possession of faith, open to all who will accept the lesson of abasement. This is the only hope, the acknowledgment of a ruin which is at once the condemnation of evil and the glorification of God. The numerical symbolism here sheds full light upon what is before us, the divine substitute for the poor hopes to which man vainly clings, and which are pictured in this Tammuz worship among God’s people of old.
(4) The last picture here is that of priestly apostasy; in this way it is the natural conclusion of the whole. Approach to God is what His house speaks of. The apostasy of the priesthood leaves this approach no longer possible; and this is complete in what is before us. "And he said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Thou shalt see yet again greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of Jehovah’s house, and behold, at the entry of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east; and they worshiped the sun towards the east."
These twenty-five men are necessarily a priestly company. They are representatives of the twenty-four courses into which we know the priesthood were divided, with the high-priest at the head of them. They are not indeed spoken of as priests, and at this we need not at all wonder, for the plain reason that they are apostate; but their position is between the porch and the altar, therefore in the priestly court, where no others were allowed. "And He said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here, that they yet fill the land with violence, and keep again provoking Me to anger; and behold, they put the vine-branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in wrath. Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them." Thus the very ones, chosen out of the chosen nation itself, to draw near to God, are seen with their backs turned upon His house, and worshiping the sun, the foremost feature in those heavens which "declare God’s glory and show His handiwork," as the Psalmist reminds us (Psa 19:1-14).
The sun, with all his brilliancy and blessing for us, is manifestly but the servant of a power beyond his own, and indeed, as Moses declares in his appeal against this very worship, servant to the peoples to whom God has assigned the ordinance of heaven (Deu 4:19). Thus in the very constancy with which it observes its appointed seasons, its character is seen as abiding under physical law, that of a servant simply. It is part of the great wheel of nature which Ezekiel has shown us, whose revolutions, indeed, its own revolution marks. But law is the rule of the governed, and not of the Governor. We must penetrate to the Heart that is beyond all this, to One who is not limited by the laws which He has appointed, to get above the necessary perplexity of those who see only, as the preacher saw, what is "under the sun." Law is indeed most necessary to produce a stable world. Where would we be if we could not trust the stability of the things amongst which we move? But those who worship it, as alas so many seem inclined to do now, instead of worshiping are merely putting the vine-branch to their nose. There is a sweetness in nature, apart from that which sin has brought into it, which we cannot and need not deny; and for one whose heart enshrines the true Beloved, "the vines with their tender grapes give a good smell" still (Son 2:13). But if we rise no higher, this sweetness of nature only hinders the sweet savor of sacrifice -of that which is true worship and of Him who has offered it, the basis upon which everything rests now for faith. The fall being ignored, no sacrifice is needed, as is plain. Nature itself bears witness of this, though it needs interpretation. But without God, what is nature, with all the steadfastness of the laws which govern it, but a poor, weak thing fittingly imaged by this vine in which God pictures it -the very image of dependence, as it surely is, with ourselves, who are part of it, upon the One "in whom we live and move and have our being." Those who are but mere Danites of Ir-shemesh (Jos 19:41) find, spite of their joy in nature, nothing finally but perplexity, as the Preacher did (Ecc 8:17). The Comtist, with his worship of humanity, may illustrate in a very forcible way man’s need and the vanity of all attempts to meet it. He is most surely one who is putting the vine-branch to his nose, and imagining himself the worshiper that he is not; for who, after all, can worship himself, much as he may desire it?
But here, then, is the end of that which we saw in the beginning, in the image of jealousy. This is what all men’s imaginations come to. They cannot get beyond the nature of which they are part, and they cannot get beyond the perplexity that is in nature, the vanity written upon all that is merely "under the sun." Yet, thank God, there is a better Sun soon to appear as Sun of righteousness upon the world, and with healing in His wings. Then shall men find how the types of nature are prophecies of what is in God’s thoughts for us; and then shall the vines with their tender grapes give a good smell; not alienating the heart from God, but drawing it to Him.
Here, then, the evidences of Israel’s condition are complete. Surely, nothing more is needed. Sentence is passed, therefore, and we have but to see the execution of it in what follows.
2. "And he cried in mine ears with a loud voice saying, Draw near, ye that have charge over the city, and every man with his destroying weapon in his hand." As already said, we are not to look at this as a judgment actually taking place at the time of the prophet’s vision. It is no doubt that which is. really executed by the Chaldeans afterwards. For the purpose of the vision there is no need to distinguish in this way, or rather, the thought that is impressed upon us is precisely that which the bringing in of Nebuchadnezzar’s host might conceal for many. The judgment is as direct from God as if the Chaldeans were not at all in question.
The six men that answer to this summons come from the north and this was, as we know, the route of invasion by the Chaldean hosts. The number six speaks, as always, of divine sovereignty over evil.* This, alas, is now to be shown in judgment. Yet on this very account the judgment must be discriminative also, as the man in linen tells us: "In the midst of them one man clothed in linen with a writer’s inkhorn by his side" Here, plainly, is that which speaks of peace in the midst of all that is adverse. "And they went in and stood beside the brazen altar." The altar had in a special way been outraged by the abominations practised, and the vengeance upon this is now to be executed. When men refuse the only way of propitiation, there can be none, of course; and as the fitting corollary to this, "the glory of the God of Israel," distinctly emphasized as that, "went up from off the cherub whereupon it was, to the threshold of the house" -a significant action indeed, for we have nothing as yet here of the living creatures, which Ezekiel soon afterwards identifies with the cherubim of the mercy-seat. But as yet they are not identified; and we are to think of the abode of the glory as realized of old, which made "the Lord God that dwelleth between the cherubim" a familiar thought. He is seen for a moment there again, but only now to show distinctly the terrible change which is taking place. There is to be no more for Israel the truth of a mercy-seat over which the cherubim bend down to see the blood of propitiation placed there. If the altar be rejected, there is no blood to be sprinkled upon it any more. But then He who dwells between the cherubim must go forth.
{*It is also the number of man, the utmost limit of his power, and thus of evil in its assault upon what is of God. It enters into Goliath’s stature (1Sa 17:4), the dimensions of Nebuchadnezzar’s image (Dan 3:1), and the number of the Beast (Rev 13:18), where, thrice repeated, it would assail the people of God. It is thus fittingly associated with this preliminary assault of the Chaldeans. -S. Ridout.} of a mercy-seat over which the cherubim bend down to see the blood of propitiation placed there. If the altar be rejected, there is no blood to be sprinkled upon it any more. But then He who dwells between the cherubim must go forth.
This, then, is what we have here the full significance of it will be developed for us in what is soon to follow. But, first of all, He calls to the man clothed in linen who had the writer’s inkhorn by his side, and bids him go through the midst of the city to "set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst" of it. The word for "mark" here is that which designates the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the tau, which in the manner of writing of that time was a cross. Who can forbear, in connection with all that we have here, to realize the meaning of this? The judgment is judgment in behalf of the altar or, to put it in another way, it is that which necessarily comes because the propitiation of the altar is no more. How significant, then, that those whom the judgment spares are just those marked for mercy by the altar itself, that is, by the sign of the cross, as the Christian heart at once interprets it. As far back as the days of Tertullian it has been interpreted in this way, and all the circumstances here confirm the interpretation. Here, then, is the sinner’s shield at all times, the only hope of escape where all are sinners.
"Unto the others He said in my hearing Go through the city after him, and smite . . . and begin at my sanctuary." Judgment must begin at the house of God. It always begins there. In proportion to the privilege is the responsibility; and the outward nearness to God, with the heart away, only the more invites judgment. The house is completely gone as that. The blood defiles it; and in the midst of the awful judgment which is then poured out, the prophet pleads against the complete removal of Israel from before God’s sight. But this has been already anticipated and answered. The only reply now is the urging of Israel’s iniquity, which is now complete, and God can no longer spare.
3. Even yet the tale of judgment is not ended. What is of the utmost importance is now seen: the appearance of the heavenly throne, as the prophet had already seen it in the vision at Chebar, is to replace the earthly one which God can no more take. The removing is to be complete. He who was once, when the ark of old passed through Jordan, spoken of as "the God of all the earth," is now to be known simply as "the God of heaven." The earth is, as we see in Daniel, to be committed in fact to the Gentiles. Outwardly and visibly God’s throne is no longer on earth. The throne of Gentile empire is, alas, how different! And yet it is the representative, responsibly, of the throne above. Though we cannot hope that this responsibility will now be discharged in a way more according to God than hitherto, yet, even so, God will rather have the Gentile with all his manifest alienation from God, than the Jew with his false profession and worse dishonor of Him by them who professed to draw nigh.
The judgment still proceeds; and it is the man clothed in linen, who has been hitherto the messenger of God’s mercy, who is told to go in between the revolving wheels and fill his hand with coals of fire from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city. Here, of course, we have the pregnant figure of divine wrath; and it is at least an approach to that which we find afterwards, when the yet future day of wrath shall have arrived, and when this will be distinctively "the wrath of the Lamb." How terrible and how hopeless when it is His wrath! And yet how blessed to see and know that it is He who is eternal Love itself who will execute the judgment, and that, therefore, the one cannot be in contradiction to the other.
And now we are called to see more fully all the significance of that which is taking place. The cloud as yet fills the house; the glory of Jehovah, as we are reminded here, having risen up from off the cherub over the threshold of the house. The brightness of the glory is rather in the court itself now than in the house which it is leaving. The wings of the cherubim too are in motion, heard as the speech of the Almighty God Himself; and the cherubim are of course no longer those of the golden mercy-seat, which, as the memorials of a mere dead worship, are now left behind. The wheels of the former vision are here also, and ready for revolution; stayed for the moment, as the linen-clothed man goes in to take of the fire (which we have already seen at Chebar as going up and down between the cherubim), and which they now put into his hands. We are reminded here of what has been seen before, that there was the form of a man’s hand under the wings of the cherubim. Human hands, we need not doubt, are to execute that judgment which, nevertheless, is itself the wrath of God.
Attention is once more called particularly to the wheels. We have them just as they appeared at Chebar, one wheel beside each cherub, with the look of the topaz in them, the display still of divine characteristics, though in human history, and the likeness as of a wheel within a wheel. There is added here that the whole body, and backs, and hands, and wings, and wheels, are full of eyes round about, the tokens of a knowledge which is indeed omniscient, although there is of course no omniscience in the creature; but they move by a wisdom higher than their own. They are, in fact, beginning as it were afresh their revolution in obedience to the call of the Voice to them, at the bidding of which they revolve. This is no doubt the real meaning of the 13th verse. The pause of contemplation is over. The trial is over. The wheels that have halted as it were in suspense for the moment, are to revolve again; and we are bidden to take notice once more of the faces of the cherubim as we have seen them, only that now the cherub itself is identified with the face of the ox; which is foremost, therefore: for through all this, while judgment is before us, God has nevertheless His harvest-field in view.
But now the cherubim mount up, and at last we have the full identification of the living creature with the figures upon the mercy-seat. "The cherubim mounted up . . . this was the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar." "I knew," says the prophet just after this, "I knew that they were cherubim." There is the complete identification. It is, as it were, those figures upon the mercy-seat that are now manifesting life and activity.
It is very striking as to this word "cherub" that only two derivations seem to be at all satisfactory for it. The one is from the word charab, "to engrave," of which "cherub" would be but the past participle; thus, "the forms engraved." This suits (but alone suits) the cherubim of the mercy-seat. On the other hand, Hengstenberg contends for another derivation, which certainly exactly suits the meaning of the living creatures, according to which it is a compound word, che-rov, "as it were a multitude."* But here, not the mercy-seat is before us, but the Chebar vision. Significant it surely is that the one meaning now goes over as it were to the other. The one is, no doubt, the interpretation of the other. But, more than this, the reality is now taking the place of the mere symbol. The cherubim are indeed the living ones, in every way full of life, and standing for that multitudinous host of God which in all His creation ever obey His will.
{*Another derivation has been given -che-reb "As if pleading." These assessors to the throne are pleading for righteous judgment upon an apostate nation. At other times their pleading has been for mercy on the basis of the blood upon the mercy-seat. But that having been rejected by the people, nothing but judgment is left. -S. Ridout.}
But, alas, for Israel, the mercy-seat is left, and the cherubim now go forth from it. "And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went forth, and the wheels beside them. And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of Jehovah’s house;" and now also "the glory of the God of Israel is over them above." It is God who is leaving His earthly abode; and yet even as He leaves, everything assumes a greater clearness and a fuller glory. Notice once more, as we are called to it, the close dependence of the wheels upon the living creatures. As the cherubim mount up, the wheels mount up with them: they leave the earth. ’Thus as far as Israel is concerned, whatever suspension of the sentence there may be (and which we read in this lingering yet a while over the east gate), it is signified to us that they are soon, as it were, to revolve no more.
As far as prophetic history is concerned, we see the truth of this fully at the present time. Prophecy as to them has ceased. We are in a gap of time which has for them, as it were, no more significance! And yet in this very way how sad a significance! In truth there was a longer suspense than this lingering over the east gate might seem to signify. God’s mercy lingered, as we know, over the returned remnant until, in fulfilment of what the countless voices of the prophets had declared, He who was to come did come, and Messiah, Himself the King of glory, stood in their midst. But it was only to find rejection proportionately decisive and complete. The wings that would have sheltered Jerusalem had to be withdrawn. She had once more to be given up to enemies that would lay her in the dust and her children with her. The glorious vision in the midst is gone, but it has gone in fact to heaven, a heaven which is opened for us that we may see it there. The living creatures are connected with this throne above, which has just been intimated to us in Ezekiel. Israel abides outside of the glory without a mercy-seat and without a priest to represent them before it; but for us there is only a nearer, sweeter vision, a fuller reality, a gospel of the glory which is indeed no longer in the face of Moses but in the face of Him who, Man as He is, is "the image of the invisible God," the effulgence of it.*
{*There seems to be a striking correspondence between this vision of the removal of the throne of God from the temple to the chariot of the cherubim, from earth to heaven, and the removal of God’s testimony from the Jews and Jerusalem to the Church, as recorded in the book of Acts. During His life our Lord had declared to the Jews, "Behold your house is left unto you desolate" (Mat 23:38-39), and the removal or transfer of the glory is seen taking place at Pentecost. The Jewish "house" being left desolate, the shekinah glory descends upon believers, instead of filling the temple of Jehovah (2Ch 13:14). The persecution of the saints develops until in the stoning of Stephen the glory is seen in heaven rather than upon earth. Gradually the blessing extends from Jerusalem to Samaria, Caesarea and Antioch -a Gentile city. The meeting at Jerusalem to consider the relation of the Gentiles to the law (Act 15:1-41) may be considered as the final lingering upon the threshold of the temple; but the widening circle of blessing reaching to Ephesus, Philippi and Corinth shows how a great change was impending. Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem is, we may say, the final appeal of lingering love, and his closing words to the Jews at Rome (Act 28:28) indicate the complete removal of the shekinah from Judaism: "The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear it." -S. Ridout.}
4. We have what is now in some sense an appendix to what has gone before. The judgment having been definitely pronounced, the glory, as we have seen, yet lingers, and I he mercy which is in God’s heart expresses itself more freely, as one may say, because of the judgment pronounced. God’s character being cleared by this, He is free to show what is in His heart. At the same time, that there may be no false hope, the judgment is re-affirmed.
We are introduced once more to the leaders of the people who have, as we see, the people behind them. They are twenty-five men (the number of the priests as given before), but these are not the priests, though they represent, as one may say, all represented by the priesthood -that is, the people at large, and therefore are the same in number. Among them, two prominent men recall in their very names the false hopes which are misleading the people: Jaazaniah, "the Lord heareth," who is the son of Azzur, "the helper," with Pelatiah, "Jehovah delivers," the son of Benaiah, "Jehovah builds up." Their words correspond to their names. These are the men, as it is declared to Ezekiel, who supplant Jeremiah’s exhortation to the captives to build houses in the place of their captivity, which was to be long (Jer 29:5), by building in Jerusalem. Judgment is not near, they say. They infer, the time to act after this manner never will be. If Jerusalem, in the midst of all its enemies, may seem indeed to be but a cauldron, and "we are the flesh in it," be it so, say they, we can accept that place with all that we find in it. The words, vague though they may seem, can scarcely be anything but mockery. They base themselves upon such prophecies as both Ezekiel and his contemporary Jeremiah were uttering against the place, which nevertheless still stood, defying its adversaries; so they argue that it will stand. These prophecies are idle talk, say they, suited enough for exiles whom the land has already cast out, and who have forfeited the privileges of the chosen people. For us, they say, we need not fear them.
Swiftly as the destruction was coming, God yet meets this with another prophetic warning. He who was acquainted with all their thoughts, would give them presently their full answer. Already the prophet sees the slain in the city, slain at the hands of those who have misled them. These would fulfil the figure, and be, manifestly enough, the flesh in the cauldron; but for themselves, the deceivers of the people, there waited still a severer judgment. God would not suffer the city to be even the tomb of such. The sword which they defied, even while they trembled at it, Jehovah would bring upon them, taking them out of the midst of the city which they had profaned, to fall by the sword in the border of Israel; they would witness before their death the calamities which they had brought upon the people. Cast out of the city, they would be judged in the border of Israel, and should learn there, to their utter confusion, that it was Jehovah who had been speaking to them -Jehovah, whose ordinances they had transgressed, while they claimed the privileges which belonged to His elect, and had gone after the ordinances of the nations around them.*
{*For an Israelite especially it was a great dishonor not to be buried, or not in his own sepulchre. There seems to have been, in the care taken of the body and its burial, a hint of the resurrection to blessing. So Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah (Gen 21:1-34). To have no burial, as in the case of Jehoiakim (Jer 22:19) was like "the burial of an ass" -S. Ridout.}
While Ezekiel thus prophesies, one of these leaders, the man whose name falsely spoke of deliverance and building up, Pelatiah, died. Vision it is still; yet one would naturally argue that this was, in fact, an actual occurrence at the time. Such a proof has constantly accompanied true prophecy, that God was speaking in it. There was to be no deliverance nor building up in the way that they imagined to themselves; but, as before, the heart of the prophet, standing truly before God for the people, trembles at the judgment manifested, and again there is a question in his heart, as has been uttered before, whether any can survive it. "Ah, Lord Jehovah," he cries "wilt Thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel?" But this had been already answered again and again.
It is but a moment of dismay; a confusion which the Lord answers in grace, explaining to him that these people, the objects of His divine judgment, are not such a remnant. His brethren, such as the prophet could truly own as kindred, those who truly represent the house of Israel, are not such men as these, but have characteristically their position among those very exiles to whom the then inhabitants of Jerusalem were saying, "Get you far from Jehovah," as having no claim upon Him. In their own possession the land still was, and so, they argued, it would continue. Was not the condition of those in exile a plain proof of the displeasure of God against them? Nay, says the Lord: it is amongst these that I am, and though it is true that in this national breach of the covenant they are removed far off among the nations and scattered among the countries, and though they have lost the recognized sanctuary in Jerusalem, yet I Myself will be to them for a little sanctuary in the countries whither they come. It was not indeed all that they were looking for, and might look for yet, it was an unseen Presence that was with them. The glory was unseen, save by such opened eyes as were those of Ezekiel . Nevertheless, in the "remnant according to the election of grace," as the apostle speaks afterwards, there was the assurance of what grace would be in its fulness when the time should come for the completion of those promises which God had unconditionally made, and which, therefore, He would fulfil. The sap of life was in the tree, although it was a tree cut down; and it would in due time manifest itself in the renewal of all they had departed from, and much more: "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah" -it is the exiles plainly to whom He is turning, He has no promise for the doomed inhabitants of the city itself -"I will even gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where ye are scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel." But along with this there must be and would be, therefore, the return of heart to God which would alone be the fulfilment of such promises. The terms of the new covenant must be fulfilled, and they would contemplate not the mere setting up again of the glory that had departed, but much more, the inward renewal, in which alone they would be manifested as the true seed of Abraham and the heirs of all that God had promised to him
Here, it is plain, we go far beyond the mere return of a remnant out of Babylon, such as took place under the Persian kings. This was, according to the Lord’s figure, but a fig-tree planted in the vineyard, under conditions of fruit-bearing, which were not fulfilled; and when He who was to come, and did come, seeking fruit upon the fig-tree and finding none, according to His word it withered away. But this could not be the end of the promise -the free and unchangeable promise of God, which never can be taken away from the people to whom He made it. And the words of Jehovah here look on to an end not come even yet, but which through all the length of time elapsed He has never forgotten: "They shall come thither," says the Lord; "and they shall take away from thence all its detestable things, and all its abominations; and I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them; and they shall be my people and I will be their God." This, then, is afresh certified with all the assurance of God’s word, and in plain view of all that has just before been denounced in the way of judgment. Nay, it is repeated here: "But as for them whose heart walketh heartily after their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their heads, saith the Lord Jehovah."
And now the breach between the city and the Lord is consummated: "And the glory of Jehovah went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city" -the Mount of Olives. How it reminds us of how the Lord Himself took leave of the same city from the same place! Refused by the world, and risen from the dead, He went up finally to heaven in the eyes of His disciples from the Mount of Olives once more. The angels prophesy His return, as Zechariah had prophesied it long before. For us, the Mount of Olives with its Bethany home, is the witness of what is ours in the meantime. Olivet is the memorial of the spiritual unction which has been poured out upon us, anointed with which we wait for His return. Meanwhile, in widowed loneliness, God’s earthly city waits also; but in how different a manner! Her captivity has been unbroken ever since, and it is to the men of the captivity that the prophet now returns. "The Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God unto Chaldea to them of the captivity, and the vision that I had seen went up from me." In principle, the story is told out, although there may be many and important details that are to follow. What a word for the elders who had been waiting all this time the result of this prophetic rapture: "I spake unto them of the captivity all the things that Jehovah had shown me."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain § 3. A Vision of Jerusalem's Sin and Doom…
§ 3. A Vision of Jerusalem's Sin and Doom (Ezekiel 8-11)
Date, August-September, 591 b.c.
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A year and two months after his call to be a prophet, Ezekiel was visited in his house by the elders of the Jewish colony at Tel-abib, and in their presence he fell into a trance, during which he was transported in spirit to Jerusalem, and witnessed, as in a dream, a remarkable drama being enacted there. The glory of God was present during this vision in the same symbolic form, and accompanied by the same living chariot, as in Ezekiel 1, but with this difference, that it sometimes left the chariot and took up its position elsewhere. Ezekiel witnessed first the idolatries practised in the Temple (Ezekiel 8), then the slaughter of all the idolaters in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 9), and next the destruction of the city by the fire of God's holiness (Ezekiel 10). He then heard a parable of judgment pronounced against the leaders of Jerusalem's wicked policy, and a message of comfort addressed to the exiles who were despised by their countrymen at home. Finally he saw the glory of God departing from the Temple, and having come back in spirit to Babylonia he awoke from his trance and recounted his vision to the exiles there (Ezekiel 11). There is no reason to doubt that Ezekiel here describes an actual experience. He was not, of course, literally transported to Jerusalem, but only seemed to be taken thither, as one might in a dream. The idolatries he saw were those which he knew to be carried on in Jerusalem, and the persons mentioned in the vision were doubtless also known to him as prominent leaders in the sin of the city. Yet in his trance these persons and practices, and the whole scene, stood out before his mind's eye with a vividness and reality which enabled him to describe them as actually seen. The truths presented in the symbols, and expressed in the messages, of judgment were really communicated to him by God.
The Idolatry of Jerusalem
Various forms of idolatry, increasing in heinousness and rising to a climax, were seen practised in the precincts of the Temple. First there was the 'image of jealousy' (Eze_8:3-6), next a species of secret animal-worship (Eze_8:7-12), then the lamentation of the women for Tammuz (Eze_8:13-15), and lastly the worship of the sun (Eze_8:16-18).
1. The sixth year.. the sixth month] August-September, 591 b.c. Mine house] to which Ezekiel's prophetic activity was confined (Eze_3:24). The elders of Judah] the leading men of the exiled community at Tel-abib. The hand of the Lord GOD fell] as in Eze_1:3. The vision, with all its meaning, was the result of divine inspiration.
2. The same appearance as the enthroned Figure in Ezekiel 1. The living chariot is not mentioned here, but, as it appears afterwards without any special explanation, it was probably present in the vision from the first.
3. The form of an hand] the same reverent reserve as in Eze_2:9. In the visions of God] Though Ezekiel's transference is described in physical terms he was not taken to Jerusalem in body, but only in spirit. Inner gate] RV 'gate of the inner court.' Solomon's Temple had two courts: the great or outer court (2Ch_4:9), and the inner court or court of the priests (1Ki_6:36; 2Ch_4:9). We know very littl e about the arrangement of the gates, but in Ezekiel's time the inner court had probably three, one on every side except the W., and the outer court at least two, one on the N. and one on the E. The gate in this v. is the inner northern gate. We must distinguish between the gate or gateway, which was a block of buildings, and the doors by which the gateway was entered at either end. The image of jealousy] An idol figure, so called from the divine jealousy which it aroused. The reference is probably to the image set up by Manasseh (2Ki_21:7) and removed by Josiah (2Ki_23:6). The seat means the place where it had stood.
4. The glory.. was there] perhaps over the main Temple building, S. of the gate where Ezekiel was. In the next v. he turns and looks N. All the idolatries were thus enacted in God's very presence.
5. Northward at] RV 'northward of.'
Gate of the altar] apparently still the northern inner gate. It is uncertain why it was so called. This image of jealousy] Ezekiel saw the image, which had not been there when he left Jerusalem, now restored to its old place. It was in the outer court, and Ezekiel, standing within the gateway, saw it through the entrance.
7. The door of the court] the opening of the gateway next the outer court.
8. A door] leading into one of the chambers of the gateway.
10. This animal-worship may have been borrowed from Egypt, where beetles, crocodiles, snakes, cats, jackals, and other animais were worshipped; or it may have been a survival and revival of ancient superstitions native to Palestine. Some think that Babylon is as likely as Egypt to have been the source of the practices.
11. Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan] Shaphan was a famous scribe who took part in Josiah's reformation (2Ki_22:8). Two of his sons, Ahikam (Jer_26:24) and Gemariah (Jer_36:10, Jer_36:25, were friendly to Jeremiah. If Jaazaniah was the son of this Shaphan he was of a different character from his father and brothers.
12. In the dark] Secrecy was a marked feature of this animal-worship. The Lord seeth us not, etc.] This was the excuse and perhaps the belief of these idolaters, though God's glorious presence was even then manifest to Ezekiel's eyes.
14. The door.. toward the north] probably the outer doorway of the outer northern gate. The women would thus be outside the Temple precincts altogether. Tammuz] a deity worshipped both in Babylonia and in Phœnicia—the same as the Greek Adonis. He appears to have been a god of the spring, and the myth regarding him told of his early death and of the descent of Istar his bride into the underworld in search of him. The death of Tammuz symbolised the destruction of the spring vegetation by the heat of summer, and it was celebrated annually by seven days of women's mourning in the 4th month (June-July), which was called Tammuz. This superstition had been introduced into Jerusalem.
16. Between the porch and the altar] The altar of burnt offering was probably in the centre of the inner court, and the main Temple building faced it on the vv. The sun-worship now described was just in front of the sacred building: cp. Mat_23:35; Luk_11:51. With their backs, etc] This followed from their turning towards the rising sun. Their position implied the greatest contempt for the God of Israel, whose glory was at that moment visible to the prophet close to them. The worship of the sim and other heavenly bodies was introduced by the kings of Judah before Josiah's day, and abolished during his reformation (2Ki_23:5, 2Ki_23:11). Sun-images are mentioned as early as the days of Asa (2Ch_14:5 RV). Jeremiah describes the worship of the Queen of Heaven (probably the moon or the planet Venus) as prevalent in Jerusalem before the second captivity (Jer_44:17).
17. The branch to their nose] usually explained as a ceremony connected with sun-worship. Persian sunworshippers held bunches of the twigs of certain trees before their mouths, that they might not contaminate the sun with their breath. Many scholars think we should read, 'they send a stench to my nostrils.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain sixth month
sixth month
i.e. September.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain Visions in Relation to Jerusalem
CHAPTERS 8-11
Visions in Relation to Jerusalem
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1. The vision of abomination in the temple (Eze 8:1-18)
2. The vision of the linen-clothed man with the inkhorn (Eze 9:1-11)
3. The vision of the coals of fire (Eze 10:1-22)
4. The vision concerning the leaders: The glory departs (Eze 11:1-25)
Eze 8:1-18. This vision shows the abomination which prevailed in the temple of Jehovah.
In the visions of God, Ezekiel is brought to the door of the inner gate that looks to the north. Here was the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. Some have taken this and the following visions to be retrospective. It has been said, “It was as if he were translated back to Jerusalem, and to the time when these things were occurring.” Such is the view of some critics; however, it is untenable. These visions would lose their meaning if the prophet seemed to be translated back to Jerusalem and to the time when these abominations had happened in Israel’s past history. Later we find the names of persons given, whom he saw. They certainly were living persons known to the prophet Ezekiel and his contemporaries. One of them died while Ezekiel prophesied (Eze 11:13). What was the image of jealousy which provoketh to jealousy? It was an idol. The word is used in Deu 4:16, where it is translated “graven image.” It is also found in 2Ch 33:7; 2Ch 33:15, where it refers to the idol, which Manasseh had made and put up in the temple.
After Manasseh’s idolatry came Josiah’s great reformation. After his death, Judah plunged into greater wickedness under the reign of wicked kings, and a revival of idolatry followed once more. Such a wrath-provoking idol was beheld by the prophet. This image they worshipped. “Son of man, seest thou what they do?” They must have lain prostrate before that idol. And yet the glory of the God of Israel was still there.
That there will be a similar scene enacted in a future temple, during the great tribulation, is well known to all students of prophecy. (See 2Th 2:1-17 and Rev 13:1-18.)
The prophet saw creeping things and beasts worshipped; the elders and the people were practising Egyptian idolatry of the most degrading kind. Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, is especially mentioned. Shaphan was the scribe, who received from the high priest, Hilkiah, the book of the law, and read it before King Josiah 2Ki 22:8-20; Jer 39:14. The son of this God-fearing scribe was the leader of the idolators. And these idol worshippers, each in his chamber of imagery (probably individual cells), said: “This LORD seeth us not; the LORD has forsaken the earth.” They denied His omniscience and omnipresence. The apostasy in Christendom is going the same road.
The women wept for Tammuz, the Babylonian “Dumuzi,” the god of spring, who dies, and revives each year. It was a vile, obscene cult, for with the worship of Tammuz were connected immoral, licentious ceremonies. Sun-worship was the crown of all these abominations. (See Eze 8:16-18).
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Time and Place of the Vision
The Time and Place of the Vision
v. 1. And it came to pass in the sixth year, the year after the captivity of King Jehoiachin, in the sixth month, In the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, where Ezekiel had shut himself up in agreement with the Lord’s command, 3:24, and the elders of Judah sat before me, those of the captivity having come to consult with him on some question, that the hand of the Lord God fell there upon me, transmitting an unusual measure of power to him for the purpose of a special manifestation.
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v. 2. Then I beheld, while in the state of peculiar ecstasy brought on by the Lord’s influence upon him, and, lo! a likeness as the appearance of fire, the form of a person shining with fire or emitting a fiery glow; from the appearance of His loins even downward, fire, as though kindled or burning; and from His loins even upward as the appearance of brightness, of a wonderful splendor, as the color of amber, the glitter of polished brass. This shining person has been identified, and probably correctly, with the Angel of Jehovah, with the Son of God, as he revealed Himself in the Old Testament.
v. 3. And He put forth the form of an hand, which may have represented the Spirit of the Lord, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, in ecstasy, not in an actual physical removal, and brought me in the visions of God, in the state brought about by the Lord’s direct influence, to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate, that leading from the court of the priests, that looketh toward the north, the prophet thus occupying a position as one summoning the avenging hosts from the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, some sort of idol-image, which provoketh to jealousy, challenging the jealous wrath of Jehovah. The image may have been one of Baal or of Astarte, such as Mannaseh had erected in the Sanctuary; Cf 2Ki 21:7.
v. 4. And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel, so called on account of the contrast inferred over against the idols of the heathen, was there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain, 3:22-23. where He appeared on his throne accompanied by cherubs and wheels, an awe-inspiring spectacle. The Lord purposely revealed Himself in all his glory, in order to make the idolatrous practices of the apostate Jews appear all the more repulsive by way of contrast.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
Ezekiel tells about another vision he saw.
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So it came about
This phrase is used here to mark the beginning of a new part of the story. If your language has a way for doing this, you could consider using it here.
in the sixth year
You may need to make explicit the time period of which this is the sixth year. AT: "in the sixth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin" (See: Ordinal Numbers and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month
This is the sixth month of the Hebrew calendar. The fifth day is near the beginning of September on Western calendars. AT: "the fifth day of the sixth month" (See: Hebrew Months and Ordinal Numbers)
the hand of the Lord Yahweh again fell upon me
This should be translated literally, as Ezekiel later sees something like a hand. Others may choose to consider the hand a metaphor for Yahweh's presence or power. (See: Metaphor)
Lord Yahweh
See how you translated this in Ezekiel 2:4.
fell upon
"took hold of"
a likeness with the appearance of a man
Here the abstract noun "likeness" means that what Ezekiel saw looked like a man. Both "likeness" and "appearance" can be translated with a verbal phrase. AT: "there was someone who appeared to be a man" (See: Abstract Nouns)
glowing metal
When metal is very hot, it glows with a yellow or orange light.
the appearance of his hips ... the appearance of something shining
The abstract noun "appearance" can be translated as a verb. AT: "what appeared to be his hips ... what appeared to be something shining" (See: Abstract Nouns)
translationWords
year
day
elder
kingdom of Judah
hand
Lord Yahweh
fire
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 8:1–11:25 This section depicts the defilement of the Jerusalem…
8:1–11:25 This section depicts the defilement of the Jerusalem Temple (ch 8), which led to its being abandoned by the Lord and subsequently destroyed (9:1–11:13). This abandonment was actually good news for those already in exile, for the Lord was coming to dwell with them, identifying them as the ones who bore hope for the future of God’s people.
8:1-18 In visionary form, the prophet Ezekiel was shown four ways in which the people were engaged in practices that defiled their land. This vision explains why the presence of the Lord left his sanctuary.
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8:1 We are in the sixth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity (see study note on 1:2), and fourteen months have elapsed since the opening vision of the book. During most of the intervening time, the prophet had been performing the sign acts of ch 4. Chapters 8–9 depict in visions the same defilement and consequent judgment of Jerusalem that ch 7 lays out in oracles. In this case, the prophet directed the message to the leaders (literally elders) of Judah, who had gathered at Ezekiel’s home. They were probably seeking a word of encouragement and comfort from the Lord (see also 14:1; 20:1), but what they received was a denunciation of the sins of the communities they represented.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.