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Ezekiel, part 27, The Stench of Idolatry

Ezekiel 8:12 says,

¹² Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land’.”

God asks Ezekiel whether he sees what the elders are doing “in the dark, each man in the rooms of his carved images.” Verse 11 shows the seventy elders together, each with a censer in his hand. Verse 12 adds “each man,” bringing out their individual responsibility. Ezekiel sees a group of leaders engaged in the same worship, and each elder is accountable for his own heart idol.

It is doubtful that Ezekiel was seeing literal idolatry in the temple. Instead, he was viewing their worship as God saw it. We ought to interpret this in light of Ezekiel 14, which explains more clearly the principle of heart idolatry. God views heart idolatry as if it were actual idolatry using physical idols. In the same way, Jesus showed how anger or hatred was the same as murder itself (Matthew 5:21, 22) from God’s perspective. Likewise, lust is the equivalent of adultery (Matthew 5:28). The New Covenant does not put away the law; it increases the requirement from the Old Covenant’s regulation of one’s behavior to the New Covenant’s requirement for an actual change of heart in one’s very nature.

The elders’ two statements belong together. “The Lord has abandoned the land” is how they explain their circumstances, as if God were a local deity. “The Lord does not see us” is what they assume about their conduct. They took what they perceived as God’s absence to mean that their actions escaped His notice. Yet it was the Lord Himself who brought Ezekiel to the wall, told him to dig through it, and showed him what was happening inside (8:7–10).

God’s question to Ezekiel, “Do you see?” answers the elders’ claim. The prophet sees because the Lord sees and has chosen to disclose it.

There is a further irony in the order of the vision. The glory of God is still there (8:4). In verse 6, God says that the people’s abominations are driving Him far from His sanctuary. The elders speak as though He had already abandoned them, while the vision shows how their own conduct is bringing about the departure of His glory.

The claim returns in Ezekiel 9:9, where it is connected with bloodshed and injustice. The secrecy of the chamber thus exposes a belief with consequences beyond the temple. Once the people persuade themselves that the Lord does not see, they act as though He will never call them to account.

Weeping for Tammuz

Ezekiel 8:13-15 continues,

¹³ And He said to me, “Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are committing.” ¹⁴ Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz. ¹⁵ He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these.”

The Lord tells Ezekiel that he will see “still greater abominations.” The prophet has just seen seventy elders burning incense before images in a dark chamber. (Incense represents acceptable prayer in Revelation 8:4.) Now the Lord brings him out to the north gate of His house. The setting changes from a concealed room to an entrance of the temple, where Ezekiel sees a different kind of worship taking place.

The women are sitting and “weeping for Tammuz.” Tammuz was the Mesopotamian deity known in Sumerian as Dumuzi. His worship included ritual mourning for his death and descent to the underworld. The offense lies in whom they mourn and where they do it. At the entrance to the Lord’s house, the women are observing a rite for another god. This was one of many early counterfeits imitating the mourning for the death of Christ.

There is also a pointed contrast in the next chapter. In Ezekiel 9:4, God marks those who sigh and groan over the abominations in Jerusalem. Here the women mourn for Tammuz. There the faithful grieve over what has become of the city and its worship.

In verse 15, the Lord asks, “Do you see this, son of man?” and again tells Ezekiel that he will see worse. The next scene takes him farther in, between the porch and the altar, where men turn their backs toward the temple and bow to the rising sun (8:16).

Ezekiel 8:16 continues,

¹⁶ Then He brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house. And behold, at the entrance to the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east; and they were prostrating themselves eastward toward the sun.

The temple’s porch had two pillars: Jachin on the right (north) and Boaz on the left (1 Kings 7:21), as the priests approached the sanctuary from west to east. But Ezekiel was shown that the worshipers were facing east with their backs toward the temple—as if they were leaving it.

In modern Masonic lodges, which they view as temples, they construct pillars that stand at the western entrance of the lodge, so the candidate passes between them from west to east. So every time they enter a Masonic temple (heading east), they are symbolically leaving God’s temple.

The Masonic candidate sees the pillars in the same order as someone facing outward from Solomon’s temple. So the lodge arrangement can be read as a visual parallel to Ezekiel’s scene. If you place the candidate’s eastward orientation onto the biblical temple plan, the sanctuary would be behind him.

Hence, they imitate the worshipers of Tammuz who face east toward the rising sun, supposedly seeking light (enlightenment). Yet the true light is behind them in the Most Holy Place.

Putting the Twig to Their Nose

Ezekiel 8:17, 18 concludes,

¹⁷ He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they have committed here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked Me repeatedly? For behold, they are putting the twig to their nose. ¹⁸ Therefore, I indeed will deal in wrath. My eye will have no pity, nor will I spare; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, yet I will not listen to them.”

“Do you see this, son of man?” draws Ezekiel’s attention to more than the men bowing to the sun. God now charges the entire house of Judah with having “filled the land with violence.” The vision began with an idol at the gate and ends with an indictment of what people are doing throughout the land. Ezekiel 9:9 makes the charge more concrete by naming bloodshed and injustice. The same people who assume that the Lord does not see their worship in secret act as though He does not see how they treat their neighbors.

God says that Judah has “filled the land with violence.” This suggests not only legal injustice but also war as a consequence of their lawlessness. Later, in Ezekiel 39:11–16, the prophet describes the burial of Gog’s army after battle, and the KJV says the burial valley “shall stop the noses of the passengers.” Those who bury the rotting corpses of the dead would put a sweet-smelling twig under their noses to block out the stench.

If the twig was used to mask the smell of the dead, the image would have a grim irony. The people responsible for the violence are trying to shield themselves from its stench. Hence, the people try to sweeten the stench of sin by normalizing lawless behavior.

We should also connect this stench to the “dung” in Ezekiel 4:12, which represents the idols of the heart and the traditions of men.

God says that His eye will not spare them and that He will not listen when they cry out. There is an irony in that wording. In verse 12 the elders say, “The Lord does not see us.” Yet by verse 18, they want the God whose attention they dismissed to hear them. Proverbs 1:24–28 gives the same sequence. Wisdom calls and people refuse to listen. When calamity comes, they call and receive no answer.

The next chapter shows whose cries God does take into account. In Ezekiel 9:4, He orders a mark placed on those who already sigh and groan over Jerusalem’s abominations. The two passages distinguish those who grieve over what is being done from those who cry out when judgment falls. That distinction comes before judgment begins at the sanctuary (9:6).