Page 41 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER VIII. 35

not yet definitively left, and is pleased to justify His
solemn procedure with His people.
“ But turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater
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, behold, 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, portrayed upon the wall round about.” It
is a scene of still more intimate and debasing idolatry,
a reproduction of the degradations of Egypt; and bow­
ing down to these, not the dregs but the rulers of the
people ! “And there stood before them seventy men of
the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of
ihem stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every
man his censer in his hand: and a thick cloud of in­
cense went up.” God had of old appointed seventy
judges; and one of their most momentous functions was
to deal with idol-worship. Here as many are found,
caught we may say, in the very act of priestly devotion to
the representation of serpents and abominable beasts
(or cattle) and all dung-gods. Shaphan was the scribe
who read the book of the law to the tender-hearted
Josiah: what an ominous change in Judah that now
Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan stood in the midst of the
seventy idolatrous elders !
Nor was this all. “ Then said he unto me, Son of
man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of
Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of