door of the gate of the LORD's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

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.

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

the LORD'S house] is here put for the whole temple (or inner) court. The seer stands in the outer court, and there are women taking part in the Thammuz-festival. See Note A at end of Chapter. It is not certain that this refers to any special act of Thammuz-worship. The month in which the vision was seen, the sixth month (September), was not the month of the Thammuz-rites. But that such rites had been performed in Jerusalem there can be little doubt. The women who wove hangings for the grove by the house of the LORD (2 K. xxiii. 7) would be ready to play their part for Thammuz. Women are mentioned as employed in the service of idols in Jer. vii. 18.

16. He now enters the inner court (the court of the priests). See description of the courts in Note at end of ch. xl.

about five and twenty men] Rather, as it were five and twenty men; as it were being appropriate to a vision. It was not an indefinite number taken at random, but the number of the heads of the twenty-four courses with the high priest presiding over them. These then were the representatives of the priests as the seventy were of the people. In the temple the seat of the Divine Majesty was at the West, perhaps appointed for this very purpose, to guard against the idolatrous adoration of the rising sun. Therefore the idolatrous priests must in worshipping the false sun-god turn their backs upon the True. It was a further aggravation of their daring impiety that they took a position scarcely permitted in the worship of Jehovah. The ordinary place of the priests was in the forecourt to the east or north of the brazen altar where they sacrificed. It was only in times of extraordinary calamity that they drew near to weep between the porch and the altar (Joel ii. 17), turning of course to the west of the temple.

violence] represents sins against man, abominations, sins against God. These went hand in hand in Jerusalem. Comp. vii. 23, ix. 9, and Micah vi. 12.

and have returned] After the reformation effected for a time by Josiah's zeal, they have gone back to their old state. They have gone backwards and not forwards, Jer. vii. 24.

provoke me to anger] This reminds us of the words of the Lord as to Manasseh's wickedness, 2 K. xxi. 15, 16.

they put the branch to their nose] This pas sage contains peculiar phrases occurring in only one place, and with an allusion to a then familiar practice, of which we find no clear traces elsewhere. Modern commentators propose conjectural emendations, which only serve to shew the difficulty of the passage. The more ancient versions, including the LXX., seem to have read as our present Hebrew text, which was certainly that of the Vulgate: we may then assume that the Masoretic reading is correct. The word for branch occurs elsewhere (xv. 2; Num. xiii. 23; Isai. xvii. 10), and always means a branch severed from the tree, commonly a vine-branch. Their nose might be "their wrath," the word for nose also meaning "wrath." The following are the chief interpretations, but none of them seem to stand on very sure ground. see in the branch the thyrsus of the Bacchanalians, assuming that the worship of the Greek Bacchus was derived from the Eastern worship of the sun. Others allege the custom of the Parsees, who while adoring the Sacred Fire hold a bunch of twigs of the tamarisk palm and pomegranate. This bunch was called Barsom, Bareçman (Spiegel, Avesta,' 11. p. Ixviii. Introd.). It was held not before the nose but before the mouth (Strabo, lib. XV. p. 732). But neither of these rites very

Some

exactly represents our phrase. This is first heard of in Western Asia in the time of Cyrus, but it may have been in use in earlier times. (2) Lightfoot takes the phrase to be proverbial, and, explaining their wrath to mean the wrath due to them, explains it as "bringing firewood to the wrath due to them," or, as we should say, "adding fuel to their fire." But the proverb is not known, and the explanation, of their curath instead of their nose is forced. (3) The LXX. and some other ancient ver

sions intimate the interpretation, "they hold out the branch as in mockery," but it does not seem clear against what object such mockery would be directed. (4) Hengstenberg's explanation seems the most satisfactory. Ezekiel is describing the attitude usual in such devotions, the branch held before the mouth, but wishing to represent it in contemptuous and derogatory terms, he substitutes the word nose for mouth.

THE IDOLATRIES OF JUDAH 1. Canaanite worship. The children of Israel when they entered the land of promise found the inhabitants devoted to nature-worship, expressed in rites most cruel and impure. These rites too soon proved very attractive to the conquerors, and retained their hold up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, though often repressed by pious rulers, and even partially supplanted by new and more popular forms of idolatry, so that in Ezekiel's time, i.e. in the reign of Zedekiah, the chronicler tells us that all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the beatben (2 Chro. xxxvi. 14).

2. High places and groves. This worship in high places was not in all cases the worship of false gods, though no doubt it continually degenerated into it, see note on 1 K. iii. 2, and 2 K. xxiii. 9, and is reproved by Ezekiel as one form of idolatry (xx. 29).

3. Egyptian idolatry lingered among the ten tribes in the calves of Dan and Bethel, but we do not know that it appeared in the kingdom of Judah, until a later period, when for a season Pharaoh-Necho subjected the land to his sway (2 K. xxiii. 34), at which time must have been introduced that kind of idolatry mentioned by Ezekiel (viii. 10), continued and fostered by the false hopes entertained of the assistance which Egypt might yet afford against the Chaldæans.

The above were all various forms of natureworship, but in subsequent days arose another kind of idolatry yet more distinctly antagonistic to the service of Jehovah.

4. The distinctive worship of Baal was introduced into the kingdom of Israel by Jezebel from Tyre, and so through her daughter Athaliah into that of Judah. See note on 1 K. xvi. 31. This was a worship of the heavenly bodies. Baal was the sun-god and was associated with Ashtoreth (Astarte, moon) the goddess of the Zidonians. Baalim and Ashtaroth (both in the plural form) occurring together represent the plurality of the bost of heaven, whose worship prevailed among the children of Israel long before the

IN THE TIME OF Ezekiel. Baal-worship from Tyre (Judg. ii. 13). The worship of Baal is connected with that of the host of heaven in 2 K. xxiii. 4.

It has been thought that Baal, Moloch, and Chemosh were originally different names of the same divinity. This opinion seems to be confirmed by the circumstance that Baal-peor is named as the god of the Moabites (in Num. xxv. 1-3) whose national god was Chemosh, and by Mesha's immolation of his son to Chemosh, an act characteristic of the rites of Moloch, 2 K. iii. 27. Again on the Moabitic stone occurs the title Astar Kamos, Astar being apparently the male divinity, corresponding to the female Ashtoreth (Schlottmann's Siegesäule,' p. 26). In the course of time however the different nations developed their rites in different forms, and thus produced distinctive worships.

5. Sun-worship. The worship of the heavenly bodies was one of the earliest forms of idolatry (Job xxxi. 26) and was expressly forbidden in the law (Deut. xvii. 3). But among the Arabians, in its earliest form, it was conducted without the intervention of images, the adoration being addressed to the heavenly bodies themselves. This form, continued among the Persians, seems to have been introduced afresh into Jerusalem at the time of Ezekiel (viii. 16). Connected with this form of idolatry were the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun (2 K. xxiii. 11), and probably, the altars which were on the top of the upper chamber of Abaz (2 K. xxiii. 12) and the images (marg. sun-images) of Ezek. vi. 4, 6, which were columns set up in honour of the sun, not images in human form. See note on 2 K. xxi. 3. But this simpler mode of sunworship was soon changed. The sun, or the god supposed to preside over it, was represented as a person, whose image was set up and adored. Thus we find in Egypt the god Ra, in Phoenicia Baal, in Greece Apollo, and the like. But although Baal-worship was in its inner meaning identical with sun-worship, it by no means follows that the people who practised it recognized it as such. Among the Phoenicians nature-worship and planet-worship, though origi

nally distinct, were mixed up together, and the common people at least lost any symbolical meaning there might be in either, and recognized only either a being with human passions and human form (as especially in Greece) or looked upon the stocks and stones, the work of their own hands, as the very gods whom they were to propitiate and serve.

worship and planet-worship, the essence of the Adoniac rites was nature-worship. The excitement attendant upon these extravagances of alternate wailing and exultation were in complete accordance with the character of nature-worship, which for this reason was so popular in the East, especially with women, and led by inevitable consequence to unbridled licence and excess. Such was in Ezekiel's day one of the most detestable forms of idolatry.

In an ancient tablet recently deciphered, there is a Babylonian legend of a goddess Istar, widow of the "Son of Life," descending through the seven circles "of the land of immobility": the same as the Greek Hades, and ascending again after various vicissitudes. The supposed point of contact between this legend and that of Thammuz lies in the name of the "Son of Life," Du-zi or Duv-zi, which according to Lenormant who observes the constant interchange of the letters D and T, and of V and M, was transformed by the people of Syria and Palestine into TMZ, Hebraized into Thammuz. Maimonides records a curious legend, that one Thammuz invited a certain king to adore the seven planets, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and was by this king cruelly put to death; and that all the idols of the different countries assembled themselves in the temple of Babylon, near the golden statue of the Sun to mourn for Thammuz (Lenormant, Premières Civilisations,' vol. II. pp. 82-99). Both here and in the legend of Du-zi, there is a manifest reference to celestial phenomena. The precise purport of the legends is not explained, but the widow weeping for the loss of Du-zi is not unlike the Egyptian Isis mourning for Osiris, the Greek Venus for Adonis, and the Syrian women for Tham

6. Thammuz-worship. The word Thammuz occurs in Ezek. viii. 14, and nowhere else in Holy Scripture-but Thammuz is found among the names of the months in use among the Jews after the return from Babylon. The month Thammuz was that of the summer solstice. The name as it occurs in Ezekiel is literally The Thammuz. This was probably a contemptuous form of expression as designating a thing rather than a person. The word is acknowledged to be Semitic, and various derivations have been suggested, none of which are very satisfactory. The more ancient Versions (among which is the LXX.) simply reproduce the word itself. The Vul gate renders it by Adonis, and Jerome expressly says that the festival of Thammuz was identical with the Greek Adoniacs. This may be accepted as the most ancient tradition, for other legends of Thammuz given in Rabbinical writers seem rather to be inventions of commentators upon this passage in Ezekiel. We know indeed for certain that the worship of Adonis had its head-quarters at Byblos, where at certain periods of the year the stream, becoming stained by mountain floods, was popularly said to be red with the blood of Adonis. From Byblos it spread widely over the East and was thence carried to Greece. Zedekiah had endeavoured to engage the Moabites, the Syrians and other peoples in a league against Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xxvii. 3) and the intercourse thus opened with heathen nations may very well have led to the introduction of an idolatry which at this time was especially popular among the eastern nations. This solemnity was of a twofold character, first, that of mourning, in which the death of Adonis was bewailed with extravagant sorrow; and then, after a few days, the mourning gave place to wild rejoicings for his restoration to life. This was a revival of nature-worship under another form-the death of Adonis symbolized the suspension of the productive powers of nature, which were in due time revived. Accordingly the time of this festival was the summer solstice, when in the East nature seems to wither and die under the scorching heat of the sun, to burst forth again into life at the due season. At the same time there was a connection between this and the sun-worship, in that the decline of the sun and the decline of nature might be alike represented by the death of Adonis, and so we are told by some that Adonis was the sun. But although in this way mystical interpretations might bring together the two forms of idolatry, nature

muz.

7. Enchantments. These in various shapes were the natural accompaniments of superstition, and so we find them rife at all times in the history of the rebellious children of Israel, and against them Ezekiel had continually to lift up his voice (xiii. 17).

8. Profanation of the house of the Lord. It was some time before false gods were actually brought into the courts of the Lord's house. Solomon's idol-temples were on a separate eminence, the mount of corruption (2 K. xxiii. 13). Athaliah seems not to have ventured to intrude into the sacred precincts, though she took vessels out of the temple for her house of Baal (comp. 2 K. xi. 18 and 2 Chro. xxiv. 7). It was reserved for Ahaz, one of the very worst of the kings of Judah, to interfere directly with the temple itself. He introduced a new altar after the pattern of one seen at Damascus, and made room for it by displacing the brazen altar of Solomon (2 K. xvi. 10). This invasion of holy ground was followed by yet worse and more daring sacrilege. Idols were set up and worshipped in the temple itself under Manasseh and Amon; and under

Zedekiah we have in addition to the transgression of the priests and people quoted under §1 the record that they polluted the house of the Lord which He had hallowed in Jerusalem (2 Chro. xxxvi. 14).

9. It was characteristic of Jewish idolatry, that while new forms came in, the old forms never died out, and so in the abominations of Manasseh we find the various idolatries, summed up in one fearful catalogue, He did after the abomination of the heathen whom the Lord cast out,...be built up again the high places,...he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove,...

CHAP. IX. The sin has been described. This chapter portrays the punishment of the dwellers in Jerusalem.

1. Cause...to draw near] See on iv. 2, xliii. 3. Them that have charge over, the word thus rendered is a noun; rendered oversight, Num. iii. 32; offices, 1 Chro. xxiv. 3; charge (xliv. 11);-hence "those who have the oversight," officers, 2 K. xi. 18; 1 Chro. xxvi. 30; Isai. Ix. 17. In Jeremiah it is commonly translated visitation, Jer. viii. 12 and elsewhere. If we adopt the translation in our text, they that have charge must be the angels who have charge to execute God's sentence. every man] Angels, not men, are spoken of. Comp. Rev. ix. 15.

2. six men] Angels of wrath-figurative of destruction. They come from the north, the quarter from which invading armies entered the Holy Land. Some say that this number denoted six divisions in which the Chaldæan army came upon the city; but we do not know that there were six divisions. These six angels, with the one among them, a superior over the six (not one of the six), make up the number seven, a number symVOL. VI,

and worshipped all the host of heaven,...he built altars in the house of the Lord,...he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the Lord's house, he made his son pass through the fire and observed times and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards (2 K. xxi. 2—6). This was the state of things which Josiah's zealous exertions interrupted for a time, but could not cure. Josiah died-the bow started back to its bentand Ezekiel saw the idolatries of Manasseh in full sway over his infatuated countrymen.

bolical of God's covenant with His people. See on xliv. 17. (Comp. Rev. viii. 2, xv. 6.)

the higher gate] The north gate of the court of the priests. The temple rose by platforms; as there was a north gate to the

outer and also to the inner court, the latter was properly distinguished as the higher gate. See Note at end of ch. xli. This higher gate was built by Jotham (2 K. xv. 35).

clothed with linen] This was the priestly garment (Exod. xxviii. 6, 8; Lev. xvi. 4). In Dan. x. 5 we have the appearance of a man clothed in linen, who is manifestly the same as He whom St John describes as the Son of man clothed with a garment down to the foot (Rev. i. 13). This One Man then was the Angel of the covenant, the great High Priest, superior to those by whom He was surrounded, receiving direct communication from the Lord, taking the coals of vengeance from between the cherubim (x. 2), but coming with mercy to the contrite as well as with vengeance to the impenitent;-who took upon Him the form of a man, who sought not His own will but the will of His Father (John v. 30), who was set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel (Luke ii. 34), who

D

came to send fire upon the earth (Luke xii. 49), but also to call sinners to repentance (Matt. ix, 13), who shall lose none of those whom the Father bath given Him (John vi. 39). All these attributes are exhibited in the Person here revealed to Ezekiel.

with a writer's inkhorn by his side] "It is still customary in the East to wear the inkhorn in the girdle. Scribes wear them constantly in their girdles, and ministers of state wear them in the same manner as symbols of their office. The form in most general use is a flat case about nine inches long, by an inch and a quarter broad, and half an inch thick, the hollow of which serves to contain the reed pens and penknife. It is furnished at one end with a lid attached by a hinge. To the flat end of the shaft toward the end furnished with the lid is soldered the ink-vessel which has at the top a hinge and a clasp fitting very closely. The ink-vessel is usually twice as heavy as the shaft. The latter is passed through the girdle and prevented from slipping through by the projecting ink-vessel. The whole is usually of polished metal, brass, copper or silver." Kitto.

The man with the inkborn has to write in the Book of Life the names of those who shall be marked. The metaphor is from the custom of registering the names of the Israelites in public rolls. See on xiii. 9. Comp. Exod. xxxii. 33; Ps. Ixix. 28; Isai. iv. 3; Philip. iv. 3; Rev. iii. 5, xiii. 8, xvii. 8, xx. 12, and xxi. 27. 3. the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub] The cherub is that upon the mercy-seat of the ark in the Holy of Holies, the proper seat of the glory of the Lord in the midst of Israel. See Note at end of

ch. i. And now God is represented as arising

from between the cherubim to scatter his enemies (Num. x. 35). So below, X. 4, 18, 19. 4. Mercy precedes judgment. So in the case of Sodom, Gen. xix. Compare the sign on the door-posts in Egypt, Exod. xii. There the exemption is national, here personal. So our Lord predicts that it shall be in the last day (Luke xxi. 18, 28), and so in Rev. vii, 1.

This accords with the eschatological character of the predictions in this chapter. (See Introduction, § 8). A mark, Hebr. Tau, the name of the last letter of the alphabet. The old form of the letter was that of a cross. Origen tells us that in his day the Jews interpreted this sign variously, some considering that Tau, being the last of the Hebrew letters, and so closing the alphabet, denoted completeness, and thus the mark indicated the completeness of the sorrow for sin in those upon whom it was placed. Others again observed that Tau was the first letter of Thorah (the Law) and that the foreheads were marked as of men obedient to the law. Christians again, he tells us, noting the resemblance of this letter in its most ancient form to a cross, saw herein a reference to the cross with which Christians were signed. (Origen, quoted by Rosenmüller.) It is worthy of observation that it was customary for heathen gods and their votaries to bear certain marks. "The Egyptian Apis was distinguished by a white triangle (or square), the signature of the power of nature (or of the world). On the forehead of the Indian Schiva is the image of the Ganges river. Schiva's, or Vishnoo's sign, was imprinted on the forehead of the Hindoo, who was purified in the holy water. The Japanese who undertakes a pilgrimage to the Temple of Teusjo Dai Sin, receives as a farewell token a small box on which is written the name of the god, and which he carries home bound to his forehead. Marking on the forehead was in use in the Mithra mysteries" (Schroeder).

These are remarkable instances, in which God was pleased to employ symbolism, generally in sign of the cross in baptism is an outward sign use, to express higher and diviner truth. The of the designation of God's elect, who at the last day shall be exempted from the destruction of the ungodly (Matt. xxiv. 22, 31).

6. begin at my sanctuary] The first to be punished were those who had brought idolatry nearest to the holy place. The twenty-five men who had stood with their backs to the altar were the first to be slain.