Ezekiel 8:5-16

B. The Abominations of Jerusalem 8:5-16

TRANSLATION

(5) And he said unto me, Son of man, set, I pray you, your eyes to the way of the north, and behold, north of the altar gate was this image of jealousy in the entrance. (6) And He said unto me, Son of man, do you see what they are doing? the great abominations which the house of Israel are doing here that I should go far away from My sanctuary? But You shall yet see greater abominations. (7) And He brought me unto the entrance of the court; and I looked, and behold, a hole in the wall. (8) And He said unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall. And I dug in the wall, and behold, a door. (9) And He said unto me, Go in, and see the evil abominations which they are doing here. (10) So I went in, and I saw, and behold, every form of creeping thing and detestable beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the wall round about. (11) And standing before them were seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan was standing in their midst, each man with his tenser in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense was going up. (12) And He said unto me, Son of man, have you seen that which the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each in his chamber of imagery? for they are saying, The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land. (13) And He said unto me, Again you shall see yet greater abominations which they are doing. (14) And He brought me unto the door of the gate of the house of the LORD which was upon the north; and behold, there the women were sitting weeping over Tammuz. (15) And he said unto me, Son of man, do you see this? You shall again see yet greater abominations than these. (16) And He brought me unto the inner court of the house of the LORD, and behold, at the door of the Temple of the LORD between the porch and the altar were about twenty-five men, with their backs towards the Temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east; and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

COMMENTS

1. The image of jealousy (Ezekiel 8:5-6). Ezekiel was told to look to a place outside the Temple courtyard within the great court and there he saw another image of jealousy. The original image of jealousy mentioned in Ezekiel 8:3 may have been the graven image of Asherah which King Manasseh had erected (2 Kings 21:7). Such an image was an outrage. Israel's God was provoked by all images (Exodus 20:3-5). The presence of the image in the vicinity of the Temple provoked the Lord to jealousy; i.e., the desire to vindicate His own exclusive rights.

This image was associated with popular religion, for it was located outside the north gate of the Temple in the great public court. The old Canaanite paganism was flourishing in Jerusalem though perhaps without official support. The image was probably the Canaanite goddess Asherah. It may be that they were thinking of this goddess as the wife of Yahweh.[210] If so, the image of jealousy would represent a Canaanization of Israelite worship. This debased concept must have dominated the popular mind in Jerusalem although the image had not been officially reinstated in the Temple. Divine interrogation called the prophet's attention to men worshiping before the image. Such practices justified, yea compelled, God's withdrawal from the Temple (Ezekiel 8:6).

[210] Cf. 1 Kings 15:13; 2 Kings 21:7, In the fifth century Jewish cult at Elephantine in Egypt, Yahweh was represented as having a wife. In most pagan cults the chief deity had a consort.

2. The secret animal cult (Ezekiel 8:7-13). Ezekiel was now led onward as through successive stages of an inferno of idolatry.[211] He was first escorted through the door of the gate which opened from the inner to the outer court. His court was surrounded by chambers or cells (Jeremiah 35:4). There he discovered a hole in the outer wall of the Temple (Ezekiel 8:7). This hole he was told to enlarge until he could crawl through it. Digging is still a metaphor for searching out the truth. Inside the side chambers of the Temple he saw a door which was used by those who were involved in illicit worship (Ezekiel 8:8). The divine voice commanded Ezekiel to pass through the door so that he might observe firsthand the abominations secretly being practiced by the leaders of the nation (Ezekiel 8:9).

[211] Plumptre, PC, p. 144.

How shocked Ezekiel must have been when he walked through that door! The religious perversion was worse than he had ever imagined. Upon the walls of that chamber the prophet saw the representation of all manner of creeping things (small animals)[212] and beasts (larger domestic animals). The figures on the walls are said to be detestable either because they were animals declared to be unclean in the Law or because of the use to which they were being put as objects of veneration. It would appear that some of the leaders of Judah had adopted the Egyptian custom of animal worship.[213] Various Egyptian cults made idols of the cat, the crocodile, the hawk, the scarab beetle and other animals. This abomination may have come into Judah during the brief period when King Jehoiakim had been a vassal of Pharaoh Necho (608-605 B.C.). At the very time when Ezekiel is said to have had this vision, King Zedekiah in Jerusalem was making political overtures to Egypt. Perhaps this vision is setting forth the idea that some of Judah's leaders were looking to Egypt for spiritual and political support.

[212] Creeping things (Heb., remes) designates all animals in Genesis 9-3, water animals in Psalms 104:25. However, usually the word indicates all creatures which appear to the observer to move close to the ground.

[213] Cooke, (ICC, p. 94) points out that certain aspects of Babylonian religion would fit this description equally well. Ellison (EMM, p. 42) thinks Ezekiel is referring to all the foreign cults, especially from Assyria and Babylonia that had poured into the country in the time of Ahaz and Manasseh, but which had influenced mainly the ruling classes.

Standing before the engraved images were seventy elders of the nation. The figure seventy is probably to be understood in contrast to the twenty-five of Ezekiel 8:16. Perhaps both figures are to be taken symbolically. Virtually all the elders were involved in this idolatry, whereas a smaller percentage of the priests had taken the final plunge into apostasy in Ezekiel 8:16. The seventy here are probably not to be understood as any official governing body.[214] Acting as their own priests, these leaders were offering to those pictorial gods the incense which none but the sons of Aaron were to offer and which none but Yahweh was to receive.

[214] From the earliest times Israel had a ruling body of seventy men. See Exodus 24:1; Numbers 11:16. In the intertestamental period this body came to be known as the Sanhedrin.

Jaazaniah is singled out for special mention because of the prominence of his family. He was the son of Shaphan, the scribe who played such an influential role in the reform efforts of Josiah (2 Kings 22:10 f.). Jaazaniah[215] must have been the proverbial black sheep of this otherwise godly family.[216] (Ezekiel 8:11).

[215] Another Jaazaniah, the son of a certain Jeremiah, appears in Jeremiah 35:3; yet another, the son of Azur, in Ezekiel 11:1.

[216] Two other sons of Shaphan, Gemariah and Ahikam, apparently were pious Israelites (Jeremiah 36:10; Jeremiah 39:14).

In the actions of the seventy elders there is a combination of secrecy and despair.[217] These men were ashamed openly to go back on the covenant made under Josiah, but they had opened their hearts to the idolatries and memories of the past. Obviously they were not successful in hiding their abominations, for Ezekiel five hundred miles away knew what they were doing.

[217] Ellison, EMM p. 43.

Were the images literally upon the walls of the Temple chambers? Probably not. The wall engravings were the outward symbols of the idol worship engraved upon the hearts and lives of the elders.[218]

[218] Blackwood, EPH, p. 74.

The tour of the inner Temple chambers ended with a question and a declaration by the Lord. To underscore the tragedy of this scene the Lord asked the prophet if he had observed that which was taking place in those private chambers. Two additional details are added in Ezekiel 8:12. The elders were practicing the pagan rites in the darkness. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the pagan rites were being performed individually as well as collectively by the elders, each in his chamber of imagery. Apparently each worshiper had his own private cubicle where the Egyptian rites were performed.[219]

[219] Others interpret each In his chambers of imagery to refer to the imaginations of those concerned; still others, to the homes of the worshipers.

The Lord who knows the hearts of all men revealed to Ezekiel the inner attitudes of those apostate elders. They affirmed (in their heart, if not openly) that the Lord (Yahweh) did not see their actions. By this they meant either (1) that God was not omniscient; or (2) what is more likely, that God was totally disinterested in the affairs of His people. The very name of their leader, Jaazaniah the Lord is listening should have warned them that God heard their blasphemous boasts.

It was also the conviction of these apostate elders that the Lord has forsaken the land of Judah.[220] (Ezekiel 8:12). To them Yahweh was no more than a local deity who had abdicated. They were free to do as they pleased without fear. They saw in the tragedies which so recently had befallen the land abundant proof that God had abandoned His people. Why continue to worship a God who would not care for His people? Such is the logic of the carnal mind. Sorrows should not cause a man to question whether God has forsaken him, but rather whether he has forsaken God.

[220] Here is the first of a series of popular half proverbs thirteen all told which are cited in Ezekiel. See Ezekiel 11:3; Ezekiel 12:22; Ezekiel 18:2; Ezekiel 18:19; Ezekiel 33:10; Ezekiel 37:11.

The first phase of Ezekiel's sight-seeing tour of the Jerusalem Temple ended with the assurance that other abominations were yet to be observed (Ezekiel 8:13).

3. The Tammuz cult (Ezekiel 8:14-15). The prophet was next conducted into the inner court in front of the northern gate of the Temple. There he observed a group of women weeping for Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14). This is the only reference to this ancient Babylonian cult in Palestine. Whereas the name Tammuz may have been a new importation, the cult itself was ancient in Palestine. Tammuz (or Dumuzi) was the son and/or lover of Ishtar, He was a vegetation god who was thought to die and go to the nether world each year in the fall, only to make his return to the land of the living in the spring. As the vegetation withered and rivers dried up, the annual death of Tammuz was lamented with public dirges. Women joined Ishtar in mourning a dead lover in the intense drought of summer. The fourth month of the Hebrew calendar still bears the name Tammuz. Ezekiel's vision, it will be recalled, dates to mid August when Palestine is parched by the summer sun. Tammuz worship survived into the Middle Ages and vestiges of it can still be observed among the Yezidis of Kurdistan.[221]

[221] Fisch, SBB, p. 44.

Tammuz worship involved sexual rites promoting the fertility of fields and herds. The worst immoralities were associated with the worship of this god. Fertility cult theology was diametrically opposed to the Mosaic and prophetic concept of God. The God of the Bible controlled nature. He was quite independent of a heavenly consort and of stimulation by the sexual activity of His people. Yahweh was the eternally self-existing One who was absolutely holy and who demanded holiness as a condition of those who would approach Him.
Women seem to have led out in religious exercises in this period of Bible history.[222] Women were the most conservative element in Oriental religious life. If the women of the nation had fallen into the cesspool of filthy idolatry and false theology, could there be any hope for the nation? As terrible as it was to find the women of Judah participating openly in such perverse practice, the prophet was still to observe greater abominations (Ezekiel 8:15).

[222] According to 2 Kings 23:7 women wove hangings for Canaanite female deity Asherah. Jeremiah conducted a lively debate with some apostate female worshipers in the land of Egypt (Jeremiah 44:9; Jeremiah 44:15-19),

4. The worship of the sun (Ezekiel 8:16). In the final phase of his Temple tour Ezekiel was brought again into the inner court. This time, however, he was brought from the northern gate to the eastern side of the Temple between the porch and the sacrificial altar, This was a sacred area to which only the priests had access. There Ezekiel discovered twenty-five men facing the rising sun and worshiping before it. Facing eastward, their back would be toward the Temple of the Lord.[223] This was not merely the debasing of Yahweh worship by linking it with pagan ritual. This was the outright rejection of Yahweh and the enthronement of the Babylonian god Shamash, the sun god.[224] By their actions these men were proclaiming that the gods of Babylon had defeated Yahweh. That created object which should have reflected the glory of God was actually detracting from His glory.

[223] Normally priests prayed facing the Temple.

[224] Moses had warned against this worship (Deuteronomy 4:19). Josiah had attempted to eliminate it from the land (2 Kings 23:4-5).

It is reasonable to assume that those participating in this sun worship were priests and/or Levites. In Ezekiel 9:6 they are called elders so they must have held senior standing. Ezekiel estimated that about twenty-five were participating in the sunrise service, If there is any significance in this number it may be as follows twenty-four of the men may represent the twenty-four priestly courses (1 Chronicles 24:4-19) with the high priest at their head.[225] The thrust of the passage would be that apostasy prevailed in the ranks of the priesthood as well as among the tribal leaders and women.

[225] Feinberg, PE, p. 52