Jerome, on Ezek 8:15

“And he said to me: Surely thou hast seen, O son of man: but turn thee again: and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.”

“(Verse 15, 16.) And he said to me: Surely you have seen, son of man: yet you will see even greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the vestibule and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun in the east. We interpreted this vestibule to be near Symmachus, who placed the πρόπυλον, because the LXX and Theodotion translated the Hebrew word for it as Aelam (): Aquila's first edition, προστάδα: second edition, was interpreted as the Aelam of the temple, which we can express as the portico of the temple: or the covered courtyard that was between the temple and the altar. And as we read above, after the idol of Zeal, which appeared at the Northern Gate: You will still see even greater abominations; and the pictures of all the beasts that the seventy priests and Jezonias, son of Saphan, were worshiping were shown on the wall, with the censers in their hands. It is said a second time: You will still see even greater abominations, which these people do, because the women were sitting and mourning for Adonis; and after the third sin, it is said: You will still see even greater abominations than these. But what is the greatest abomination of the three previous sins? Namely, the fourth that follows: Behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the vestibule and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, and they worshipped the rising sun. They did this because they despised the Lord, that is, the Creator, and worshipped the sun, that is, the creature of the Lord, as the Lord Himself commanded through Moses (Deut. XII), that they should not worship God against the east in the manner of the Gentiles: but wherever they were in the world, whether to the east, or to the west, or to the south, or to the north, they should worship toward the temple, where it was believed the Lord dwelled in the Holy of Holies. Indeed, we read in Daniel (Dan. VI) that he did this in Babylon, who, with the windows of his upper room open, worshipped the Lord opposite the temple, which was in Jerusalem. That this was sacrilege according to the letter, no one doubts. According to allegory, he will be able to know that all heretics are worse than their predecessors, that is, the idol of Zeal and the painted figures of animals on the wall, and the lamentation for Adonis, through which idolatry and pleasures are demonstrated, he who understands the prophet saying: But you hate discipline, and you have cast my words behind you (Ps. XLIX, 17). And in another place: They turned against me the back and not the face (Jer. II, 27). Do we not know Marcion and the other heretics, who tear apart the old Testament, despising the Creator, that is, the just God, and worship and adore another false good God, whom they have invented from their own imagination? And all the heretics of our time, who preach that the Son of God is a creature, and yet adore him, confess with their own words that they adore a creature, having deserted the temple of divinity and turned their backs to it. But we worship the sun of righteousness in such a way that we worship God in the temple of the old Testament, where the Law and the Prophets, where the Cherubim and the mercy seat are. These twenty-five men we have translated, the seventy placed twenty, and in some copies, five from Theodotion were added.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.