Ezekiel 8

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. Then I beheld, and, lo, a likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of his loins and downward, fire: and from his loins and upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. 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 gate of the inner court that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the appearance that I saw in the plain. 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 of the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry. And he said unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel do commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but thou shalt again see yet other great abominations. And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here. 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, pourtrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders 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 the odour of the cloud of incense went up. Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his chambers of imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth. He said also unto me, Thou shalt again see yet other great abominations which they do. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’s house which was toward the north; and behold, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? thou shalt again see yet greater abominations than these. 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 worshipped the sun toward the east. 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 turned again to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. 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.

9:1 Then he cried in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, Cause ye them that have charge over the city to draw near, every man with his destroying weapon in his hand. And behold, six men came from the way of the upper gate, which lieth toward the north, every man with his slaughter weapon in his hand; and one man in the midst of them clothed in linen, with a writer’s inkhorn by his side. And they went in, and stood beside the brasen altar. And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon it was, to the threshold of the house: and he called to the man clothed in linen, which had the writer’s inkhorn by his side. And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye through the city after him, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: slay utterly the old man, the young man and the maiden, and little children and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house. And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and smote in the city. And it came to pass, while they were smiting, and I was left, that I fell upon my face, and cried, and said, Ah Lord God! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury upon Jerusalem? Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of wrestling of judgement: for they say, The LORD hath forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not. And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will bring their way upon their head. And behold, the man clothed in linen, which had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me.

10:1 Then I looked, and behold, in the firmament that was over the head of the cherubim, there appeared above them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. And he spake unto the man clothed in linen, and said, Go in between the whirling wheels, even under the cherub, and fill both thine hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight. Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court. And the glory of the LORD mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the LORD’s glory. And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of God Almighty when he speaketh. And it came to pass, when he commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, Take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim, that he went in, and stood beside a wheel. And the cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim unto the fire that was between the cherubim, and took thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed in linen, who took it and went out. And there appeared in the cherubim the form of a man’s hand under their wings. And I looked, and behold, four wheels beside the cherubim, one wheel beside one cherub, and another wheel beside another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone. And as for their appearance, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been within a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides: they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went. And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. 14 As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing, the whirling wheels. And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. And the cherubim mounted up: this is the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar. And when the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them: and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they mounted up, these mounted up with them: for the spirit of the living creature was in them. And the glory of the LORD went forth from over the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went forth, and the wheels beside them: and they stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above. This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubim. Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings. And as for the likeness of their faces, they were the faces which I saw by the river Chebar, their appearances and themselves; they went every one straight forward.

11:1 Moreover the spirit lifted me up, and brought me unto the east gate of the LORD’s house, which looketh eastward: and behold, at the door of the gate five and twenty men; and I saw in the midst of them Jaazaniah the son of Azzur, and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people. And he said unto me, Son of man, these are the men that devise iniquity, and that give wicked counsel in this city: which say, The time is not near to build houses: this city is the caldron, and we be the flesh. Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, O son of man. And the spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and he said unto me, Speak, Thus saith the LORD: Thus have ye said, O house of Israel; for I know the things that come into your mind. Ye have multiplied your slain in this city, and ye have filled the streets thereof with the slain. Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Your slain whom ye have laid in the midst of it, they are the flesh, and this city is the caldron: but ye shall be brought forth out of the midst of it. Ye have feared the sword; and I will bring the sword upon

9 you, saith the Lord God. And I will bring you forth out of the midst thereof, and deliver 10 you into the hands of strangers, and will execute judgements among you. Ye shall fall by the sword; I will judge you in the border of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. 11 This city shall not be your caldron, neither shall ye be the flesh in the midst thereof; I will 12 judge you in the border of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the LORD: for ye have not walked in my statutes, neither have ye executed my judgements, but have done after the 13 ordinances of the nations that are round about you. And it came to pass, when I prophesied, that Pelatiah the son of Benaiah died. Then fell I down upon my face, and cried with a loud voice, and said, Ah Lord God! wilt thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel? 14, 15 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy kindred, and all the house of Israel, all of them, are they unto whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, Get you far from the LORD; unto us is this land 16 given for a possession: therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God: Whereas I have removed them far off among the nations, and whereas I have scattered them among the countries, yet 17 will I be to them a sanctuary for a little while in the countries where they are come. Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. 18 And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the detestable things thereof and 19 all the abominations thereof from thence. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them 20 an heart of flesh: that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do 21 them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their 22 way upon their own heads, saith the Lord God. Then did the cherubim lift up their wings, and the wheels were beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above. 23 And the glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain 24 which is on the east side of the city. And the spirit lifted me up, and brought me in the vision by the spirit of God into Chaldea, to them of the captivity. So the vision that I had 25 seen went up from me. Then I spake unto them of the captivity all the things that the LORD had shewed me.

Chaps. 8-19. A date is prefixed to the 8th (fourteen months after the date of the preceding visions); the next date given is in the 20th chapter. The prophecies contained in the intervening chapters must therefore fall within eleven months. Although they were not all delivered on the same day, they may be regarded as a whole. They contain, in fact, a review of the condition of the people of Judah, including those who were still in the Holy Land, and those who were with the prophet exiles in Chaldea.

This is first represented by a vision in which the seer is transported in spirit to the Temple of Jerusalem, and sees there idolatry, so often openly practised in that city (8); the punishment of all except such as had received God’s mark (9). He sees the glory of the Lord quit the Temple (10), punishment fall upon the princes, and the glory of the Lord leave the city (11).

This vision ended, and the prophet having again taken his stand as a man among men, he by a symbolical act expresses to his fellow- exiles the coming removal of their countrymen from Jerusalem and the Holy Land and the doom of their king (12), and addresses a warning of false prophets, whether in Jerusalem or in Chaldea, who were holding out false hopes that the doom of the city would be averted (13). The prophet next turns a searching eye to the exiles themselves. These might at first seem free from the charge of idolatry (for the outward sin was not committed by them as it was at Jerusalem), but there might be, and unhappily was, a spirit of idolatry which called for stern rebuke (14). He then, by the parable of an unfruitful vine, depicts the state of God’s people (15), and reviews under another figure their past history, showing how the nation had fallen, and yet holding out hopes of restoration (16). By a striking figure he illustrates the doom of the nation, warns them against their false hopes of delivery from Egypt, and shows that their future hopes rest not on the present ruler (Zedekiah), but on the family of him who has been displaced (17). Lest, however, the recital of the sins of past times should lead the people to imagine that they were to suffer, not for their own, but for others’ faults, the prophet corrects this misapprehension (18), and closes this section of his prophecy by a lament over his ruined country (19). B. C.

Chaps. 8-11. These chapters contain but one vision, of which I give a general idea, that the attention of the reader may not be too much divided.

The prophet in the visions of God is carried to Jerusalem, to the northern gate of the Temple, which leads by the north side to the court of the priests. There he sees the glory of the Lord in the same manner as he did by the river Chebar. At one side he sees the image of jealousy. Going thence to the court of the people, he sees, through an opening in the wall, seventy elders of the people who were worshipping all sorts of beasts and reptiles, which were painted on the wall. Being brought thence to the door of the gate of the house, he saw women weeping for Tammuz, or Adonis. As he returned to the court of the priests, between the porch and the altar, he saw twenty-five men with their backs to the sanctuary and their faces toward the east, worshipping the rising sun. This is the substance of the vision contained in the eighth chapter.

About the same time he saw six men come from the higher gate with swords in their hands; and, among them, one with an ink-horn. Then the Divine Presence left the cherubim and took post at the entrance of the Temple, and gave orders to the man with the ink-horn to put a mark on the foreheads of those who sighed and prayed because of the abominations of the land; and then commanded the men with the swords to go forward and slay every person who had not this mark. The prophet, being left alone among the dead, fell on his face and made intercession for the people. The Lord gives him the reason of His conduct; and the man with the ink-horn returns, and reports to the Lord what was done. These are the general contents of the ninth chapter.

The Lord commands the same person to go in between the wheels of the cherubim, and take his hand full of live coals and scatter them over the city. He went as commanded; and one of the cherubim gave him the live coals; at the same time the glory of the Lord, that had removed to the threshold of the house, now returned, and stood over the cherubim. The cherubim, wheels, wings, etc., are here described as in the first chapter. This is the substance of the tenth chapter.

The prophet then finds himself transported to the east gate of the Temple, where he saw twenty-five men, and among them Jaazaniah, the son of Azur, and Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, princes of the people; against whom the Lord commands him to prophesy, and to threaten them with the utmost calamities, because of their crimes. Afterward God Himself speaks; and shows that the Jews who should be left in the land should be driven out because of their iniquities; and that those who had been led captive, and who acknowledged their sins and repented of them, should be restored to their own land. Then the glory of the Lord arose out of the city and rested for a time on one of the mountains on the east of Jerusalem, and the prophet being carried in vision by the Spirit to Chaldea, lost sight of the chariot of the Divine glory, and began to show to the Captivity what the Lord had shown to him. This is the substance of the eleventh chapter.

We may see from all this what induced the Lord to abandon His people, His city, and His Temple—the abominations of the people in public and in private. But because those carried away captives with Jeconiah acknowledged their sins, and their hearts turned to the Lord, God informs them that they shall be brought back and restored to a happy state both in temporal and spiritual matters; while the others, who had filled up the measure of their iniquities, should be speedily brought into a state of desolation and ruin. This is the sum and intent of the vision in these four chapters. A. C.

Chap. 8 opens a very extraordinary vision, the details of which fill four chapters (8-11). It has its well-defined date—precisely one year and two months later than his first vision (chap. 1), which brought to him the Lord’s call into his prophetic office. The symbolic transaction of besieging Jerusalem and bearing the iniquities of Israel and Judah, filled up the interval between that vision and this, and was now just closed. That the transactions recorded in these four chapters were all seen in vision and not done in the external world is made abundantly clear by the language which records them. “The hand of the Lord fell upon me;” “I saw a likeness;” “He put forth the form of a 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.” There he saw the Shekinah—the visible manifestation of the glory of the Lord. The scene closes with the statement (chap. 11: 24, 25), “After that, the Spirit took me up and brought me back in a vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea to them of the Captivity. So the vision that I had seen went up from me. Then I spake unto them of the Captivity all the things that the Lord had showed me.” All this is perfectly explicit to the point that the scene here is purely prophetic vision. None of his fellow-captives saw it. Every feature in this description conspires to make a clear and unquestionable case of a pure prophetic vision. The great moral purposes of this vision are obvious. The Lord aimed to reveal to His prophet, and through him to the exiles: (1) The horrible abominations of idol worship in various forms as they existed in Jerusalem and within the very Temple of Jehovah; and (2) the discriminating judgments by which the Lord would assuredly sift out and cut down in His unsparing vengeance all the guilty idolaters among His people. These points it was of the utmost consequence to the captives in Chaldea to understand. As bearing on their own moral state, it was vital that they should know how deeply guilty the masses of the people in their native land had become; how much the elders and the priests were involved in this guilt as indeed the prime leaders in it by their position and example; and how terribly the Lord would destroy them for such horrible apostasy and depravity. These things would show the exiles that they had no occasion to sympathize with their suffering brethren as if punished too severely in the terrible calamities of siege and ruin then closely impending. They would also be a forcible and most pertinent warning to themselves to turn away from those same sins as they would escape a like terrible vengeance. H. C.

God transports him in spirit to the land of mountains; so does the beloved home of his childhood and youth present itself to his memory in the midst of the vast plains over which his eye now wanders. He imagines himself present at the idolatrous abominations, of which Jerusalem, and even the Temple itself, is the scene. He contemplates in a vision the Israelitish women celebrating, in the sanctuary, the feast of the Phœnician god Tammuz, the Adonis of the Greeks. In the inner court the high-priest, at the head of the chiefs of the twenty-four classes of sacrificers, is worshipping the sun. Then, following upon these profanations, he beholds the mysterious cloud, symbol of the presence of God, rising from over the Holy of Holies, and moving off to the threshold of the Temple. Thence it once more rises, and now takes up its position upon the Mount of Olives, to the east of the city—thus abandoning Jerusalem and the Temple into the hands of the enemy, in order to shelter that portion only of the nation which had been carried away to the East, and which was thenceforth to be the sole hope of the kingdom of God upon earth. Wondrous picture, fitted to make the exiles accept the approaching destruction of the city and of the Temple, and at the same time to kindle in them faith in their future restoration! Godet.

1-3. As already shown, the days of his lying on his side (chap. 4) have just closed. He is now at home, sitting quietly in his own house. The elders of Judah are sitting there before him, deeply impressed (we may suppose) by the strangeness of that scene, by its fearful significance, and by the threatenings of judgment on the guilty city which we have been reading in chaps. 5-7. The Lord proceeds now to another method of presenting, first to the prophet and then through him to the people, essentially the same ideas—the sin and the doom of the Jews yet remaining in Jerusalem. The method of presenting these truths is obviously varied in the hope of more effectually securing thereby the desired moral impression. This method of presenting to the prophet and to his fellow-exiles the sin and doom of Jerusalem reveals emphatically and precisely God’s view of them. The facts are shown from God’s own standpoint. Hence this vision teaches us how God looks upon such sins as those, among His own covenant people, within His very sanctuary, and also how He discriminates between the innocent and the guilty; by what marks He knows and points out the innocent, and with what unsparing vengeance He punishes and even exterminates all save those who bear His mark. The glorious personage present to the mind’s eye of the prophet in this vision is the same who was seen on the movable throne in chap. 1, bearing essentially the same description as in chap. 1:26-28, all begirt with fire, and with a resplendent radiance as of polished brass; the word rendered “the color of amber,” being the same as in chap. 1:4. The impression of being transported through the air is not unknown in the phenomena of dreams. How closely analogous this case of prophetic vision may be to the experience of dreams, it is impossible for any to say save the prophets themselves. Let it suffice us to rest in the fact that He who made the mind of man must have ample means for making any impression upon it which He may wish to make. “The door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north” is the Temple. This “image of jealousy” is an idol image which provoked the jealousy of Almighty God. The thought looks toward the second command, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” etc., “thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” H. C.

2. As Ezekiel sits among the elders who had come to consult him—the same Person who had been seen above the throne appears to him in visions of God, but no mention is made of the chariot, of the living creatures, of the firmament, or of the throne itself. He is caught up by the same Spirit as had been manifested in the living creatures and in the wheels. Here the inspiration of the prophet himself is the predominating idea. The Person who is to speak to him stands forth prominently, and for a moment the general purpose of such communication, judgment, and the revelation of the Divine glory is kept, as it were, in the background. The prophet is lifted in spirit between earth and heaven.

4. When the prophet appears in spirit before the Temple all the previous features of the original vision come into notice—the glory of God was there according to the vision which he saw on the plain. For now is to be the application of the general revelation of the Divine justice and wrath. B. C.

4-6. The “vision seen in the plain” refers to chap. 3:22, 23. Here he meets again the same glorious personage as there, in the form of the ancient Shekinah. This personage speaks to him and leads him on through the scenes of this vision. Standing in the Temple at Jerusalem and looking toward the north, he sees at the Temple gate, near the great altar of burnt-offering, this idol image which provoked the God of Israel to jealousy. His Divine Guide calls his special attention to this first abomination. H. C.

7. They were not willing that those who saw them in God’s house should see them in their own, lest they should see them contradict themselves, and undo in private what they did in public. But, behold, a hole in the wall (verse 7). When hypocrites screen themselves behind the wall of an external profession, and with it think to conceal their wickedness from the eye of the world, and carry on their designs the more successfully, it is hard for them to manage it with so much art but that there is some hole or other left in the wall, something that betrays them to those who look diligently, not to be what they pretend to be. H.

9-12. There is now opened to the prophet’s view a secret “chamber of imagery,” the walls of which are covered with delineations of all unclean beasts and insects, portrayed here as objects of idolatrous worship. This species of idols and the manner of delineating them were obviously Egyptian, borrowed from that land where almost every known animal was included among their objects of reverence and worship. It would seem that this base form of idolatry was kept somewhat back from public view, in the secret chambers of the Temple. These seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel were obviously the Jewish Sanhedrim, the well-known supreme council of the nation, always chosen from the elders of the people. It was their sacred duty to suppress all idolatry; yet here they are in their retired chambers with every man his censer in his hand to burn incense to every abominable creature! It was for many reasons a strong case that Jaazaniah, the son of the good Shaphan, and now the president of the Sanhedrim, hoary with years, should be leading on his younger brethren of this great council in these most base and debasing idolatries. Alas! how were the noble fallen! And how manifestly hopeless of reform must the nation have become! The Lord saw their deeds of darkness, and revealed them in vision to His prophet. “Son of man, hast thou seen?” Take note of it, for it testifies to the deep and hopeless corruption of the people. H. C.

The eighth chapter of Ezekiel exhibits the prophet’s portraiture of the prevailing idolatries of his time. He here clearly and graphically sets forth that in the age of Jerusalem’s doom the Jews had fallen into all the idolatries of their Egyptian, Phoenician, and Assyrian neighbors, and simultaneously practised them, apparently at the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, producing by their combination, and with a profession of allegiance to Jehovah, an abomination worse than any of these idolatries taken singly could have been, and forming a most cogent justification of their condemnation, and an awful elucidation of the causes of their ruin. We knew this before, from the dispersed intimations of the other prophets; but not so as to impress the fact deeply on the mind, as is done here by Ezekiel, who brings the matter visibly before us, and makes us, with himself, spectators of the awful scene.

In the visions of God he conceives himself taken to Jerusalem, where, in the inner court of the Temple, his attention is directed to a chink or hole in the wall, which he is ordered to enlarge; on doing which he finds a door which had not before been obvious. “I went in,” he says, “and looked; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the walls.” This is clearly the Egyptian form of idolatry. The Rev. W. Jowett quotes this text as furnishing an exact description of the “chambers of imagery” in that country; adding, “The Israelites were but copyists, the master sketches being to be seen in all the temples and tombs of Egypt.” In that country the walls of the inner sanctuaries of the temples, as well as the tombs and mystic cells, are to this day covered with representations, sculptured or painted in vivid colors, of sacred animals, of gods in human form and under various circumstances, or in various monstrous combinations of the human and bestial shapes. The temples alone would furnish sufficient illustration, but that of the tombs seems the most exactly appropriate, for they furnish just such chambers as the prophet gained access to, decorated in the same manner; and there is little doubt, from the nature of these decorations, from their connection with the temples, and other circumstances, that they were not merely tombs, but were also used for the celebration of the darker mysteries and superstitions of the most debasing idolatry the world has ever witnessed. Kitto.

Think of the dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our hearts. Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. With reverence, we may say of each other as we say of God: “Clouds and darkness are round about him.” After all the manifestations of a life, we remain enigmas to one another and mysteries to ourselves. For every man is no fixed somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. Therefore we have all to feel that after all self-examination there lie awful depths within us which we have not fathomed; and after all our knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, and each soul dwells alone.

There is in every heart a dark chamber. There are very, very few of us that dare tell all our thoughts and show our inmost selves to our dearest ones. The most silvery lake that lies sleeping amid beauty, itself the very fairest spot of all, when drained off shows ugly ooze and filthy mud, and all manner of creeping abominations in the slime. I wonder what we should see if our hearts were, so to speak, drained off, and the very bottom layer of everything brought into the light. Do you think you would stand it? Well, then, go to God and ask Him to keep you from unconscious sins. Go to Him and ask Him to root out of you the mischiefs that you do not know are there, and live humbly and self-distrustfully, and feel that your only strength is: “Hold Thou me up, and I shall be saved.” “Hast Thou seen what they do in the dark?” . . .

By our memory, and by that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, and by our desires, we are forever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with pictures. That is an awful power which we possess, and, alas! too often use for foul idolatries. I do not dwell upon that, but I wish to drop one very earnest caution and beseeching entreaty. You, young men and women, especially you young men, mind what you paint upon those mystic walls! Foul things, as the text says, “creeping things and abominable beasts,” only too many of you are tracing there. Take care, for these figures are ineffaceable. No repentance will obliterate them. I do not know whether even Heaven can blot them out. What you love, what you desire, what you think about, you are photographing on the walls of your immortal soul. And just as to-day, thousands of years after the artists have been gathered to the dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on their walls, in all the freshness of their first coloring, as if the painter had but laid down his pencil a moment ago; so, on your hearts, youthful evils, the sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days, may live in ugly shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe out. Nothing can do away with “the marks of that which once hath been.” What are you painting on the chambers of imagery in your hearts? Obscenity, foul things, mean things, low things? Is that mystic shrine within you painted with such figures as were laid bare in some chambers in Pompeii, where the excavators had to cover up the pictures because they were so foul? Or is it like the cells in the convent of San Marco, at Florence, where Fra Angelico’s holy and sweet genius has left on the bare walls, to be looked at, as he fancied, only by one devout brother in each cell, angel imaginings, and noble, pure, celestial faces, that calm and hallow those who gaze upon them? What are you doing, my brother, in the dark, in your chambers of imagery? A. M.

14. Tammuz worship. The word Tammuz occurs nowhere else in Holy Scripture; but Tammuz is found among the names of the months in use among the Jews after the return from Babylon. The month Tammuz was that of the summer solstice. The name as it occurs in Ezekiel is literally The Tammuz. 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 Vulgate renders it by Adonis, and Jerome expressly says that the festival of Tammuz was identical with the Greek Adoniaos. This may be accepted as the most ancient tradition, for other legends of Tammuz 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 headquarters 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 endeavored to engage the Moabites, the Syrians and other peoples in a league against Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 27:3), 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 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 license and excess. Such was in Ezekiel’s day one of the most detestable forms of idolatry. B. C.

13,14. The noticeable thing in these verses is the stronger shading of odiousness and of guilt in the prophets of Jerusalem than in the prophets of Samaria. The reason of this discrimination against the prophets of Jerusalem obviously is, that they sinned against far greater light than their brethren of Samaria. They had the house and the worship of God in the midst of them, and the Lord’s true prophets had often borne their testimony there.

16,17. Most fitly the Lord exhorts the people to give no heed to their words. So it is always ineffably perilous to listen to men who profess to speak truly for God, yet in fact speak only the visions of their own heart. Men sometimes pervert the Bible so that it no longer utters (in their construction of it) the true voice of God, but seems to endorse their own lies. So doing they wield a terrible power for evil. They assume a fearful responsibility before God. H. C.

We should seek to strengthen the hands of all who want to be good. They are so often weak in action. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” They are hindered by strong temptations which come in their way, when they are striving to get nearer God’s ideal for them. They are in need of sympathy. They have to be helped in reaching encouraging views of Divine truth. They need to be remembered in prayer, and generally to have more heart and spirit put into them ; then, having abundant life within, they will not lack force, steadiness and persistency of hand. If we are actively engaged in strengthening the hands of the good, we are to this extent weakening the hands of the evil. And finally, it is very consoling to recollect that when those who profess to be good are found strengthening the hands of evil-doers, this is precisely the time when God’s indignation is aroused and His opposition most effective. “If God be for us, who can be against us ?” Y.

18. In the matter of the false and the true prophets, nothing could be more important than to draw the line between them definitely and distinctly, giving the marks and tests whereby each class may be known. Hence the Lord gives these tests here. In the first clause the sense is, one who has been in close and intimate communion with God, who has listened carefully and affectionately to His words, and who has enjoyed precious manifestations of His love. The further description in our text should be carefully noted : “One who has seen and heard His words ;” and in the parallel clause, “Who is he that has bent his mind in closest attention to the word of the Lord, and so has truly heard it ?” These are the men who may be relied on to speak the word of God truly and honestly. A thoroughly docile and humble spirit, a heart in deep sympathy with God, a supreme regard for His will, and for His revealed word as its reliable manifestation to men—these are decisive tests by which the true prophet may be distinguished from the false in every age. H. C.

20. They will not consider now, But in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly, consider it with understanding (so the word is), or with consideration. Those that will not fear the threatenings shall feel the execution of them, and will then perfectly understand what they will not now admit the evidence of, what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of a just and jealous God. They that will not consider in time will be made to consider when it is too late. Son, remember. H.

How many times did God by His messengers here call upon them. And yet these men would never be brought to consider. But in the latter days, saith the Lord, they shall perfectly consider it, when God hath arrested them and judgment is passed upon them, then they cannot choose but consider it, whether they will or no. Now they have no leisure to consider, nor any room in their memories for the things of another life. Ah ! but then they shall have leisure enough, they shall be where they shall have nothing else to do but consider it ; their memories shall have no other employment to hinder them ; it shall even be engraven upon the tables of their hearts. God would have the doctrine of their eternal state to have been written on the posts of their doors, on their houses, on their hands, and on their hearts ; He would have had them mind it and mention it, as they rise and lie down, and as they walk abroad, that so it might have gone well with them at their latter end. And seeing they rejected this counsel of the Lord, therefore shall it be written always before them in the place of their thraldom, that which way soever they look they may still behold it. Richard Baxter.

“Son, remember !” It is the voice, the first voice, the perpetual voice, which meets every man when he steps across the threshold of earth into the presence chamber of eternity. All the future is so built upon and interwoven with the past, that for the saved and for the lost alike this word might almost be taken as the

motto of their whole situation, as the explanation of their whole condition. Memory in another world is indispensable to the gladness of the glad, and strikes the deepest note in the sadness of the lost. We believe that what a man is in this life, he is more in another, that tendencies here become results yonder, that his sin, that his falsehood, that his whole moral nature, be it good or bad, becomes there what it is only striving to be here. We believe that in this present life our capacities of all sorts are hedged in, thwarted, damped down, diluted, by the necessity which there is for their working through this material body of ours. We believe that death is the heightening of a man’s stature—if he be bad, the intensifying of his badness; if he be good, the strengthening of his goodness. We believe that the contents of the intellectual nature, the capacities of that nature also, are all increased by the fact of having done with earth and having left the body behind. It is the teaching of common sense and it is the teaching of the Bible. True, that for some, that growth will only be a growth into greater power of feeling greater sorrow. Such an one grows up into a Hercules; but it is only that the Nessus shirt may wrap round him more tightly, and may gnaw him with a fiercer agony. But whether saved or lost—he that dies is greater than when yet living; and all his powers are intensified and strengthened by that awful experience of death and by what it brings with it. We forget nothing, in the sense of not being able, some time or another, to recall it; we forget much in the sense of ceasing for a time to have it in our thoughts. The fragmentary remembrances which we have now lift themselves above the ocean of forgetfulness like islands in some archipelago, the summits of sister hills though separated by the estranging sea that covers their converging sides and the valleys where their roots unite. The solid land is there, though hidden. Drain off the sea, and there will be no more isolated peaks, but continuous land. In this life we have but the island memories heaving themselves into sight, but in the next “the Lord” shall “cause the sea to go back” by the breath of His mouth, and the channels of the great deep of a human heart’s experiences and actions shall be laid bare. “There shall be no more sea;” but the solid land of a whole life will appear when God says, “Son, remember!” A. M.