Imagery

im'-aj-ri (maskith, "carved figure"): Only in Ezek 8:12, "every man in his chambers of imagery," i.e. dark chambers on whose walls were pictures in relief representing all kinds of reptiles and vermin, worshipped by elders of Israel. Some maintain that the cult was of foreign origin, either Egyptian (Bertholet, Commentary on Ezekiel), or Babylonian (Redpath, Westminster Commentary on Ezekiel); others that it was the revival of ancient superstitions of a totemistic kind which had survived in obscure circles in Israel (W.R. Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, revised edition, 357). The word here rendered "imagery" is elsewhere in the King James Version translated "image" (of stone) (Lev 26:1, the Revised Version (British and American) "figured stone"), "pictures" (Num 33:52, the Revised Version (British and American) "figured stones"; Prov 25:11, the Revised Version (British and American) "network"); twice it means imagination, conceit, i.e. a mental picture (Ps 73:20; Prov 18:11). "Imagery" occurs once in Apocrypha (Sirach 38:27 the King James Version, eis homoiosai zographian, the Revised Version (British and American) "to preserve likeness in his portraiture").

D. Miall Edwards