Ezekiel 8 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
September 592 BC, the sixth year of King Jehoiachin's exile, about five years before Jerusalem fell
Location
Ezekiel's house in Tel Abib, a settlement of deported Judeans beside the Chebar canal in southern Babylonia, with the vision itself carrying him to the temple courts in Jerusalem roughly 700 miles away
Audience
Judean exiles deported to Babylonia in 597 BC, many of whom still expected a quick return home because the temple was standing
Situation
The elders of the exile community are sitting in Ezekiel's house when he is seized by a vision and shown, in stages, four scenes of idol worship going on inside the Jerusalem temple. He is taken from an image at the north gate, to elders burning incense to animal figures in a hidden room, to women weeping for Tammuz, to men bowing east toward the sun.
Key Background
Tammuz was a Mesopotamian shepherd god whose yearly death and return were mourned by women in ritual weeping, so its presence in the temple shows foreign religion adopted at the heart of Israel's worship. Bowing eastward toward the rising sun meant turning your back on the temple building itself, a deliberate reversal of the direction Israelite worship faced. The seventy elders match the number of leaders who once ate with God on Mount Sinai, which makes their secret incense ritual a mirror image of the covenant they were meant to uphold.
In the in the month, on the fifth day — I was sitting in my house, and the of were sitting right there with me — when the of the Sovereign One, fell on me.
I looked — and there, a that From what appeared to be his waist downward: From his waist upward: something the glow of
He stretched out what looked like a hand and seized me by the hair of my head. Then the of lifted me up between earth and sky and carried me — in these from — to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the inner gate that faces north. And there stood the that the one that stokes fury.
And there — the of the God of Israel, just as I had seen it in the
And he said to me, of — look north." So I looked north, and there at the entrance to the altar gate: this idol of jealousy, right there at the way in.
He said, "Son of man, do you see what they're doing? The terrible things the of is doing here, driving me far from the for me? But wait. You'll see things even more terrible than this."
Then he brought me to the entrance of the courtyard, and I looked — there, a hole in the wall.
He said, "Son of man, dig through the wall." So I dug through the wall, and there — an opening.
He said, "Go in. See the terrible things they are doing here."
So I went in and looked — and there, carved all over the walls: every kind of and detestable animal, and every of the house of Israel.
Standing in front of them: of the house of Israel, with of standing among them. Each one held a in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense rose up.
He said to me, "Do you son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark — each in his own of They tell themselves, us. has abandoned the land.'"
Then he said, "You will see even more terrible things they are doing."
He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of — and there, women sitting, weeping for
He said, "Do you see this, son of man? You will see things even more terrible than these."
He brought me into the inner courtyard of Yahweh's house — and there, at the entrance to the of Yahweh, the and the about with their to the of Yahweh and their faces toward the east, bowing down to the sun.
He said, "Do you see this, son of man? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the vile things they've done here — they also fill the land with and provoke me again and again? Look — they even the to their
So I will act in My will not them, and I will show no compassion. Even when they out in my at full volume — I will not listen to them.