Third Scene: “Women . . . Weeping Over the God Tammuz”

13. What did Ezekiel see apostate women doing at one of the temple gates?

¹³ Read Ezekiel 8:13, 14. Following the first two scenes of detestable practices, Jehovah again told Ezekiel: “You will see detestable things that are even more terrible that they are doing.” What, then, did the prophet see next? At “the entrance of the north gate of the house of Jehovah,” he saw “women sitting and weeping over the god Tammuz.” A deity of Mesopotamia, Tammuz is called Dumuzi in Sumerian texts and is thought to have been the consort of the fertility goddess Ishtar.d The Israelite women were evidently weeping as part of some religious ritual connected with the death of Tammuz. By weeping over Tammuz in Jehovah’s temple, those women were carrying out a pagan ritual in a center for pure worship. But a false religious observance was not sanctified by being carried out in God’s temple. Why, from Jehovah’s standpoint, those apostate women were doing “detestable things”!

14. What lesson can we learn from Jehovah’s view of what the apostate women were doing?

¹⁴ What lesson can we learn from Jehovah’s view of what those women were doing? To keep our worship pure, we must never mix it with unclean pagan practices. Hence, we must have nothing to do with observances that have pagan religious origins. Does origin really matter? Yes! Today the practices associated with certain observances, such as Christmas and Easter, may seem harmless. But let us not forget that Jehovah saw firsthand the pagan religious practices that eventually have become modern-day observances. In Jehovah’s view, pagan practices do not become less detestable with the passage of time or through efforts to mix them with pure worship.​—2 Cor. 6:17; Rev. 18:2, 4.