Discovery BoxEzekiel 8:11 
Context8:11 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
Context8:16 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
Context31:16 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.
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.
