Took me by a lock of mine head. — Not, of course, literally, in the body, but in vision. Ezekiel did not actually leave Chaldæa at all, as is shown by Ezekiel 11:24.
The door of the inner gate. — This is one of the gates which led from the court of the people to the court of the priests which was on a higher level. In the account of the building of the temple there is no mention of gates leading from the one to the other, but they would naturally have been placed there, as we know they were in the later temple of Herod. The particular gate was the one “which looketh toward the north,” as the one by which the priests went directly to the great altar.
The image of jealousy is explained in the following clause, “which provoketh to jealousy.” It is not necessary to consider “jealousy” as a proper name — the name of any particular heathen divinity — but rather as a descriptive name, an image which aroused the Divine indignation. It has even been thought that it is not meant to indicate any particular idol, but is only a picture to set forth the prevailing idolatry. It is, however, altogether probable that at this time there actually were heathen idols set up in the temple, and nothing could give a more vivid picture of the corruption of priests and people alike than the mention of their presence. Idolatry had been growing more general and more bold from the time of Solomon. He built places of worship for the various idols of his wives “in the hill that is before Jerusalem” (1 Kings 11:7); but Ahaz, under the influence of the Assyrian king, had placed an idolatrous altar in the temple itself, removing the brazen altar to make room (2 Kings 16:10-16), and Manasseh afterwards did the same (2 Kings 21:4). All the subsequent kings of Judah, except Josiah, were wicked men, and although this particular sin is not distinctly recorded of Zedekiah, yet it seems altogether likely that he too made use of the temple for idolatrous worship, and that Ezekiel in vision now saw his idols standing in the court.