Ezekiel 8:12 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ezekiel 8:7-12.— He brought me to the door] The first inference which may be drawn from these words is, that the superstition here described was Egyptian. This appears from its objects being the gods peculiar to Egypt: every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, Ezekiel 8:10 which in another verse the same prophet calls, with great propriety and elegance, the abominations of the eyes of the Israelites, chap. Ezekiel 20:7-8. The second inference is, that they contain a very lively and circumstantial description of the celebrated mysteries of Isis and Osiris. For, 1. The rites are represented as performed in a secret subterraneous place, Ezekiel 8:7-9. This secret place was, as the prophet tells us, in the temple: and such kind of places for this use the Egyptians had in their temples, as we learn from a similitude of Plutarch; "like the disposition," says he, "and the ordonnance of their temples; which in one place enlarge and extend themselves in wings and fair and open isles; in another, sink into dark and secret subterraneous vestries, like the Adyta of the Thebans." 2.These rites were celebrated by the Sanhedrim, or the elders, Ezekiel 8:11. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel. Now it appears from the best accounts that we have of the Egyptian mysteries, that none but princes, rulers, and the wisest of the people, were admitted to their most secret celebrations. 3. The paintings and imagery on the walls of this subterraneous apartment answer exactly to the descriptions which the ancients have given us of the mystic cells of the Egyptians: Behold every form of creeping things, &c., Ezekiel 8:11. There is a famous antique monument, once a consecrated utensil in the rites of Isis and Osiris, and now well known to the curious by the name of the Isiac, or Bembine tables; on which, as appears by the order of the several compartments, is pourtrayed all the imagery which adorned the walls of the mystic cell. Now, if we were to describe the engravings of that table, we could not find juster or more emphatical terms, than those which the prophet here employs. The third inference which may be drawn from this vision is, that the Egyptian superstition was that to which the Israelites were more particularly addicted. And thus much may be gathered from Ezekiel 8:10. We have shewn this to have been a description of an Egyptian mystic cell, which certainly was adorned only with Egyptian gods; and yet these gods are here called, by way of distinction, all the idols of the house of Israel; which seems plainly to infer this people's more particular attachment to them. But, the words house of Israel being used in a vision describing the idolatries of the house of Judah, we may take it for granted, that in this indefinite number of all the idols of Israel, were eminently included those two prime idols of the house of Israel, the calves of Dan and Beth-el; and the rather for that the original calves held a distinguishing station in the paintings of the mystic cell, as the reader may see by viewing the Bembine table. And this by the way will lead us to the reason of Jeroboam's erecting two calves: for they were as we find worshipped in couples by the Egyptians, as representing Isis and Osiris. And what is remarkable, the calves were male and female, as appears from Exodus 10:29 compared with Hosea 10:5 where in one place the masculine, and in the other the feminine term is employed. But though the Egyptian gods are thus, by way of eminence, called the gods of the house of Israel, yet other idols they had besides, and of those good store, as will appear in the sequel; for this prophetic vision is employed in describing the three master-superstitions of this unhappy people, the Egyptian, the Phoenician, and the Persian. The Egyptian we have seen.