Ezek. viii. 15. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man ? Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
MAN is ready to complain of God's judgments, as though they were unmerited or severe. But " God will be justified in his sayings, and will overcome when he is judged a." The captives in Babylon thought that God had dealt hardly with them. God therefore gave to the Prophet Ezekiel, who was amongst the captives there, a vision of what was at that very time transacting in the temple at Jerusalem, notwithstanding the judgments that had been inflicted on them. This was the sixth year of king Jehoiakim's captivity ; and yet did the remnant of the people in Jerusalem continue as impenitent as ever. It was on account of their idolatries that God had given them over into the hands of the Chaldeans : yet was ido- latry practised at Jerusalem in all its most hateful and abominable forms, even by the priests and elders, who ought to have exerted their authority to repress it. They laboured, indeed, to conceal their impiety from common observation ; and therefore they built a wall to obstruct the common entrance into the place where they assembled : but the prophet, in his vision,
a Rom. iii. 4.
spied a hole in the wall, which he was directed to enlarge, so as to get access to the door ; and then on entering at the door, " he saw every form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about, and seventy elders, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan at their head, offering clouds of incense to themV Being directed then to go to another part of the temple, he saw " still greater abominations," even a multitude of " women sitting, weeping for Tammuz," some deified monster of iniquity0." Then, in the passage which I have read, he was told, that, on going to another part of the temple, he should " see greater abominations still." Accordingly, he went into the inner court of the temple, and there saw about five- and-twenty men, " with their backs towards that part of the temple" where the holy of holies was, and which was the more immediate residence of the Deity, and "worshipping the sun towards the eastd." The Lord then appeals to the prophet, whether there was not abundant reason for the judgments which he had inflicted on the nation ; and declares his determination to chastise them with yet greater severity ; " Hast thou seen this, O son of man ? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here ? Therefore will I deal with them in fury : mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity : and, though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them6."
In its primary sense, this passage doubtless refers only to the Jews; and to them at the period here specified. But, when we consider that the deporta- tion of the Jewish people into captivity, their sub- sequent deliverance from that captivity, and their restoration to their own land, were all typical of what yet passes in the world, and in the Church, and in the heart, we feel authorized so far to accommodate the words of our text to existing circumstances, as to take occasion from them to point out the hidden
b ver, 7_ii. c ver. 13, 14. d ver. 15, 16. c ver. 17, 18.