WORSHIP OF A REBEL AGAINST GOD

Then, in an inner courtyard, Ezekiel reports, “Look! there the women were sitting, weeping over the god Tammuz.”​—Ezek. 8:14.

Who was this Tammuz? According to the Babylonians and the Syrians, he was the god of vegetation. In southwest Asia, the vegetation grows during the rainy season with its kindly floods and dies during the dry season. Death of the vegetation was viewed as picturing the death of Tammuz, and it was his death that was bewailed annually at the time of the greatest heat, by the idolatrous worshipers of Tammuz. At the return of the rainy season Tammuz was supposed to return from the underworld, as symbolized by the growth again of the vegetation.

How would the Israelites ever be induced to worship an idol? Why would they follow the practices of such a cult? When we consider the history and background of Tammuz worship it becomes more apparent. In his book The Two Babylons Dr. Alexander Hislop identifies Tammuz with Nimrod, the founder of the city of Babylon, about 180 years after the flood of Noah’s day.

Nimrod’s followers considered his violent death a tragedy or calamity, and deified him. Annually they memorialized his death on the first or second day of the lunar month named Tammuz, when the idolatrous women wept over his idol. Thus the reason for this weeping over him by the Babylonian cultists is understood. Also, the fact that Nimrod is recognized by scholars as identified with Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonians, enables us to see why the Jews, then tributary to Babylon, and in danger of being swallowed up by this World Power of the day, might be induced to take up Tammuz worship.