Catholic Commentary
The Secret Chamber: Elders Offering Incense to Idols
7He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall.8Then he said to me, “Son of man, dig now in the wall.” When I had dug in the wall, I saw a door.9He said to me, “Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here.”10So I went in and looked, and saw every form of creeping things, abominable animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed around on the wall.11Seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel stood before them. In the middle of them Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan stood, every man with his censer in his hand; and the smell of the cloud of incense went up.12Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.’”13He said also to me, “You will again see more of the great abominations which they do.”
Ezekiel 8:7–13 describes the prophet's vision of seventy elders secretly worshipping idols and unclean creatures in hidden chambers within the Temple, each offering incense to these abominations while falsely believing God no longer sees or cares for the land. The passage exposes the comprehensive corruption of Israel's religious leadership, whose willful denial of divine omniscience and abandonment of covenant faithfulness enabled their interior apostasy and perverse use of sacred worship instruments.
The elders offer incense to idols in secret chambers because they believe—wrongly—that God no longer sees them or cares, proving that idolatry begins not with false gods but with a false god: one who abandons His people.
Commentary
Ezekiel 8:7 — The Hole in the Wall The vision begins in medias res: the divine guide has already brought Ezekiel through the Temple precincts (cf. 8:1–6), and now they stand at the door of the inner court. Ezekiel notices a hole (Hebrew: ḥor) in the wall — not a formal entrance, but a breach. The very architecture of concealment is significant. True worship moves through open doors, consecrated gates, public liturgy; what follows is accessed only through a hole, a secret passage. The physical disorder of the wall already signals that something has gone profoundly wrong with the house it encloses.
Ezekiel 8:8 — "Dig in the Wall" God commands Ezekiel to enlarge the breach — an act of prophetic disclosure. The command "dig" (ḥatar) is the same verb used elsewhere for breaking and entering (cf. Job 24:16; Matt. 6:19–20). Ezekiel is not demolishing the Temple; he is exposing what is already broken. The divine insistence on this act communicates that God Himself wills the revelation of hidden sin. Nothing is concealed from the divine gaze; the act of digging merely makes visible to the prophet what God already sees.
Ezekiel 8:9 — "See the Wicked Abominations" The word rendered "abominations" (tô'ēbôt) is Ezekiel's signature term for cultic apostasy and moral depravity (used over forty times in the book). The divine imperative "go in and see" transforms the prophet into a forensic witness. He does not stumble upon this scene accidentally; he is commissioned to see, to record, and ultimately to testify. This mimics the structure of prophetic calling: the seer must behold what is unbearable so that the community may hear what it refuses to face.
Ezekiel 8:10 — Images on the Walls What Ezekiel sees is comprehensive in its horror: every form of creeping things (remeś), ritually impure beasts, and idols (Hebrew: gillûlîm, a term Ezekiel coins or adopts with contempt, possibly related to the word for dung pellets) are "portrayed around on the wall" — images incised or painted in a frieze pattern, reminiscent of Egyptian or Mesopotamian temple decoration. The seventy species of the animal kingdom represented here may deliberately invert the Genesis taxonomy of creation: instead of God's ordered, blessed creatures, these are the unclean, the creeping, the abominable — a parody of creation oriented toward chaos. The walls of the house of God have been turned into a pagan pantheon.
Ezekiel 8:11 — Seventy Elders and Jaazaniah The number seventy is charged with covenantal resonance. Seventy elders accompanied Moses up Sinai and beheld God (Exod. 24:1, 9–11); seventy constituted the Sanhedrin in later tradition. Here, the same number has assembled not in divine encounter but in divine betrayal. Each elder holds his own censer (miqṭeret), the instrument of legitimate priestly intercession now turned to idolatrous use. Jaazaniah son of Shaphan is named specifically — his family was among Josiah's most faithful reformers (cf. 2 Kgs. 22:12), making his presence here all the more stinging. The corruption has reached even those of noble religious lineage. The cloud of incense ascending is a grotesque inversion of the Tabernacle cloud of divine Presence.
Ezekiel 8:12 — "Yahweh Doesn't See Us" This verse is the theological heart of the passage. The elders operate "in the dark" (baḥōšek) and in "rooms of imagery" (ḥadrê maśkît), suggesting both physical secrecy and interior fantasy — chambers of their own making, populated by images of their own choosing. Their creed is stated baldly: "Yahweh doesn't see us; Yahweh has forsaken the land." This twofold denial — of divine omniscience and of divine fidelity — is the precise error that enables every subsequent corruption. It is not ignorance but an act of willful theological reasoning: because the land is in crisis (Babylonian pressure, failed harvests, political instability), they have concluded God has withdrawn, and therefore alternative allegiances are rational. Ezekiel's vision destroys this logic: God sees exactly because He has not abandoned the land.
Ezekiel 8:13 — "You Will Again See More" The divine commentary is spare and chilling: this is not the worst of it. The vision of secret idolatry is merely the second of four escalating scenes of Temple abomination (cf. 8:14–18). The incremental structure is pedagogical — each level of sin disclosed is more public or more egregious than the last. The phrase "great abominations" signals that the prophetic tour has not reached its climax.
Typological and Spiritual Senses In the allegorical sense, the hidden chamber lined with idols represents the human heart that has closed itself to God and constructed an interior pantheon of rival loyalties — pleasure, power, prestige. The Church Fathers frequently read this passage as diagnosing concupiscence and the darkened intellect (cf. Rom. 1:21–23). In the anagogical sense, the scene anticipates the judgment that must precede restoration: only what is fully exposed can be fully healed.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage at several intersecting levels.
The Omniscience of God and the Impossibility of Concealment. The elders' creed — "Yahweh doesn't see us" — is precisely the error the Catechism identifies when it teaches that God "knows everything" and that "nothing is hidden from him" (CCC 208, 302). St. Augustine, meditating on Psalm 139, writes that the soul which flees God's gaze is fleeing its own source of being — a flight that can only end in disintegration. The hidden chamber is Augustine's cor inquietum in its most deformed state: a heart that has not merely not found rest in God but has actively constructed a substitute sanctuary.
Idolatry as Disordered Worship. The Catechism's treatment of the First Commandment (CCC 2112–2114) defines idolatry as honoring and revering a creature in place of God, noting that it "perverts man's innate sense of God." What Ezekiel witnesses is this perversion at the institutional level — it is not folk religion at the margins but the leadership of the covenant community. St. John Chrysostom, in his homilies on idolatry, insists that every idol represents a willed act of self-deception: we construct gods that will not hold us accountable.
Priestly Responsibility and Scandal of Leadership. The Second Vatican Council's Presbyterorum Ordinis (§12) and the Catechism (CCC 1551) both emphasize that ordained ministers act in persona Christi and bear proportionately greater responsibility for the integrity of worship. The seventy elders with their censers constitute a scandalous inversion of priesthood, directly anticipating Christ's condemnation of religious leadership that "closes the kingdom of heaven against men" (Matt. 23:13). Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium §97, warns against the "spiritual worldliness" that leads ministers to seek human reward through institutional forms — a modern echo of worship re-oriented toward self rather than God.
The Censer as Instrument of Inversion. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 93) treats superstition as a vice opposed to religion by excess — giving religious worship to what does not deserve it. The incense, ritually proper in the Temple, becomes here the instrument of superstition, a precise example of what Aquinas means. The holier the instrument, the more corrupting its misuse.
For Today
The elders' logic — "God doesn't see; God has abandoned the field" — is remarkably durable. Contemporary Catholics can encounter its equivalent whenever difficult circumstances (illness, political disorder, perceived Church failure, personal suffering) produce the quiet conclusion that the covenant is effectively suspended and practical compromises are therefore justified. The "rooms of imagery" Ezekiel describes are easily furnished today: the carefully guarded private life that contradicts public faith, the double standard maintained between Sunday Mass and Monday boardroom, the habitual sin rationalized because God seems silent.
This passage challenges Catholics in leadership — catechists, deacons, priests, parents, Catholic educators — with particular directness: the seventy are not the rabble but the elders. The corruption of those entrusted to lead worship and moral formation is not merely a personal failure but an ecclesial wound. A practical examination this passage invites: Where in my life have I constructed a hidden chamber — an area deliberately kept from prayer, from confession, from the light of Scripture — because I have, functionally, decided God is not looking? The remedy Ezekiel implies is God's own act of digging open the wall: interior honesty before a God who sees and has not left.
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