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Ezekiel, part 26, Hidden Creature Worship

Ezekiel 8:5, 6 says,

⁵ Then He said to me, “Son of man, raise your eyes now toward the north.” So I raised my eyes toward the north, and behold, to the north of the altar gate was this idol of jealousy at the entrance. ⁶ And He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary? But yet you will see still greater abominations.”

After God has transported Ezekiel (spiritually) to the temple in Jerusalem, God tells him to look north. The idol first mentioned in verse 3 now comes into view at the entrance, north of the altar gate. The altar gate led toward the outdoor altar of burnt offering, as we see in Leviticus 1:11. Its location is part of the offense. A rival object of worship stands at the approach to the altar dedicated to the Lord.

The altar itself represents the place of justification by faith in Christ, who was the ultimate Sacrifice for the sin of the world. However, the in those days the people were required to approach the altar of God through this idol. In other words, the priests required sinners to approach God through the idols of their hearts, prophetically referred to as “dung” and as the traditions of men.

It is the equivalent of priests and ministers leading men to understand that their salvation was based on the human tradition that they are saved by their own will (decision), rather than by the will of God, as John 1:13 tells us. In so doing, they place an idol in front of the altar of God, which is said to be an abomination—something detestable. Many Christians see nothing wrong with this, but God views it as a rival god that provokes Him to jealousy.

That idol is removed primarily by recognizing that our own will is a response to God’s will. We must understand that “the kindness of God leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). If God does not reach out to us first, we will always fail to reach out to Him. So Jeremiah prays, “Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned” (Lamentations 5:21 KJV). This truth is seldom made clear to new believers. It is not one of the “four spiritual laws” presented to them.

The result is that most Christians become Old Covenant believers. Their salvation is based on their own will and their own vow to follow God, following the example of the Israelites in Exodus 19:8, who promised, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do!” There is nothing inherently wrong in making such a commitment, but if we base our salvation on it, we will soon discover that we will fail. Man’s good intentions are good but they always fail in the end.

Later in the chapter Ezekiel has to dig through a wall to see what the elders are doing in secret (8:7–12). This first abomination is already in plain sight.

Exposing Religious Corruption

In verse 6, God asks, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing?” Ezekiel sees an image, but God calls his attention to the people’s actions. They have given the idol a place in His sanctuary, and by doing so they are driving Him far from it. That is the force of the qin’ah we discussed in verse 3. The idol provokes the Lord’s jealousy because it intrudes on the worship that belongs to Him under the covenant (Exodus 34:14). Hence, in the end, the glory departs.

In other words, Old Covenant believers will not qualify to fulfill the glory of the feast of Tabernacles and will not be raised in the first resurrection (Revelation 20:5, 6). They will have to await the general resurrection a thousand years later (Revelation 20:12), the one described by Jesus Himself in John 5:28, 29.

The words “far from My sanctuary” anticipate the movement of the glory in chapters 10–11. In 8:4 the glory of God is still there. It later moves from the temple threshold to the east gate and finally to the mountain east of the city (10:18–19; 11:22–23). Meanwhile, God says He Himself has been a sanctuary to the scattered people (11:16). The people in Jerusalem still have the temple, while the exiles can still have God’s presence.

This anticipates the New Covenant, where the glory of God is no longer restricted to Jerusalem or even to a building or to a denomination that men may think is “the true church.” It is a time where our bodies are the temple of God, regardless of where we live.

Greater Abominations

When God says Ezekiel will see “greater abominations,” He leads the prophet farther into the temple precincts. The sequence culminates in verse 16, where men stand between the porch and the altar with their backs toward the temple of the Lord as they bow to the rising sun. Their posture makes visible what God has already charged in verse 6. They have turned away from Him in His own house.

Ezekiel 8:7, 8 says,

⁷ Then He brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall. ⁸ He said to me, “Son of man, now dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall, and behold, an entrance.

Now God brings Ezekiel to the entrance of the court, where he sees only a small hole in the wall. At God’s command he digs through the wall and discovers a doorway. The order is worth noticing. Ezekiel sees the hole first, then the doorway, then what lies inside. God is leading him from what anyone could see at the gate to what the elders thought they could keep hidden.

Ezekiel 8:9-11 continues,

⁹ And He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations that they are committing here.” ¹⁰ So I entered and looked, and behold, every form of creeping things and beasts and detestable things, with all the idols of the house of Israel, were carved on the wall all around. ¹¹ Standing in front of them were seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them, each man with his censer in his hand and the fragrance of the cloud of incense rising.

God tells Ezekiel to go in and see what the people are doing. The first thing Ezekiel sees is the carvings that cover the walls all around him, including crawling creatures, animals, and idols. In verse 11 he sees what makes the carvings objects of worship. Seventy elders stand before them, each holding a censer, and a cloud of incense rises. The passage takes us from the images on the wall to the leaders who are honoring them.

The choice of images recalls Deuteronomy 4:15–19. At Horeb, Israel heard God’s voice but saw no form. Moses therefore warned them against making an image in the likeness of a human being, an animal, a bird, a crawling creature, or a fish. Ezekiel walks into a room in the temple precincts whose walls display the very kinds of images Moses warned against. The people had brought the forms of created things into the Lord’s sanctuary and were burning incense before them. The apostle Paul refers to this in Romans 1:25,

²⁵ For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Creature worship includes the worship of man himself. This is done when he elevates his own will above the will of God and values his own understanding (“traditions”) above the word of God.

The wall itself answers what the elders say in verse 12, “The Lord does not see us.” They are hidden from ordinary view, and the people are too blind to see the distinction between creature and Creator.

Related to this, of course, are the food laws, which distinguish between clean and unclean spiritual food. Unclean food correlates with traditions of men, while clean food correlates with true spiritual food. As we saw in Ezekiel 4, food preparation is one of the keys to understanding this principle. Too often, good food is cooked over the dung of men’s traditions, thereby polluting what otherwise would have been good food (scripture).

Jaazaniah, Son of Shaphan

Who was Jaazaniah, mentioned in Ezekiel 8:11?

His father was probably Shaphan, King Josiah’s scribe, who read the newly discovered Book of the Law to the king (2 Kings 22:8–10). If that identification is correct, Jaazaniah belonged to a family closely associated with Josiah’s reforms and Jeremiah’s ministry. His brother Ahikam, also a son of Shaphan, protected Jeremiah from being put to death (Jeremiah 26:24), and Elasah, another brother, carried Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:3). That family background gives Jaazaniah’s appearance in the chamber particular force. The son of the man who read the Law to Josiah is seen taking part in the very kind of worship the Law forbade.

His name means “The Lord hears.” That has an ironic ring in this scene, where the elders say, “The Lord does not see us” (Ezekiel 8:12). The Jaazaniah named later in Ezekiel 11:1 is identified by a different father, Azzur and is not to be confused with the son of Shaphan.