Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture

Now, because these elders are not limited to seventy but they come from the seventy, scholars presume that this isn’t a reference to the Sanhedrin (the early form of the Sanhedrin), but more probably a group representing lay—that is, nonpriestly—leaders in Jerusalem.

Political figures.

So here we go again: state sponsored idolatry.

State-sponsored, again, by the people who should know better.

They’re burning incense in the dark.

It’s described as this room of pictures.

Each one is there in this room of pictures.

Now the pictures, these images, are going to correspond to the list of animals in verse 10:

So there are engravings of unclean things on the walls and they’re burning incense there.

Now Taylor has a short commentary, this is part of the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series, that comments on this.

I think it’s worth a quick read.

Taylor writes this about this section:

Engraved upon the walls (portrayed, 10, EVV, is inadequate for a word meaning ‘incised’ or ‘carved in relief’) [ Basically that means they were reliefs, is what he’s saying] were all kinds of creeping things, loathsome beasts, and idols.

Creeping things (Heb.

remeś) are specifically mentioned as part of God’s good creation (Gen.

1:24); they are not by definition all unclean [ Just because it creeps doesn’t mean it’s unclean], as the AV of Leviticus 11:41 would suggest, for the word translated ‘creeping things’ in that context is the Hebrew šereṣ.

They do, however, include many reptiles and small verminous creatures that scurry and slither over the ground, from snakes to scorpions, and these certainly were unclean.

The serpent-deities known from Egyptian, Canaanite and Babylonian religions give grounds for supposing that this incident reflects the widespread influence of foreign cults on Israelite worship, cultivated no doubt from political, more than purely religious, motives.

Basically, that’s an allusion to alliances—political alliances.

Again, allowing this sort of influence as some sort of positive, political, good-will gesture within the context of Israel.

So I read the quote just to make the point that the language suggests, like Taylor says, the widespread influence of other Ancient Near Eastern cults.

This is why there’d be certain specific unclean creeping things engraved in relief on the walls.

So, apart from the idolatry, you have also the issue of alliances with these pagan states that themselves—you know, God was supposed to be their king, so that’s a violation—but then one of the reason that you don’t do that is not only that you want to show that you trust God but also because you’re going to be infected by what they believe.

And sure enough, that’s what you get here.

Now as far as the role of incense (I only bring this up, and I’d have to look for it… it popped into my head here), I had a friend in graduate school in an Israelite religion seminar one time who did a paper on the role of incense in worship.

It’s really hard to find material on that.

If I could find it (it might be in his dissertation, and that probably means I can’t post it).

If I find just his paper-paper then I could, but I’ll give it a look because I could post that.

But anyway, the bottom line here is that you used incense not only, as many commentators say, “They used it in the tabernacle so that you couldn’t smell the animal stink.”

Well, okay, that probably has something to do with it, but think of it this way: when you entered into sacred space, this is where you used incense.

So you weren’t depending on the incense cloud to filter outside the tabernacle where they were killing the animals and burning them, and the animal poop and all this stuff.

That’s a residual effect, but that isn’t why you did it.

You used incense in sacred space for a very simple reason: it marked that space different than other space.

In other words, you couldn’t just walk around the Israelite camp or the city of Jerusalem and smell incense.

When you smelled incense it was a clue to your senses—it should have been a clue to your brain—that okay, this was divine territory, this is divine turf, because this is burned on holy ground, sacred ground.

It distinguished the place from other places.

That’s a really important part of the logic of why you would use incense—to distinguish the sacred from the profane, from the normal.

We spent a lot of time on this in Ezekiel [sic.,Leviticus],

talking about how these distinctions were made.

Incense is part of that.

So if you take that back to Ezekiel, what do you have?

You have Israelites burning incense to these unclean figures carved on the walls, and the connotation was, “These are our gods.”

They are sacred.

We are marking out space for them, as though the space they occupy is holy and sanctified and sacred.

Of course, for Ezekiel this is just abominable.

If you’re the reader and you’re an orthodox Israelite, you’re thinking, “This is horrible!”

So what does Ezekiel say in verse 13, right after he’s done describing that, he says:

So now if you’re the reader you’re thinking, “What else could they possibly be doing?”

Well, they could be doing a lot of things, and you’re going to get it here again with more specifics in the chapter.

Verse 14:

Weeping for Tammuz.

Now Hebrew here, when it actually refers to Tammuz, the Hebrew text here has a (sorry for the grammar spasm again) has a definite article prefixed Tammuz: ha tammuz.

And if you remember about satan in Job 1, you do not prefix a definite article to a proper personal name.

You just don’t do that.

So this isn’t actually a reference to the deity Tammuz himself, but it’s certainly something connected with Tammuz.

Or it refers to (this is probably the best way to look at it) the ritual act—the religious act—of weeping for Tammuz, which was well-known throughout the ancient world.

People wrote songs for this, they used descriptions from Mesopotamian and Sumerian stuff, and it worked its way into the Greek culture and the Syro-Palestinian culture.

There were odes to Tammuz, weeping for Tammuz, to commemorate Tammuz.

If you don’t know anything about Tammuz, I’ll just give you a short reference.

So the fact that they put a definite article on it refers to some specific ritual or some specific song, or maybe some specific literary piece or genre—not technically to the deity himself because of the definite article.

But either way it’s directed at the deity, so that’s kind of like a distinction without a difference, or six of one and half dozen of another.

But I just thought I’d point it out.

This is from DDD, I believe… no this is from Harper’s Bible Dictionary, the article written by Richard Clifford, who’s an author I particularly like.

I don’t always agree with him, but he always says something useful

Tammuz is the Hebrew form of Dumuzi, which is a Sumerian term for “proper son.”

Tammuz was a god widely honored from the third millennium, B.C., in Mesopotamia, onward.

The vast and complex Mesopotamian literature about this god shows three essential aspects of him: as lover and consort of Inana [ a goddess], as one held in the underworld and mourned because of his absence [ in other words, in Mesopotamian stuff, Tammuz dies and rises from the dead again; that’s why the people are mourning—because of his absence], and as the embodiment of spring vegetation, and then of vegetation in general.

So Tammuz was a fertility deity and fertility didn’t just mean weird, aberrant sexual rituals.

It meant fecundity for the land—for cattle, for crops, that sort of thing.

And that’s important because you eat that stuff.

That’s what keeps you alive.

Clifford continues:

Many laments are preserved that bewail “the far one” who has disappeared.

Detained in the underworld, the laments reflect the aspect of Tammuz as god of vegetation.

His disappearance is connected to the drying up of the steppe in summer.

His cult may have been brought to Israel by the Assyrians in the 9th and 8th centuries, B.C. Aspects of Tammuz became synthesized with west Semitic gods of similar characteristics.

Baal Hadu, for example, went down to the underworld, died, rose, and was mourned during his absence.

[ That’s a specific reference to Baal, as the Canaanites knew him.]

Some of Dumuzi’s traits also appear in Adonis, a god first attested in Greece in the 5th century B.C. Ezekiel’s vision of four sins being committed in Jerusalem at the temple [That’s the chapter we’re in, chapter 8], the third of which is a group of women weeping for Tammuz in the North Gate, refers to this.

The women in Ezekiel are mourning this dying and rising god.

[ Now catch this—this is the point that I like that Clifford observes.]

The action is an abomination to Ezekiel, who believes that God does not die, and therefore cannot be mourned.

Again, God is eternal.

This isn't some sort of denial, even on Clifford's part of the incarnation and what-not.

Clifford is actually a Catholic.

He's going to go with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

He's a Catholic priest.

So that isn't why he's writing this.

He's just saying that for the Israelites, this is pre-incarnation, and anything that we would associate with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ—to an Israelite, well, God is eternal.

If he's from everlasting to everlasting, he doesn't die so you can't mourn him.

And that's what made this abominable.

That's what made it offensive to Ezekiel and the rest of his people, at least those who shared his theology.

Verse 15, the chapter goes on:

I mean, we've been through a bunch of layers of this already, and God—the figure that took Ezekiel by the hair, God of the Spirit, or whoever—brings him to this place and says, "It gets worse than this!"

So what's going to follow here is

abhorrent for a number of reasons that are going to become apparent.

It's abhorrent because it worships the creator as though he were part of the creation, and it's also abhorrent because it involves turning the back—the people who bow down are turning the back—on the presence of Yahweh.

That becomes very offensive.

Let me just read.