Ezekiel 8:17,18 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then he said After the prophet had seen all, and had had time to consider all he saw, God appeals to him concerning the heinousness of their crimes. Is it a light thing to the house of Israel Who know and profess better things, and are dignified with so many privileges above other nations? Is it excusable in them, who have God's oracles and ordinances, that they commit the abominations which they commit here? Do they not deserve to suffer who thus sin? Should not such abominations as these make desolate? For they have filled the land with violence All kinds of injustice are here meant, toward all sorts of men, whom they first despised and then defrauded, oppressed, or destroyed. And it is not strange if they who wrong their Creator make no conscience of injuring their fellow- creatures, and with all that is sacred, trample also on all that is just. And this wickedness of their conduct toward each other would have made their worship an abomination, even if it had been paid to the true God: see Isaiah 1:11, &c. And have returned to provoke me, &c. After having filled the land with violence, they return to the temple to practise their idolatries: from injustice against man they return to impiety against God, and thus, by fresh abominations, add new aggravations to their guilt. And lo, they put the branch to their nose This obscure clause is supposed by several commentators to relate to some custom among the idolaters of dedicating a branch of laurel, or of some other tree, to the honour of the sun, and carrying it in their hands at the time of their worship. And Spencer, De leg. Hebrews, lib. 4. cap. 5, observes, “that the heathen, in the worship of their deities, held forth the branches of those trees which were dedicated to them:” a rite which was called among the Greeks, οσχοφορια, θαλλοφρια : that is, branch-bearing. And Lewis, in his Origines Hebrææ, vol. 3. p. 4, observes, that the most reasonable exposition is, that the worshipper, with a wand in his hand, was wont to touch the idol, and then apply the stick to his nose and mouth, in token of worship and adoration. The Jewish rabbins, however, reckon this among the texts which their wise men have corrected, and say the original reading was not אפם, their nose, but אפי, my nose, or face; according to which reading the sense will be, They put a stick to my face, namely, to mock, or exasperate me: or, taking זמרה to mean here, not a branch, but, as Buxtorf renders it, odor malus ventris, the words will mean, they put an offensive smell to my nose, that is, they put an open affront upon me, namely, by turning their back to me in the place dedicated to my worship. And to this sense the LXX. interpret it, reading αυτοι ως μυκτηριζοντες, they are as those that mock me, or publicly affront me. The Vulgate, however, reads the clause as we do. Dr. Lightfoot renders the place, They put the branch to my wrath, or their wrath; that is, “they add more fuel to my wrath, which will burst out like a flame to consume them: just as if one should lay a heap of dry sticks upon a fire.” Therefore will I deal in fury, &c. Hebrew, in anger, or wrath. Mine eye shall not spare Their provocations are such, that my justice cannot be satisfied without bringing deserved punishment upon them; and though they cry, &c. Their sins cry louder for vengeance than their prayers cry for mercy.