Bible Commentaries

Chambers of Imagery

Exodus 24:9-10, and the other seventy referred to in Numbers 11:16. These two seventies were selected for the purpose of enjoying special nearness to God, but the seventy referred to in the text seem to have been princes of iniquity, thoroughly skilled and trained in the use of all the abominations which were most abhorrent to the God of Israel. Ezekiel saw that every man had his censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. We have seen ( 2 Chronicles 26:16-18) that the burning of the incense was the exclusive function of the priesthood. By offering incense to their idols the seventy elders claimed to be the priests of those idols. How men can delude themselves! how the most gifted teachers can yield their minds to the most obvious infatuations! It was worth while putting on record all these deviations from the right road simply to trace the whole history of human nature in its unity. From the beginning human nature has been given to apostasy, to self-worship, and to all manner of disobedience. Wickedness is no modern invention. Iniquity has not come upon us as the result of our civilisation. From the beginning every feature was lurid in its vividness, was appalling in the striking resemblance which it bore to the discoveries of our own consciousness. All that was done by rebellious Israel was done "in the dark." By the "dark" we are to understand that the idolatry was performed in secret. There was an open and public idolatry in Jerusalem at this very time, but such is the downward tendency of all evil that it was not sufficient to have a public and an almost established idolatry, but something further should be done in darkness and concealment. Stolen waters are sweet. Man cannot have enough of evil. He always invents another sweetness, another luxury, another delight in the service of his evil master. When wickedness can be enjoyed in public it ceases to be an enjoyment. It would appear as if the darkness were necessary to bring out the full savour of a bad man's delight.

By "chambers of imagery" understand chambers painted throughout with images such as Ezekiel saw. We are not to understand that this was a solitary instance, we are to accept it rather as indicative of the general condition and worship of the idolatrous people. What was done in this one particular chamber was done in every other chamber, and had become indeed the new method in which Israel served the devil. Conscience had been driven away from the rule of human life. The people who were once the very elect of God said in their wickedness, "The Lord seeth us not": we have found a refuge from his eye, and here we may do what we please in the gratification of our worst desires. Is this merely a historical instance? Is there no desire now to plunge into an impenetrable concealment? Is it not true now that in many enjoyments the whole delight is to be found in the secrecy of their participation? A man can hide himself from his fellow-man in this matter, and can in the very act of prayer place himself within chambers of imagery, and delight himself with visions which no eye but his own can see. What is meant by "There sat women weeping for Tammuz" we cannot now certainly say. Tammuz is nowhere else mentioned in Scripture, but learned men have discovered that in ancient tradition it is a term identified with the Greek Adonis, the beloved of Venus. "The annual feast of Adonis consisted of a mourning by the women over his death, followed by a rejoicing over his return to life, and was accompanied by great abominations and licentiousness." From 2 Kings 23:7 we infer that women were engaged in the service of idolatry near the temple itself. The painful part of all this revelation consists in the fact that the idolatry was perpetrated within the sacred enclosure of the temple. This was not something done at a distance, in some faraway grove, in some spot which but few had ever penetrated; it was actually done in the temple, in the sacred building, on the consecrated floor, and the altar itself was dragged into the unholy and disastrous service. How are the high places made low! How are the mighty fallen! A decay of veneration is a decay of the whole character. Once let us feel that all places are equally common, and the level of our whole life will go down with that conclusion. For this reason it has pleased God to set up for himself a token in the succession of the days, so that we say of one particular day, "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it": it has pleased God to claim a certain part of the produce of the earth; it has pleased God to ask for a certain portion of the wealth which we have earned: so long as we maintain the reality of these claims, and respond to them with the willingness of love, we save our life from its worst degradation; once let us give up our idea of sacred time, or any divine claim upon the produce of the earth or the earnings of industry, and we not only surrender these particular instances, but we surrender all the tract and area of life and time to which they belong. Superstition is better than atheism. The worship of the sun is better than the utter denial of God.

In the seventeenth verse there is another peculiar expression which cannot be explained—"And, lo, they put the branch to their nose." Learning and ingenuity have failed to discover the precise meaning of these words. It is allowed that it must be an allusion to some custom familiar to the people, but now utterly lost. The Pharisees had a habit of holding twigs of the tamarisk, palm, and the pomegranate before their mouths. These habits and customs really have but little interest for us, seeing that there remains the fact, of ever-enduring interest and signification, that men may turn from the living God to dead idols. Now the Lord stands up in the terribleness of his wrath; out of his nostrils there proceed, as it were, fire and brimstone and a great anger. He says he will delight in fury, his eye shall not spare, and he will have no pity, and though the people cry in his ears with a loud voice, yet he will not hear them. How unfamiliar are these exclamations to us! How little of accord is there between them and the quiet tenor of divine providence as seen in daily life. The words are such as could hardly have been invented by the human imagination. Who would ascribe fury to the Lord, and an unsparing eye to him who made all tender and beautiful things? Who would venture to suppose that pity would be a stranger to him whose mercy is over all his works? How incredible the miracle that it should ever come to pass that the God and Father of men should be deaf to prayer and regardless of human entreaty! Yet here is the statement in plainest terms. Nor is it a statement: in a book only; it is the saddest fact in human consciousness. Every bad man knows what is meant by a withdrawal from the: universe of all holy ministries, all tender pities, all yearning; solicitudes, so that there is nothing left but an infinite void, a great resounding emptiness within which we cry without an answer, and supplicate without any recognition from on high. Attribute as much of this as we may to Hebrew poetry, and to the redundance of the Hebrew language, man has only to go within his own consciousness to know that there is a fact higher than the poetry, a bitter experience untouched by the sublimest rhetoric, by the noblest and most copious eloquence.

In the ninth chapter there is a vivid and instructive figure—"Cause them that have charge over the city" ( Ezekiel 9:1). By these: we should naturally understand the magistrates, the Ezekiel 9:4-6).

This is not the God with whose lovingkindness we have been familiar! So should we say in our ignorance, and yet we owe the very lovingkindness of God to the fact that such anger is possible: apart from the exercise of such indignation the lovingkindness would be simply sentiment; but seeing that the wrath of God can be so terrible, we find in his lovingkindness a counterpart of that dire extremity. A singular suggestion is that that the eye of the executioner might spare where God's own eye had failed to shed a tear: it would seem as if the executioners would be more pitiful than their Lord: were this so it could only be because they could descry only a partial aspect of the awful case. He who could see all had no hesitation in giving the commandment for an utter extermination of the rebels. Ezekiel himself broke down when the fearful vision passed before him. Whilst the slaughter was proceeding, he fell upon his "face, and cried, and said, Ah Lord God! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury upon Jerusalem?" This was very human, but this was profoundly sentimental. Ezekiel saw little more than the merely physical suffering of the people; he could not grasp the full majesty of eternal law. The Lord gave the reason in words which cover the whole of the sad occasion:—

"The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not. And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head" ( Ezekiel 9:9-10).

Observe, it was their way. Notice in particular that this is not an arbitrary act on the part of God. This is a Lord of measurement, of proportion, who adapts means to ends, who does not act indiscriminately and ruthlessly; a God who holds in his hands the balances of righteousness and judgment, and who gives to every man according to his deeds. The Lord himself is always careful to maintain this fact. Whatever we have seen of the terribleness of divine judgment has been matched by the terribleness of human sin. We may not see it; we may look upon the divine judgment as an exaggeration; but surely those who have studied the divine way are prepared to believe that God does nothing in excess, that in reality, if we could see things as he sees them, it would be almost impossible for judgment to be coordinate with sin. So terrible a thing is iniquity I so fearful a reality is a stain upon the robe of ineffable holiness! We cannot tell how awful a thing this is. We must take it on the authority of revelation that sin is the abominable thing which God hates, that it is an insult, a wound, a shame, a degradation which can never be explained in words. Hell itself can hardly enlarge its borders so as to take in all the tremendous issues of sin.

Prayer

Almighty God, help us to keep our foot when we enter into the house. Say unto us, The place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Yet hast thou made room at the altar for penitence and broken-heartedness. They have nothing to fear from the judgment of God; thou dost welcome such, and offer pardon upon pardon in wavelike abundance. We are sinners before God; we therefore pray thee have mercy upon us; drive us not away because of our unholiness. We have done the things we ought not to have done, we have left undone the things that we ought to have done: God be merciful unto us sinners! Is there not mercy in the Cross? Are there not pardons upon Calvary? Doth not the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanse from all sin? Did he not die the just for the unjust? We come in the name of Christ, we stand in the sanctuary of the love of Christ; we are sure that, being in Christ, we shall not be turned empty or unforgiven away. Thou knowest our life, a dawning cloud; thou knowest our experience, a daily need and a daily pain; thou knowest our best desires, they are thine own creation, therefore wilt thou answer our petitions. Come and save us, come and help us, come and abide with us, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Our days are few; may we spend them all for Christ. We know not when our life may end—may we be ready for its close by being ready for its duties. Give us masculine strength, efficient power, great energy, and dominance of will in things that are heavenly and in things that are beneficent: thus may our life go from us day by day, and the last shall be as a gate folding back upon immortality. Pity us when we are very weak; sanctify our strength lest it become riotousness; chasten us, that all our energies may be acceptable sacrifices. Bless the old man with such hopefulness that he shall forget his days in his dawning youthhood coming to him from the heavenly heights. Bless the busy man lest he should prove to be a fool at last, saving up that which must be burned, and leaving that which may be ill-spent. Bless the little child—may angels rock its cradle, may Christ be its earliest friend. Be with the sick and the weary and the sore of heart; send such help from the sanctuary, and strength out of Zion. Give us alway to feel how great the earth is, because it is part of the great universe. Amen.