Ezekiel 8:15-16

Ezekiel 8:15-16. Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations These latter wickednesses may be accounted greater, because they were acted in a more sacred place. And he brought me into the inner court The court next the temple, namely, that of the priests. And, behold, at the door of the temple At that door through which there was an entrance into the porch of the temple, from the altar of burnt- sacrifices. Before, he saw the abominations committed in the gates of the courts, now he is come to the very house itself. Were about five and twenty men with their backs toward the temple, &c. In contempt of God and his worship they turned their backs toward his sanctuary, and their faces toward the sun; according to the custom of the Chaldeans, Persians, and other eastern nations who worshipped the sun. Lowth thinks Hezekiah might allude to some idolatrous practice of this kind, in that confession of his, recorded 2 Chronicles 29:6, Our fathers have forsaken him, and turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs. They turned their back to God, and not the face, as Jeremiah expresses their contempt toward him, Jeremiah 2:27. To prevent even the appearance of this, the people were commanded to come into the courts of the temple at the north or southern gates when they came to worship, that they might not, at their return, turn their backs upon God: see Ezekiel 46:9. God ordered the holy of holies, in his temple, to be placed toward the west, in opposition to this species of heathen idolatry, which consisted in worshipping the rising sun. And the pious Jews always turned their faces toward the temple when they worshipped.