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A Desecrated Temple

In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth of the month,[a] as I was sitting in my house with the elders of Judah sitting in front of me, the hand[b] of the Sovereign Lord seized me.[c] As I watched, I noticed[d] a form that appeared to be a man.[e] From his waist downward was something like fire,[f] and from his waist upward something like a brightness,[g] like an amber glow.[h] He stretched out the form[i] of a hand and grabbed me by a lock of hair on my head. Then a wind[j] lifted me up between the earth and sky and brought me to Jerusalem by divine visions, to the door of the inner gate that faces north where the statue[k] that provokes to jealousy was located. Then I perceived that the glory of the God of Israel was there, as in the vision I had seen earlier in the valley.

He said to me, “Son of man, look up toward[l] the north.” So I looked up toward the north, and I noticed to the north of the altar gate was this statue of jealousy at the entrance.

He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing—the great abominations that the people[m] of Israel are practicing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see greater abominations than these!”

He brought me to the entrance of the court, and as I watched, I noticed a hole in the wall. He said to me, “Son of man, dig into the wall.” So I dug into the wall and discovered a doorway.

He said to me, “Go in and see the evil abominations they are practicing here.” 10 So I went in and looked. I noticed every figure[n] of creeping thing and beast—detestable images[o]—and every idol of the house of Israel, engraved on the wall all around.[p] 11 Seventy men from the elders of the house of Israel[q] (with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them) were standing in front of them, each with a censer in his hand, and fragrant vapors[r] from a cloud of incense were swirling upward.

12 He said to me, “Do you see, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in the chamber of his idolatrous images?[s] For they think, ‘The Lord does not see us! The Lord has abandoned the land!’” 13 He said to me, “You will see them practicing even greater abominations!”

14 Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the Lord’s house. I noticed[t] women sitting there weeping for Tammuz.[u] 15 He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? You will see even greater abominations than these!”

16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there[v] at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar,[w] were about twenty-five[x] men with their backs to the Lord’s temple,[y] facing east—they were worshiping the sun[z] toward the east!

17 He said to me, “Do you see, son of man? Is it a trivial thing that the house of Judah commits these abominations they are practicing here? For they have filled the land with violence and provoked me to anger still further. Look, they are putting the branch to their nose![aa] 18 Therefore I will act with fury! My eye will not pity them nor will I spare[ab] them. When they have shouted in my ears, I will not listen to them.”

The Execution of Idolaters

Then he shouted in my ears, “Approach,[ac] you who are to visit destruction on the city, each with his destructive weapon in his hand!” Next I noticed[ad] six men[ae] coming from the direction of the upper gate[af] that faces north, each with his war club in his hand. Among them was a man dressed in linen with a writing kit[ag] at his side. They came and stood beside the bronze altar.

Then the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherub where it had rested to the threshold of the temple.[ah] He called to the man dressed in linen who had the writing kit at his side. The Lord said to him, “Go through the city of Jerusalem[ai] and put a mark[aj] on the foreheads of the people who moan and groan over all the abominations practiced in it.”

While I listened, he said to the others,[ak] “Go through the city after him and strike people down; do not let your eye pity nor spare[al] anyone! Old men, young men, young women, little children, and women—wipe them out! But do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary!” So they began with the elders who were at the front of the temple.

He said to them, “Defile the temple and fill the courtyards with corpses. Go!” So they went out and struck people down throughout the city. While they were striking them down, I was left alone, and I threw myself face down and cried out, “Ah, Sovereign Lord! Will you destroy the entire remnant of Israel when you pour out your fury on Jerusalem?”

He said to me, “The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is extremely great; the land is full of murder, and the city is full of corruption,[am] for they say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the land, and the Lord does not see!’[an] 10 But as for me, my eye will not pity them nor will I spare[ao] them; I hereby repay them for what they have done.”[ap]

11 Next I noticed the man dressed in linen with the writing kit at his side bringing back word: “I have done just as you commanded me.”

God’s Glory Leaves the Temple

10 As I watched, I saw[aq] on the platform[ar] above the top of the cherubim something like a sapphire, resembling the shape of a throne, appearing above them. The Lord[as] said to the man dressed in linen, “Go between the wheelwork[at] underneath the cherubim.[au] Fill your hands with burning coals from among the cherubim and scatter them over the city.” He went as I watched.

(The cherubim were standing on the south side[av] of the temple when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court.) Then the glory of the Lord arose from the cherub and moved to the threshold of the temple. The temple was filled with the cloud while the court was filled with the brightness of the Lord’s glory. The sound of the wings of the cherubim could be heard from the outer court, like the sound of the Sovereign God[aw] when he speaks.

When the Lord[ax] commanded the man dressed in linen, “Take fire from within the wheelwork, from among the cherubim,” the man[ay] went in and stood by one of the wheels.[az] Then one of the cherubim[ba] stretched out his hand[bb] toward the fire that was among the cherubim. He took some and put it into the hands of the man dressed in linen, who took it and left. (The cherubim appeared to have the form[bc] of human hands under their wings.)

As I watched, I noticed[bd] four wheels by the cherubim, one wheel beside each cherub;[be] the wheels gleamed like jasper.[bf] 10 As for their appearance, all four of them looked the same, something like a wheel within a wheel.[bg] 11 When they[bh] moved, they would go in any of the four directions they faced without turning as they moved; in the direction the head would turn they would follow[bi] without turning as they moved, 12 along with their entire bodies,[bj] their backs, their hands, and their wings. The wheels of the four of them were full of eyes all around. 13 As for their wheels, they were called “the wheelwork”[bk] as I listened. 14 Each of the cherubim[bl] had four faces: The first was the face of a cherub,[bm] the second that of a man, the third that of a lion, and the fourth that of an eagle.

15 The cherubim rose up; these were the living beings[bn] I saw at the Kebar River. 16 When the cherubim moved, the wheels moved beside them; when the cherubim spread[bo] their wings to rise from the ground, the wheels did not move from their side. 17 When the cherubim[bp] stood still, the wheels[bq] stood still, and when they rose up, the wheels[br] rose up with them, for the spirit[bs] of the living beings[bt] was in the wheels.[bu]

18 Then the glory of the Lord moved away from the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim. 19 The cherubim spread[bv] their wings, and they rose up from the earth[bw] while I watched (when they went, the wheels went alongside them). They stopped at the entrance to the east gate of the Lord’s temple as the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them.

20 These were the living creatures[bx] that I saw at the Kebar River underneath the God of Israel; I knew that they were cherubim. 21 Each had four faces; each had four wings and the form of human hands under the wings. 22 As for the form of their faces, they were the faces whose appearance I had seen at the Kebar River. Each one moved straight ahead.

Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 8:1 tc The LXX reads “In the sixth year, in the fifth month, on the fifth of the month.” sn In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth of the month would be September 17, 592 b.c., about fourteen months after the initial vision.
  2. Ezekiel 8:1 tn Or “power.” sn Hand in the OT can refer metaphorically to power, authority, or influence. In Ezekiel God’s hand being on the prophet is regularly associated with communication or a vision from God (3:14, 22; 8:1; 37:1; 40:1).
  3. Ezekiel 8:1 tn Heb “fell upon me there,” that is, God’s influence came over him.
  4. Ezekiel 8:2 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb (so also throughout the chapter).
  5. Ezekiel 8:2 tc The MT reads “fire” rather than “man,” the reading of the LXX. The nouns are very similar in Hebrew.
  6. Ezekiel 8:2 tc The MT reads: “what appeared to be his waist and downwards was fire.” The LXX omits “what appeared to be,” reading: “from his waist to below was fire.” Suggesting that “like what appeared to be” belongs before “fire,” D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:277) points out the resulting poetic symmetry of form with the next line, as followed in the translation here.
  7. Ezekiel 8:2 tc The LXX omits “like a brightness.”
  8. Ezekiel 8:2 tn See Ezek 1:4.
  9. Ezekiel 8:3 tn The Hebrew term is normally used as an architectural term in describing the pattern of the tabernacle or temple or a representation of it (see Exod 25:8; 1 Chr 28:11).
  10. Ezekiel 8:3 tn Or “spirit.” See note on “wind” in 2:2.
  11. Ezekiel 8:3 tn Or “image.”
  12. Ezekiel 8:5 tn Heb “lift your eyes (to) the way of.”
  13. Ezekiel 8:6 tn Heb “house.”
  14. Ezekiel 8:10 tn Or “pattern.”
  15. Ezekiel 8:10 tn Heb “detestable.” The word is often used to describe the figures of foreign gods.
  16. Ezekiel 8:10 sn These engravings were prohibited in the Mosaic law (Deut 4:16-18).
  17. Ezekiel 8:11 sn Note the contrast between these seventy men who represented Israel and the seventy elders who ate the covenant meal before God, inaugurating the covenant relationship (Exod 24:1, 9).
  18. Ezekiel 8:11 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
  19. Ezekiel 8:12 tn Heb “the room of his images.” The adjective “idolatrous” has been supplied in the translation for clarity.sn This type of image is explicitly prohibited in the Mosaic law (Lev 26:1).
  20. Ezekiel 8:14 tn Given the context, this could be understood as a shock, e.g., idiomatically “Good grief! I saw….”
  21. Ezekiel 8:14 sn The worship of Tammuz included the observation of the annual death and descent into the netherworld of the god Dumuzi. The practice was observed by women in the ancient Near East over a period of centuries.
  22. Ezekiel 8:16 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.
  23. Ezekiel 8:16 sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).
  24. Ezekiel 8:16 tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of “twenty-five,” perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash. tn Or “exactly twenty-five.”
  25. Ezekiel 8:16 sn The temple faced east.
  26. Ezekiel 8:16 tn Or “the sun god.” sn The worship of astral entities may have begun during the reign of Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:5).
  27. Ezekiel 8:17 tn It is not clear what the practice of “holding a branch to the nose” indicates. A possible parallel is the Syrian relief of a king holding a flower to his nose as he worships the stars (ANEP 281). See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 1:145-46. The LXX glosses the expression as “Behold, they are like mockers.”
  28. Ezekiel 8:18 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
  29. Ezekiel 9:1 tc Heb “they approached.” Reading the imperative assumes the same consonantal text but different vowels.
  30. Ezekiel 9:2 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
  31. Ezekiel 9:2 sn The six men plus the scribe would equal seven, which was believed by the Babylonians to be the number of planetary deities.
  32. Ezekiel 9:2 sn The upper gate was built by Jotham (2 Kgs 15:35).
  33. Ezekiel 9:2 tn Or “a scribe’s inkhorn.” The Hebrew term occurs in the OT only in Ezek 9 and is believed to be an Egyptian loanword.
  34. Ezekiel 9:3 tn Heb “house.”
  35. Ezekiel 9:4 tn Heb “through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem.”
  36. Ezekiel 9:4 tn The word translated “mark” is in Hebrew the letter ת (tav). Outside this context the only other occurrence of the word is in Job 31:35. In ancient Hebrew script this letter was written like the letter X.sn For a similar concept in the Bible, see Rev 7:2-4; 13:16; 14:9, 11; 20:4; 22:4.
  37. Ezekiel 9:5 tn Heb “to these he said in my ears.”
  38. Ezekiel 9:5 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
  39. Ezekiel 9:9 tn Or “lawlessness” (NAB); “perversity” (NRSV). The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT, and its meaning is uncertain. The similar phrase in 7:23 has a common word for “violence.”
  40. Ezekiel 9:9 sn The saying is virtually identical to that of the elders in Ezek 8:12.
  41. Ezekiel 9:10 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
  42. Ezekiel 9:10 tn Heb “their way on their head I have placed.” The same expression occurs in 1 Kgs 8:32; Ezek 11:21; 16:43; 22:31.
  43. Ezekiel 10:1 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
  44. Ezekiel 10:1 tn Or “like a dome.” See 1:22-26.
  45. Ezekiel 10:2 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  46. Ezekiel 10:2 tn The Hebrew term often refers to chariot wheels (Isa 28:28; Ezek 23:24; 26:10).
  47. Ezekiel 10:2 tc The LXX, Syriac, Vulgate, and Targum mss read plural “cherubim,” while the MT is singular here, “cherub.” The plural ending was probably omitted in copying the MT due to the similar beginning of the next word.
  48. Ezekiel 10:3 tn Heb “right side.”
  49. Ezekiel 10:5 tn The name (“El Shaddai”) has often been translated “God Almighty,” primarily because Jerome translated it omnipotens (“all powerful”) in the Latin Vulgate. There has been much debate over the meaning of the name. For discussion see W. F. Albright, “The Names Shaddai and Abram,” JBL 54 (1935): 173-210; R. Gordis, “The Biblical Root sdy-sd,” JTS 41 (1940): 34-43; and especially T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God, 69-72.
  50. Ezekiel 10:6 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  51. Ezekiel 10:6 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the man dressed in linen) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  52. Ezekiel 10:6 tn Heb “the wheel.”
  53. Ezekiel 10:7 tn Heb “the cherub.”
  54. Ezekiel 10:7 tn The Hebrew text adds, “from among the cherubim.”
  55. Ezekiel 10:8 tn The Hebrew term is normally used as an architectural term in describing the plan or pattern of the tabernacle or temple or a representation of it (see Exod 25:8; 1 Chr 28:11).
  56. Ezekiel 10:9 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
  57. Ezekiel 10:9 tn The MT repeats this phrase either due to dittography or a distributive meaning of the repeated phrase (see GKC, 134q).
  58. Ezekiel 10:9 tn Heb “Tarshish stone.” The meaning is uncertain. The term has also been translated “topaz” (NEB), “beryl” (KJV, NASB, NRSV), and “chrysolite” (RSV, NIV).
  59. Ezekiel 10:10 tn Or “like a wheel at right angles to another wheel.” Some envision concentric wheels here, while others propose “a globe-like structure in which two wheels stand at right angles” (L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 1:33-34). See also 1:16.
  60. Ezekiel 10:11 sn That is, the cherubim.
  61. Ezekiel 10:11 tn Many interpreters assume that the human face of each cherub was the one that looked forward.
  62. Ezekiel 10:12 tc The phrase “along with their entire bodies” is absent from the LXX and may be a gloss explaining the following words.
  63. Ezekiel 10:13 tn Or “the whirling wheels.”
  64. Ezekiel 10:14 tn Heb “each one”; the referent (the cherubim) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  65. Ezekiel 10:14 sn The living creature described here is thus slightly different from the one described in Ezek 1:10, where an ox’s face appeared instead of a cherub’s. Note that some English versions harmonize the two descriptions and read the same here as in 1:10 (cf. NAB, NLT “an ox”; TEV, CEV “a bull”). This may be justified based on v. 22, which states the creatures’ appearance was the same.
  66. Ezekiel 10:15 tn Heb “it was the living creature.”
  67. Ezekiel 10:16 tn Heb “lifted.”
  68. Ezekiel 10:17 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the cherubim) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  69. Ezekiel 10:17 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the wheels) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  70. Ezekiel 10:17 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the wheels) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  71. Ezekiel 10:17 tn Or “wind.”
  72. Ezekiel 10:17 tn Heb “living creature.”
  73. Ezekiel 10:17 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the wheels) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  74. Ezekiel 10:19 tn Heb “lifted.”
  75. Ezekiel 10:19 tn Or “the ground” (NIV, NCV).
  76. Ezekiel 10:20 tn Heb “That was the living creature.”