Ezekiel 8

When the sons of Asaph wanted to describe the city of Jerusalem, they wrote, “Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King” (Ps. 48: nkjv). The Babylonian Talmud says, “Of the ten measures of beauty that came down to the world, Jerusalem took nine” (Kidushin 49b), and, “Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in its splendor has never seen a lovely city” (Succah 51b). Of modern Jerusalem, Samuel Heilman wrote, “It is a place in which people actually live; it is a place that lives in them.” One of the Jewish exiles in Babylonian wrote: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Ps. 137:5–6 nkjv). When Jewish families around the world celebrate Passover, they conclude the meal with, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

The Jewish exiles wouldn’t be happy with the three messages Ezekiel would bring them from the Lord, for he was going to announce the destruction of Jerusalem and the ravaging of the Promised Land. It was bad enough that the Jews were exiles in a pagan land, but to be told that they would have no city to return to was more than they could bear. No wonder they preferred the encouraging messages of the false prophets.

The Gentile nations had their temples, priests, religious laws, and sacrifices, but only the nation of Israel had the glory of the true and living God dwelling in their midst (Rom. 9:4). When Moses dedicated the tabernacle, God’s glory moved in (Ex. 40:34–35), but the sins of the people caused the glory to depart (1 Sam. 4:19–22). When Solomon dedicated the temple, once again God’s glory filled the sanctuary (1 Kings 8:11); but centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel watched that glory leave the temple—and then come back again! Without the presence of the glory of the Lord, God’s people are just another religious crowd, going through the motions. “If Your presence does not go with us,” said Moses to the Lord, “do not bring us up from here” (Ex. 33: nkjv). The people of God are identified by the presence of God.

Recorded in these chapters is a remarkable vision that God gave Ezekiel, which he shared with the elders of the people of Israel (Ezek. 11:25). It wasn’t an easy message to preach because it dealt with three great tragedies in the life of the Jewish nation: the temple was defiled (8:1–18), the people were doomed (9:1—10:22), and the leaders were deceived (11:1–25). The truths he shared in this message were opposite to what the false prophets were declaring both in Jerusalem and in Babylon. In their blind overconfidence, the false prophets and the officials who followed them all claimed that God would never permit His holy temple to fall into the hands of pagan Gentiles, but they proved to be wrong.

Seeing dramatic visions and hearing God’s voice were not everyday experiences for God’s servants the prophets. As far as the record is concerned, fourteen months passed since Ezekiel was called and given his first visions. During that time he and his wife lived normal lives as Jeremiah had instructed (Jer. 29:4–9). Since the exiles in Babylon didn’t have Jewish kings or princes to direct the affairs of the people, they chose elders to be their leaders; and some of these elders occasionally visited Ezekiel (see Ezek. 14:1; 20:1; 33:30–33). In this chapter, Ezekiel had two vivid experiences that led to a sad declaration: God would unleash His fury and judge His people without pity.

The glory of God was revealed (vv. 8:1–2). Above everything else, God’s servants need to focus on the glory of God. It was seeing God’s glory that kept Moses going when he was heavily burdened for the people (Ex. 33:18–23), and Ezekiel needed that same kind of encouragement. He saw the same glorious being and the same “chariot throne” that he had seen in the first vision (Ezek. 1). It’s likely that this awesome being was Jesus Christ in a preincarnate appearance, and “the glory of God” in 8: was undoubtedly the spectacular vision of the wheels, cherubim, firmament, and throne that accompanied his prophetic call. God’s servants may think that their greatest need is to see new visions and hear new voices, but the Lord doesn’t always work that way. Instead, He often meets the need by giving us a fresh experience of the original call. The Lord reminded His servant that He was still on the throne and that His providential care for him and his people had never ceased. What more did Ezekiel need to know?

The idolatry of the people was exposed (vv. 8:3–16). Ezekiel was lifted from his house in Babylon and taken to the temple in Jerusalem! He wasn’t transported bodily; he remained in his house and saw what was going on in the temple. (See 11:1, 24; 37:1; 43:5.) The first thing he saw in the temple was an idol! It’s called “the image of jealousy” because idolatry provokes the Lord who is jealous over His people (Deut. 32:21). As the nation decayed spiritually, the religious leaders incorporated into the temple rituals the worship of other gods along with the worship of Jehovah. The stages in their idolatry were clear. First the Jewish people became curious about their neighbors’ religion and then they investigated it. Its baser elements appealed to their fleshly appetites, and before long they were secretly participating in pagan worship. It was just a short step to start worshipping idols openly and then moving this false worship into the temple, as though Jehovah was just one of many gods (Deut. 7:1–11). Since the Lord and Israel were “married” in a covenant relationship, Israel’s “religious prostitution” aroused the Lord’s holy jealousy, just as a husband or wife would be jealous if a “lover” invaded their marriage (Ex. 20:5; Deut. 32:16).

King Hezekiah had removed idolatry from the land (2 Kings 18:1–5), but King Manasseh not only restored it but made it worse. It was he who put an idol into the Lord’s temple (21:1–7), and Amon, his son and successor, continued his father’s evil practices. But godly King Josiah purged the land of idolatry and burned that idol and crushed it to powder (23:4–20). But the idol had been replaced! The remarkable thing is that the glory of God was present in the same temple, but God was about to remove His glory and Ezekiel would watch it occur. Without the presence of God, the temple was just another building. It was the blasphemous sins of the religious leaders that drove God away from His holy house, and Ezekiel was about to see how wicked these leaders really were.

The Lord then led him to a place in the temple where there was a hole in the wall leading to a secret chamber. When Ezekiel entered the room, he saw seventy elders of the people (Ex. 24:9–10; Num. 11:16ff.) burning incense before various idols whose images were painted on the wall, each man worshipping his own idol (see Ezek. 12 nasb). So gross was their appetite for false gods that they were even worshipping creeping things! (See Deut. 4:14–19; Rom. 1:18–25.) Ezekiel recognized Jaazaniah, one of the leading men in Jerusalem. (This is not the Jaazaniah of Ezek. 11:1.) It’s possible that his father Shaphan was the same man who found the book of the law in the days of King Josiah and served the Lord so faithfully (2 Chron. 34). If so, he had at least three other sons: Ahikam, who protected Jeremiah from being killed (Jer. 26:24); Gemariah, who begged King Jehoiakim not to destroy Jeremiah’s scroll (36:12ff.); and Elasah, who delivered Jeremiah’s scroll to the Jews in Babylon (29:1–3). Nebuchadnezzar appointed Shaphan’s grandson Gedaliah to serve as governor of Judah after Jerusalem was destroyed (39:14). With this kind of godly heritage, it’s difficult to believe that Jaazaniah became an idolater.

God knew what was in the hearts of these men and how they justified their sin: “The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land” (Ezek. 8: nkjv). But the Lord isn’t like the dead idols they worshipped, which “have eyes but see not” (Ps. 115:5), and the people had forsaken the Lord long before He forsook them (2 Chron. 24:20; Jer. 1:16; 2:13, 17; 7:29, 15:6). Sad to say, the false thinking of these elders reached to the people, and they adopted it as their excuse for sin (Ezek. 9:9).

But there was more sin for Ezekiel to see in the temple. This time, it was the women at the gate of the temple who were openly taking part in a heathen ritual dedicated to Tammuz (8:13–14). While not all scholars agree, Tammuz is usually identified as a fertility god whom the Egyptians called Osiris and the Greeks called Adonis. According to their myths, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar and went to the underworld, and this tragedy brought winter each year. But his wife Ishtar (Astarte) would rescue him and bring the return of springtime and the rebirth of nature. It was nothing but superstition; the Jewish women had forsaken the truth of God for lies and were depending on gods that didn’t exist. The rituals associated with the worship of Tammuz were unspeakably vile, as most fertility rituals were.

The fourth sight that would grieve Ezekiel’s heart was that of twenty-five men at the door of the temple, between the porch (entry) and the brazen altar, openly bowing down to the sun (vv. 15–16). Since they were standing in an area by the altar of sacrifice available only to the priests, it’s likely these men were priests, although in 9:6, these men are called elders. In worshipping the sun, they had to face the east, and this meant they turned their backs on the temple of God and the God of the temple. The idolatry of the seventy elders was hidden in the temple, but these men practiced their idolatry openly! It was contrary to God’s law for the Jews to worship the heavenly bodies (Ex. 20:1–6; Deut. 17:3), but these men were worshipping the creation instead of the Creator (Rom. 1:25) and doing it openly in the temple precincts.

Idolatry was a besetting sin among the Jewish people. Abraham belonged to an idol-worshipping family before God called him (Josh. 24:2), and the Jews learned a great deal about idolatry when they sojourned in Egypt (Ezek. 20:7; Josh. 24:14). When they captured the Promised Land, they failed to destroy the idols and shrines of the residents of the land, and this idolatry became a snare to them (Judg. 2:10–15). While believers today may not bow before grotesque idols like those named in the Bible, we must still beware of idols, for an idol is anything that has our devotion and commands our will and takes the place of the true and living God. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21) is an admonition that needs to be heeded by the church today.

The divine judgment is announced (vv. 17–18). Ezekiel had seen only a part of the evidence that the people in Jerusalem had abandoned themselves to idolatry. He had seen an idol in the temple, defiling its very precincts and yet being worshipped by people who also claimed to worship the Lord, as though Jehovah were one God among many, not the Lord of lords. Then he saw the leaders secretly worshipping false gods in the temple. After that, everything was out in the open: the women weeping for Tammuz, and the priests/elders bowing down to the sun. In God’s sight, these things were abominable and detestable and they provoked Him to anger. Except for the faithful remnant, the Jewish people no longer feared God or cared about pleasing Him.

The strange phrase “put the branch to the nose” has no parallel in Scripture and may describe a part of an idolatrous ritual. Some see it as an insulting gesture, similar to our “sticking up the nose” at someone or something, while others suggest it should be translated “a stench in my nose.” Whatever it means, the gesture was repulsive to God. He announced that the nation’s idolatry was the cause of the violence in the land. Because the leaders despised God’s law, they didn’t care whether the courts were just toward everyone or partial toward the rich. When people lose their fear of God, they do as they please and don’t worry about the consequences.

The Lord had presented the evidence and announced the verdict, and now He declared the sentence: He would obey His covenant and severely punish His people for their multiplied sins. “Unsparing fury” was the sentence, and no pity added. The guilty nation could cry out for mercy, but He would not listen to them, and they couldn’t appeal to a higher court. He had given them opportunity after opportunity to turn from their sins, but they refused to listen; and now He wouldn’t listen to them.