“And she increased her whoredoms, for she saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, belted with belts on their loins, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them officers to look on, after the likeness of the Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth.”

These gorgeous cultic pictures painted on Babylonian walls had become familiar to Ezekiel since coming to Babylonia, and may possibly have been reproduced in some small way, through Babylonian influence, in Jerusalem. They were a vivid means of portraying the way that Jerusalem had been seduced by Babylonian sophistication and had become wrapped up in Babylon, like young women falling in love with a photograph of a uniformed officer.

‘Vermilion (shashar).' This refers to a lead or iron oxide yielding a bright red pigment suitable for wall painting.

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