Ezekiel 8:11

8:11 Seventy men from the elders of the house of Israel ¹  (with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them) were standing in front of them, each with a censer in his hand, and fragrant ²  vapors from a cloud of incense were swirling upward.

Ezekiel 8:16

8:16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there ³  at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, ⁴  were about twenty-five ⁵  men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, ⁶  facing east – they were worshiping the sun ⁷  toward the east!

Ezekiel 31:16

31:16 I made the nations shake at the sound of its fall, when I threw it down to Sheol, along with those who descend to the pit. ⁸  Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and the best of Lebanon, all that were well-watered, were comforted in the earth below.

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¹ sn Note the contrast between these seventy men who represented Israel and the seventy elders who ate the covenant meal before God, inaugurating the covenant relationship (Exod 24:1, 9).

² tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.

³ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.

⁴ sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).

⁵ tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash.

tn Or “exactly twenty-five.”

⁶ sn The temple faced east.

⁷ tn Or “the sun god.”

sn The worship of astral entities may have begun during the reign of Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:5).

⁸ sn For the expression “going down to the pit,” see Ezek 26:20; 32:18, 24, 29.