Ezekiel 8:14

The women bewailing Tammuz

14. gate of the Lord's house i.e. outside the whole temple buildings to the north gate of the outer court; cf. ch. Ezekiel 10:19; Ezekiel 11:1. The term "house" embraces all the temple buildings (Jeremiah 35:4). The women may have been seen sitting outside the gate, or they may have been in some of the chambers of the outer gateway. Of course the temple building in Ezekiel's time did not quite correspond to his ideal sketch in ch. 40 seq., but there were no doubt chambers at that time connected with both gateways (Jeremiah 35:2; Jeremiah 35:4; Jeremiah 36:10; Jeremiah 36:12; Jeremiah 36:20-21; cf. Jeremiah 26:10; 2 Kings 23:11). Tammuz is identical with Adonis. The latter name, Adon, "Lord," is not a proper name, being applicable to any great god, but when the myth found its way to Greece, the word became a proper name. The name Tammuz is Babylonian Dumu-zi, Dûzi, said to signify "son of life," and to indicate the eternal youth of the sun-god (cf. Fried. Del. in Baer's Ezek.; Schrader, KAT. on Ezekiel 8:14; Sayce, Hibbert Lect. IV). The story of the death of Tammuz is said to be a solar myth, having reference to the death of the sun-god. The explanations given by Assyrian scholars are not very clear. Sometimes the death is said to be that which he undergoes each night, sometimes that which he undergoes when he expires before the touch of winter, and sometimes the death is that of the lusty, life-giving vernal god, who perishes along with all life on earth amidst the summer fires which he himself has kindled. The town of Gebal or Byblos, eight miles north of Beirut, was the great seat of the Adonis worship in Phenicia. It is possible that the cult passed westward from Babylonia, but it may be that in Syria the rites had an independent origin and a different meaning, and that it was not till later that they were interpreted in the sense of the Babylonian myth (W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, index under Adonis). It was probably from Phenicia that the worship entered Judæa. Milton's interpretation of the rites may not quite exhaust their meaning:

the love tale

Infected Zion's daughters with like heat;

Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch

Ezekiel saw.

Such myths may originally be only beautiful nature poetry, but we are so allied to nature that we see our feelings reflected in her, as on the other hand her moods repeat themselves in us. Particularly in times of decay and loss the sadder aspects of nature intensify our own feeling by presenting to our minds a universal decay in which we and all things are involved. It is only the sorrowful side of the Tammuz rite that the prophet refers to.