CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY

im'-aj-ri, im'-a-jer-i (maskith): The reference (Ezekiel 8:12) is to chambers in the temple where the elders of Israel were wont to assemble and practice rites of an idolatrous character. What the imagery consisted of, we may gather from 8:10: symbolic representations of beasts and reptiles and "detestable things." It is thought that these symbols were of a zodiacal character. The worship of the planets was in vogue at the time of the prophet among the degenerate Israelites.

IMAGERY

im'-aj-ri (maskith, "carved figure"): Only in Ezekiel 8:12, "every man in his chambers of imagery," i.e. dark chambers on whose walls were pictures in relief representing all kinds of reptiles and vermin, worshipped by elders of Israel. Some maintain that the cult was of foreign origin, either Egyptian (Bertholet, Commentary on Ezekiel), or Babylonian (Redpath, Westminster Commentary on Ezekiel); others that it was the revival of ancient superstitions of a totemistic kind which had survived in obscure circles in Israel (W.R. Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, revised edition, 357). The word here rendered "imagery" is elsewhere in the King James Version translated "image" (of stone) (Leviticus 26:1, the Revised Version (British and American) "figured stone"), "pictures" (Numbers 33:52, the Revised Version (British and American) "figured stones"; Proverbs 25:11, the Revised Version (British and American) "network"); twice it means imagination, conceit, i.e. a mental picture (Psalm 73:20 Proverbs 18:11). "Imagery" occurs once in Apocrypha (Sirach 38:27 the King James Version, eis homoiosai zographian, the Revised Version (British and American) "to preserve likeness in his portraiture").

D. Miall Edwards