Ezekiel 8:1-18
8 ** And in the year six, in the sixth month, on the fifth of the month, I was sitting in my house and the elders of Judah were sitting before me, and the Lord Jehovah’s hand fell on me there;
2 * and I saw and found a semblance in the form of a man, from the appearance of his waist down fire, and from his waist up a resplendent appearance like the luster of green gold.
3 ** And he reached out the figure of a hand and took me by my cue, and a wind took me up between the earth and the sky and brought me to Jerusalem in divine vision, to the northward inner gateway, where was the site of the jealousy-effigy;
4 and I found there the glory of the God of Israel, like the sight I had seen in the bottom-lands.
5 And he said to me “Man, raise your eyes northward”; and I raised my eyes northward and to the north of the altar gate I found this jealousy-effigy in the entrance.
6 * And he said to me “Man, do you see what they are doing, great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to be far from my sanctuary? but yet again you shall see great abominations.”
7 * And he brought me to the gate of the court, and I saw and found a hole in the wall.
8 And he said to me “Man, break into the wall”; and I broke into the wall and found an entrance.
9 * And he said to me “Go in and see the vile abominations they are committing here.”
10 And I went in and saw and found every figure of reptile and disgusting beast and all the fetishes of the house of Israel, delineated on the wall all round;
11 * and seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan in the middle, standing before them with censers in their hands and the invocatory cloud of incense going up.
12 And he said to me “Do you see, man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his picture-chambers, because they think ‘Jehovah does not see us, Jehovah has left the country’?”
13 And he said to me “Yet again you shall see great abominations that they are committing.”
14 And he brought me to the northern gate of Jehovah’s house, and I found the women there, sitting weeping for Tammuz.
15 And he said to me “Did you see, man? yet again you shall see greater abominations than these.”
16 * And he brought me to the inner court of Jehovah’s house, and I found at the door of Jehovah’s temple, between the porch and the altar, about twenty men with their backs to Jehovah’s temple and their faces eastward; and they were doing reverence eastward to the sun.
17 * And he said to me “Do you see, man? Do the house of Judah find it too slight a matter to have committed the abominations they had committed here, that they have filled the country with outrage and here they are sending bad air at my nose?
18 * And I on my part will act in resentment; my eye will have no mercy and I will not spare; and they will cry in my ears in a loud voice and I will not listen to them.”
Footnotes
^ 8:1 Conj. year thirty
^ 8:1 Var. fifth month
^ 8:2 Var. from his waist down
^ 8:3 Or by my cowlick
^ 8:3 Var. the jealousy-effigy that stirred jealousy
^ 8:6 Conj. to repel me from
^ 8:7 Var. omits last half
^ 8:9 Var. the abominations
^ 8:11 Lit. (unc.) the invocation of the cloud of
^ 8:16 Var. about twenty-five
^ 8:17 (bad air) The precise meaning, as given by Jewish tradition, is something for which English has no word current in decent society, referring to the attitude of the men with their backs at the open front of the temple and their foreheads to the ground
^ 8:18 Var. omits last part
