Search The Scriptures —Study 5 — Ezekiel 8

Study  5 From the Book of Ezekiel is: Ezekiel 8

Chapters 8-11 describe what Ezekiel was shown in a prophetic trance fourteen months after his first vision.  Cf. 8:1 and 1:1, 2.

1.     The prophet is carried ‘in visions of God’ (verse 3) to Jerusalem, and is there shown four forms of idolatry, practices in or at the gate of the Temple.  If you were asked what these practices were, how would you describe them? Observe also what classes of the community are seen engaging in them.

2.     The idol-worshipping elders said, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land’ (verse 12). In what sense were their words true (cf.verse 6), and in what sense false? How does this chapter show that all that was happening was under the eyes and under the judgment of God?

Notes

1.     Verse 3. ‘Image of jealousy’: i.e., which provoked God’s jealous anger. Cf. Dt. 32:21.

2.     Verse 14. ‘Women weeping for Tammuz’: i.e., talking part in the heathen festival of mourning the death of the vegetation god, Tammuz, later known in Greek mythology as Adonis.

3.     Verse 16. ‘Between the porch and the altar’: these men must therefore have been priest.  Cf. Joel 2:17.

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