EZEKIEL 8
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2003 James Melough
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.”
The time mentioned here, “the sixth year ... sixth month ... fifth day...” is
generally understood to refer to the time that king Jehoiachin had been in
exile, and that Zedediah, Judah’s last king, had been reigning; and the
reference to the prophet’s sitting in his house is also generally taken to
have reference to the command given him in 3:24 to shut himself within his
house, so that he was to cease going out to speak to the people, but rather,
to let them come to him when they wished to discuss something. It was under
that Divine arrangement that the elders had come to Ezekiel in his house; the
hand of God falling upon him meaning simply that the Spirit of God had come
upon him or had entered into him.
8:2. “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 of brightness, as the color of
amber.”
This was a theophany, a manifestation of God in a representative visible
form. From the waist downwards the form was fire; and above the waist,
gleaming bronze. Since fire and brass or bronze are both symbols of Divine
anger and judgment, the picture is of God about to execute judgment upon rebel
Judah.
8:3. “And he put forth the form of an 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, 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.”
The theophanic figure then extended his hand, grasped the prophet’s hair, and
transported him into the air, giving him a vision of Jerusalem, where at the
inner gate on the north side of the city, he saw an idol which provoked the
Lord’s jealous anger.
It is significant that Ezekiel was shown the north side of the city, for in
Scripture the north is the direction that speaks of intelligence or reason,
rather than faith which is always associated with the south. The people had
rejected God, and were following the dictates of their own evil minds.
8:4. “And, behold, the glory of the God of
Israel was there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain.”
Ezekiel was then shown the same glorious manifestation of God as had been
given him in 3:22-23.
8:5. “Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up
thine eyes now the way toward the north, 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.”
In obedience to the Divine command the prophet then looked northward, and saw
there just north of the altar gate the image which had provoked the Lord’s
fierce jealous anger.
8:6. “He said furthermore 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? but turn thee yet
again, and thou shalt see greater abominations.”
The “great abominations (filthy practices)” were Judah’s veneration of idols
while continuing to preserve the empty form of worshiping Jehovah, their
idolatrous hypocrisy so antagonizing Him that He was about to “go far off from
my (His) sanctuary,” that departure being accomplished by His bringing the
Babylonians to destroy His Temple, and carry the idolatrous people into
captivity.
That one idol, however, wasn’t the only thing provoking God’s anger. The
prophet was about to be shown even viler practices.
8:7. “And he brought me to the door of the
court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall.”
That literal hole in the wall was symbolic of the breach in the Divinely
ordained pattern of worship caused by the people’s idolatry.
8:8. “Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now
in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.”
Ezekiel’s having to dig portrays the truth that the evil was so carefully
disguised as not to be readily discernible, and in this is disclosed the truth
that the corruption lying under the facade of Christendom’s so-called worship
is also not readily apparent. For example, clerical garb distracts attention
from the fact that the whole clerical system - Protestant as well as Roman
Catholic - is anathema to God, for it is nothing less than the Nicolaitanism
denounced in Re 2:15, and in regard to which God says, “... which thing I
hate.”
The digging revealed a door through which the prophet beheld utter evil; and
so is it in regard to apostate Christianity. A careful examination of it in
the light of Scripture reveals similar great evil.
8:9. “And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the
wicked abominations that they do here.”
The prophet was then commanded to go through the door so that he might see the
filthy practices being engaged in by those who were supposed to be the elders
of the people. The same disgusting sights would meet his eyes were he still
on earth and permitted to see behind the religious facade of apostate
Christianity.
8:10. “So I went in and saw; and behold every
form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house
of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about.”
Carved or drawn on the walls were all kinds of reptiles, vermin, and every
imaginable loathsome creature, together with all the idols which Israel
worshiped.
8:11. “And there stood before them seventy men
of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood
Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a
thick cloud of incense went up.”
The seventy were the leaders of the nation, Jaazaniah being a descendant of a
family that had been outstandingly faithful in Israel, yet there he was
worshiping his favorite idol as the others were worshiping theirs.
8:12. “Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast
thou seen what the ancients of the house 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.”
“... the chambers of his imagery” is also translated, his room of pictures:
his idol or image room: his painted room. Each had his own idol or idols,
and a personal shrine at which he presented his idolatrous worship; their
consciences being freed from any sense of wrongdoing by their own false
reasoning that Jehovah had forsaken the land, and therefore took no notice of
what they did.
How accurately all this portrays the evil state of Christendom! Here too each
has his own “god” - mammon, learning, sports, pleasure, being but a few of the
gods worshiped, the consciences of the devotees being salved by an occasional
brief visit to “church,” or by the false conclusion that God doesn’t even
exist.
8:13. “He said also unto me, Turn thee yet
again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do.”
It might have been expected that the prophet had seen all of Israel’s
wickedness, but he hadn’t: he had been shown only the “tip of the iceberg.”
8:14. “Then he brought me to the door of the
gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat
women weeping for Tammuz.”
Again, the direction mentioned is “the north,” which as noted already, is
biblically synonymous with intelligence or reason rather than faith.
Relative to Tammuz, The New Bible Dictionary states that:
This mourning for the god Tammuz took place on the second day of the fourth
month (June/July).... It commemorated the legendary death of the Sumerian
deity Dumu.zi (‘true son’), the prediluvian shepherd and husband of Ishtar.
On his death, Ishtar mourned and called on all to do so. When she entered the
underworld all birth, life, and joy ceased. It is now known that Tammuz did
not rise to life with Ishtar’s return for he later appears as a god of the
underworld. Those who see him as a dying and rising vegetation-deity take
this to typify the disappearance of vegetation in the summer and its revival
in the following spring rains. The cult figures little in Assyrian and
Babylonian religion except for the Tammuz-liturgies, which support the
myth....
The women of Israel were just as idolatrous as the men.
8:15. “Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen
this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater
abominations than these.”
It might have been assumed that what the prophet had been shown was the full
extent of the idolatry, but worse was to follow.
8:16. “And he brought me into the inner court of
the Lord’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between
the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs
toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, and they
worshiped the sun toward the east.”
These men with their backs to the temple are generally believed to have been
priests, representative of the nation, for apart from the small godly remnant,
all the people had turned their backs on God. Nor should we miss the
significance of their number, twenty-five, for this number factorizes to 5
multiplied by 5, and five is the biblical number of responsibility. God would
hold them responsible for their wickedness, as He will every man who dies in
unbelief.
The mention of the east adds further evil significance, for it is the biblical
direction of sin and rejection of God, in spite of its being universally
associated with good, because of its association with the rising of the sun
and the coming of light, but it is to be remembered that it is the source of
natural light, the symbol of human intelligence, as opposed to spiritual light
of which the Holy Spirit is the Source. Every biblical reference to the east,
in fact, has an evil connotation. Those twenty-five men “worshiped the sun
toward the east.” They are representative of the nation which had rejected
the knowledge of God in favor of a self-willed worship dictated by man’s
fallen intellect.
8:17. “Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen
this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit
the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with
violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the
branch to their nose.”
Having rejected God’s control of their lives, and having lived according to
the dictates of their own wicked hearts, they had filled the land with
lawlessness, and therefore aroused the Lord’s anger.
Relative to the words “they put the branch to their nose,” nothing is known of
this custom in connection with the worship of any people of antiquity, but
obviously it did play some part in the ritual of such worship.
Some understand the words to mean that they put the branch, not to their own
nostrils, but to God’s, thus offering Him an insult, but this also fails to
shed any light on the actual significance of the gesture.
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.
By their persistent idolatry, and refusal to repent in God’s time, they had
passed beyond the pale of mercy and must therefore perish without any hope of
either leniency or pity, as must every man who dies unrepentant.
[Ezekiel
9]