Ezekiel 8:14

(Verse 13, 14). And he said to me: You will still see greater abominations that they (or these) do. And he brought me through the entrance of the gate of the house of the Lord, which faced north; and behold, there were women sitting there, mourning for Adonis. Whom we interpret as Adonis, and in the Hebrew and Syriac languages is called Thamuz.

Yet such absurdities as these are those guilty of who follow after lying vanities and forsake their own mercies. Some think it was for Adonis, an idol among the Greeks, other for Osiris, an idol of the Egyptians, that they shed these tears. The image, they say, was made to weep, and then the worshippers wept with it.

There sat women weeping for Tammuz - This was Adonis, as we have already seen; and so the Vulgate here translates. My old MS. Bible reads, There saten women, mornynge a mawmete of lecherye that is cleped Adonrdes. He is fabled to have been a beautiful youth beloved by Venus, and killed by a wild boar in Mount Lebanon, whence springs the river Adonis, which was fabled to run blood at his festival in August.

From the secret abominations of the chambers of imagery, the prophet's eye is turned to the outer court at the north door; within the outer court women were not admitted, but only to the door. sat--the attitude of mourners (Job 2:13; Tammuz--from a Hebrew root, "to melt down." Instead of weeping for the national sins, they wept for the idol.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

The seer is now brought back to the same gate as in Eze 8:3. It is not certain that this verse refers to any special act of Tammuz-worship. The month in which the vision was seen, the sixth month (September), was not the month of the Tammuz-rites. But that such rites had been performed in Jerusalem there can be little doubt. Women are mentioned as employed in the service of idols in Jer 7:18. There is some reason for believing that the weeping of women for Tammuz passed into Syria and Palestine from Babylonia, Tammuz being identified with Duv-zi, whose loss was lamented by the goddess Istar. The festival was identical with the Greek “Adoniacs.” The worship of Adonis had its headquarters at Byblos, where at certain periods of the year the stream, becoming stained by mountain floods, was popularly said to be red with the blood of Adonis. From Byblos it spread widely over the east and was thence carried to Greece. The contact of Zedekiah with pagan nations Jer 32:3 may very well have led to the introduction of an idolatry which at this time was especially popular among the eastern nations. This solemnity was of a twofold character, first, that of mourning, in which the death of Adonis was bewailed with extravagant sorrow; and then, after a few days, the mourning gave place to wild rejoicings for his restoration to life. This was a revival of nature-worship under another form - the death of Adonis symbolized the suspension of the productive powers of nature, which were in due time revived. Accordingly, the time of this festival was the summer solstice, when in the east nature seems to wither and die under the scorching heat of the sun, to burst forth again into life at the due season. At the same time there was a connection between this and the sun-worship, in that the decline of the sun and the decline of nature might be alike represented by the death of Adonis. […]