Ezekiel 8:18

Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.

Though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear - (, "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me;" ).

Remarks:

(1) In this chapter Ezekiel is shown in a vision the abominations on account of which God is about to forsake His own temple, and to give it and the city of Jerusalem to destruction (Ezekiel 8:17). The prophet is permitted to see, with his own eyes, "the image" which provoked God's holy "jealousy," at the door of the inner temple gate (); then also "the chambers of imagery" covered with portraits of abominable idols () and before them the 70 elders of Israel offering incense in the dark, as though the Lord saw them not, and had forsaken the earth (); next, the very women weeping for the imaginary sorrows of the impure god Tammuz (); and a greater abomination still being perpetrated "between the porch and the altar" of Yahweh, where the ministers of the Lord ought to have been weeping for their own and the nation's sins (), and deprecating His wrath, the high priest and the four and twenty leaders of the courses of priests, with their backs turned on the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, as they were worshipping the rising sun ().

(2) One could hardly believe that such abominations were possible among the people of God's covenant; and, after having seen them, one's only wonder is, that God should have spared them so long, and that, when He did take vengeance, He did not utterly destroy the whole race, root and branch, so as to leave no surviving remnant. But is there nothing analogous among ourselves? If God were to give any of us a comprehensive view of all the abominations perpetrated in one nation, or even one city, at one time, would our so-called Christian peoples have much cause for glorying as superior to Israel and Jerusalem when God was about to take vengeance on His covenant-people for their sins? How grievously must our national and individual covetousness, which is idolatry (), "provoke God to jealousy"! (.)

(3) Again, if "in the wall" of most men's outward profession of Christianity "a hole" or window were opened; whereby the inner heart could be seen (), and "a door" dug whereat one could "Go in, and behold the wicked abominations" there, what awful pictures "pourtrayed in the chambers of every man's imagery" () would be discovered!

(4) How many, even in higher positions of life, such as were "the ancients of the house of Israel," would be found "doing in the dark" the deeds of darkness (), "burning incense" to the idols of the heart, lust, and self, and virtually saving "The Lord seeth us not, the Lord hath forsaken the earth!" (.)

(5) Again, as many women wept for the idol Tammuz () who "grieved not for the affliction of Joseph" (), so how many professing Christian women waste in sickly and carnal sentimentality the tender and susceptible natures which God has given them wherewith to weep with them that weep, to heal the bruises of the suffering members of the Church, and to minister to those who need temporal or spiritual help!

(6) Again, how many in offices of ministerial responsibility, as the high priest and the twenty-four subordinate priests were (), who ought to be with their faces toward the Lord, and in His house interceding for their guilty country (), would be detected with their backs turned on the Lord, paying homage to those in princely stations, with their faces toward them as the rising sun in the east, and forgetting that "promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south: but God is the Judge; He putteth down one and setteth up another"! ( Psalms 75:6.)

(7) The more we search into the secret springs of human nature and of our own hearts, the more abominations shall we detect. And the more we thereby see the forbearance of God toward us, the more incentive have we to provoke no more so long-suffering a God. Our spiritual privileges are greater than those of the most highly favoured of the Old Testament people of God. "He that is least in the kingdom of heaven (that is, the Gospel dispensation) is greater than" their greatest (). Let us, then, seek, by the promised aid of the Holy Spirit, to "cast down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (). Let Christian women, instead of weeping over fictitious tales of morbid love and carnal sorrows, like the women who wept for the beautiful and licentious Tammuz (), consecrate their fine sensibilities to the active promotion of the glory of Him who is altogether lovely, and whose bitter sufferings for us should call forth our tears of gratitude and glowing love. Let them, instead of resembling the women weeping for Tammuz, try to resemble the devotion Mary, who, when all others were gone, stood at the sepulchre of her crucified Lord weeping, and so had her tears dried up by the risen Saviour Himself (John 20:11). Let ministers seek to be pure in their aims and motives, having a single eye to the glory of God. And let all guard against an unbridled imaginati on, and against every bosom-idol which would provoke our holy and loving God to jealousy.