Yehezkiel 8:11-13

8:11 Seventy men from the elders of the house of Israel ¹  (with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them) were standing in front of them, each with a censer in his hand, and fragrant ²  vapors from a cloud of incense were swirling upward.

8:12 He said to me, “Do you see, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in the chamber of his idolatrous images? ³  For they think, ‘The Lord does not see us! The Lord has abandoned the land!’” 8:13 He said to me, “You will see them practicing even greater abominations!”

Yehezkiel 8:16

8:16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there ⁴  at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, ⁵  were about twenty-five ⁶  men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, ⁷  facing east – they were worshiping the sun ⁸  toward the east!

[8:11]  ¹ sn Note the contrast between these seventy men who represented Israel and the seventy elders who ate the covenant meal before God, inaugurating the covenant relationship (Exod 24:1, 9).

[8:11]  ² tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.

[8:12]  ³ tn Heb “the room of his images.” The adjective “idolatrous” has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[8:12]  sn This type of image is explicitly prohibited in the Mosaic law (Lev 26:1).

[8:16]  ⁴ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.

[8:16]  ⁵ sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).

[8:16]  ⁶ tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash.

[8:16]  tn Or “exactly twenty-five.”

[8:16]  ⁷ sn The temple faced east.

[8:16]  ⁸ tn Or “the sun god.”

[8:16]  sn The worship of astral entities may have begun during the reign of Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:5).