THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL


CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY

'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
his imagery!'--EZEKIEL viii. 12.

This is part of a vision which came to the prophet in his captivity. He
is carried away in imagination from his home amongst the exiles in the
East to the Temple of Jerusalem. There he sees in one dreadful series
representations of all the forms of idolatry to which the handful that
were left in the land were cleaving. There meets him on the threshold of
the court 'the image of jealousy,' the generalised expression for the
aggregate of idolatries which had stirred the anger of the divine
husband of the nation. Then he sees within the Temple three groups
representing the idolatries of three different lands. First, those with
whom my text is concerned, who, in some underground room, vaulted and
windowless, were bowing down before painted animal forms upon the walls.
Probably they were the representatives of Egyptian worship, for the
description of their temple might have been taken out of any book of
travels in Egypt in the present day. It is only an ideal picture that
is represented to Ezekiel, and not a real fact. It is not at all
probable that all these various forms of idolatry were found at any
time within the Temple itself. And the whole cast of the vision
suggests that it is an ideal picture, and not reality, with which
we have to do. Hence the number of these idolaters was seventy--the
successors of the seventy whom Moses led up to Sinai to see the God
of Israel! And now here they are grovelling before brute forms painted