Ezekiel 8:16

Ezekiel 8:16 f. Sun Worship. The next scene is a group of sun-worshippers with their backs significantly turned towards the Temple. This also points to Babylonian influence. Sun worship, abolished by Josiah (2 Kings 23:11) had apparently been reintroduced. What the more abominable thing, alluded to in Ezekiel 8:17, may have been, we do not know, as the phrase they put the branch to their nose is obscure: some imagine it conceals a reference to a definitely immoral worship. [But see J. H. Moulton's Early Zoroastrianism, pp. x, 189- 191. He says, referring to the Magi. The earliest evidence of their activity as a sacred tribe is in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 8:17), where they are found at Jerusalem, in or before 591 B.C., worshipping the sun, and holding to their face a branch, which is the predecessor of the later barsom (p. x). Of the barsom he says that Parsi priests still hold it to the face as they minister before the sacred fire (p. 190). J. G. Frazer, with reference to Strabo's account of Zoroastrianism in Cappadocia, says: The perpetual fire burnt on an altar, surrounded by a heap of ashes, in the middle of the temple; and the priests daily chanted their liturgy before it, holding in their hands a bundle of myrtle rods and wearing on their heads tall felt caps with cheek-pieces which covered their lips, lest they should defile the sacred flame with their breath. Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3 i. 191. A.S. P.] At any rate, after so many references to ritual sin, it is refreshing to find Ezekiel ending the indictment which justified the doom with a definite charge of wrong-doing: they have filled the land with violence.