Behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz— The prophet here refers to the Phoenician or Syrian superstition. Tammuz was an idol of Chaldee extraction, as is plain from his name; which also is used for the tenth month, reckoning from the autumnal equinox, that is to say, the month of June; and Tammuz, as the object of worship, expresses the solar light in its perfection, as it is at the summer solstice in the month of June, dispensing heat and its effects, not only to the earth and plants, but also to the bodies of animals. The Vulgate renders Tammuz by Adonis; and there is no question but Adonis, according to the physical theology of the heathens, was the same as the sun. Macrobius, indeed, expressly affirms it. Saturnal lib. i. c. 21. He says, that the tradition of Adonis's being killed by a boar, means the diminution of the sun's light and heat by winter. See Orpheus's Hymn to Adonis. This departure of Adonis, or the sun, was lamented by the Phoenician and Assyrian women in the most frantic ceremonies of grief, and by most improper and criminal actions: and thus the Jewish women are described by our prophet weeping for Tammuz on the fifth day of the sixth month, that is, of August; at which time his descent to hell, and his death by the winter boar, were drawing on apace. Tammuz was supposed to have been killed in mount Lebanon; whence flows the river Adonis, whereof Mr. Maundrel speaks thus: "We came to a fair large river, doubtless the ancient river Adonis, so famous for the idolatrous rites performed here in lamentation of Adonis. We had the fortune to see, what may be supposed to be the foundation of that opinion which Lucian relates; namely, that this stream, at certain seasons of the year, especially about the feast of Adonis, is of a bloody colour, which the heathens looked upon as proceeding from a kind of sympathy in the river for the death of Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar in the mountains out of which this stream rises. Something like this we saw actually come to pass; for the water was stained to a surprising redness, and, as we observed in travelling, had discoloured the sea a great way into a reddish hue, occasioned doubtless by a sort of minium, or red earth, washed into the river by the violence of the rain." Milton has finely touched upon each of these particulars in the following elegant and melodious lines:
————Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd The Syrian damsels to lament his fate, In amorous ditties all a summer's day; While smooth Adonis, from his native rock, Ran purple to the sea, suppos'd with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: The love-tale Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, His eye survey'd the dark idolatries of alienated Judah. PARADISE LOST, b. i. v. 446, &c.
See Parkhurst on the word תמוז tammuz, Univ. Hist. vol. 1: p. 342 and Lucian. de Dea Syria.