The Room Of Pictures

“Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures?” – Ezekiel 8:12

Ezekiel records a disturbing vision of the idolatry of his people in this passage. His vision takes him to the temple of Jerusalem, where he sees sitting at the entrance an “image of jealousy,” an aggregate symbol of all idolatries. Then in the temple are three groups representing idolaters of different lands: the elders in the dark like the Egyptians, the weeping women like the Syrians, and the sun-worshippers like the Eastern religions.

The description of the elders is particularly chilling. Their room is entirely hidden. Ezekiel has to dig into the wall to find the entrance, which leads to a hidden bedchamber. There, engraved into the walls, are “every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts” (8:10). Seventy elders are there, burning incense in worship of these images—strikingly, the same number of elders that Moses leads up to Mt. Sinai in Numbers 11:16. 

On one level, this is a picture of people who’ve decided God has not given them what they want, and turned to the gods of their neighbors. The Egyptians painted their gods on the walls. They were known for religious mystery-rites, to which none were admitted without initiation, and these extended to the Grecians and Romans as well. It is only too easy to be self-seeking in our motivations or functionally worship what others around us are.

But on another level, this is a picture of our hearts, of the secret places in the dark where we nurture idols we think no one else sees. One commentator wrote, “By our memory, and by that marvelous faculty that people call the imagination, and by our desires, we are forever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures.” True worship is what we worship in the dark, in the private chapels where no one goes into but ourselves. What do you think upon, imagine, or desire that you would not want to bring into the light? What is in your room of pictures?

The irony is that one of the elders is named Jaazaniah, which means “the Lord hears.” Jeremiah 17:10 says, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind.” The image at the front of it all is an image of jealousy—the anger, hurt, and disappointment not just of a bad choice, but of a broken relationship. That is what our sins in the dark mean, to the God who sees everything, even the places in ourselves that no one else does.