In Ezekiel 7:22, we read, “My face will I turn also from them, and they shall pollute my secret place; for the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it.”
God, through Ezekiel, is telling of his condemnation of Judah. He states that he is going to allow strangers (non-Israelites) to enter the Temple and pollute it. He will do this because the Israelites have become so wicked. In verse twenty, we learn that they had made horrible idols in the Temple. They were worshipping these idols. In 8:10, Ezekiel, in a vision, sees these terrible idols and sees the leaders of the people worshipping them.
In 8:16, Ezekiel sees leaders of the people standing in the Temple looking east. They were worshipping the sun. The sun rises in the east. Therefore, many sun worshippers worship while looking east.
God always pictured Himself as being in the west. In the Tabernacle that He had Moses build, the Holy of Holies was on the west end of the Tabernacle. The gates to enter the Tabernacle compound, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies were on the east side. The gate to the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were sent out after their sin was on the east. The picture is that to look back to God they would look west.
To worship the sun in the Temple required one to turn his back on God. This is exactly what we read in Ezekiel 8:16, “…with their backs toward the temple of the Lord…” Since the people had turned their back on God, He would also turn his back on them. In the verse from Chapter Seven, God is turning His back. Not only was He turning His back on the people of Judah to allow strangers to enter the Temple, but He was turning His back from the strangers while they defiled the Temple. This meant that He would allow them to do something that usually brought death. However, since the people of Israel had already defiled the Temple and turned their backs on Him, He would allow the strangers to do this.
Live obediently to God. I know you do not want God to turn His back on you. However, if you do not live according to His laws given in the Bible, He will turn His back on you. Keep studying your Bible. If any of this is hard to understand, ask an adult to help you.
