Ezekiel 8:11-12

Oh! what an awful account is here. The Prophet hath discovered now through the Lord's teaching him, by looking in through this hole in the wall, that it is not the common people, not the ignorant, not the unlearned only, that were given to idolatry; but the very elders, the ancients of the house of Israel, from whom the people ought to have received knowledge. The prophet saw seventy in number, that is, the whole Sanhedrim; meaning all the elders. Perhaps the vision meant to say, that even those who sat before Ezekiel in Babylon were to be included. And one more daring than his fellows the Prophet saw, whose person he knew, and to his everlasting disgrace he is mentioned by name. And the whole party were active and alive, ministering as the priests of the true God were used to do, in the temple service, with their censers. Lord! what is man! The Lord's second appeal comes in after such a representation uncommonly striking! Reader! have you and I seen such things in our day, in which the divine goodness is provoked? Oh! what chambers of imagery are there now in the world, yea, in the professing world! The Lord himself hath said, and who can unsay it: the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9.