Interpretation Helps for Ezekiel 8-11

Ezekiel definitely has some parts that are difficult to understand. Here are the ones that I looked up today:

• In Ezekiel 8:8 God tells Ezekiel to dig a hole into the wall of the temple court. This suggests evil things were being done in secret.
• In 8:14 Ezekiel sees women mourning for Tammuz. Tammuz is a Babylonian fertility god, and the mourning is part of the worship ritual (having to do with the god annually dying and causing vegetation to wilt).
• In 9:2 I was wondering what the man clothed in linen represented. Priests dressed this way, so it seems to show this man as a servant of God.
• Ezekiel 10 talks about the cherubim who were originally described in detail in chapter 1. Their four faces and their movement is mainly to show how they are watching and moving within the four corners of the earth.
• In Ezekiel 11:2-11 the wicked men compare themselves to meat in a cooking pot. To them Jerusalem was as strong as an iron pot and they were the choice portions, the meat whereas the exiles were the discarded bones.
• Ezekiel 11:19-20 is an illustration of the "inner spiritual and moral transformation that results in a single-minded commitment to the Lord and to his will" (Concordia Self-Study Bible).