---
title: Ezekiel 8:17
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/ezekiel-8-17/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/ezekiel-8-17.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Ezekiel 8:17
testament: OT
section: Prophets
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Ezekiel 8:17

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> “Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger? Look, they are even putting the branch to their nose!

## JW Usage

Watchtower literature occasionally cites Ezekiel 8:17 — "they are putting the branch to their nose" — as evidence that the cross is a phallic sun-worship symbol with pre-Christian pagan roots. The reading is traceable through H. Cutner's 1940 *A Short History of Sex-Worship* (a Rationalist Press Association freethought pamphlet) back to Alexander Hislop's 1853 *The Two Babylons* — a source publicly retracted by its biggest Evangelical popularizer Ralph Woodrow in 1997 after he checked Hislop against primary sources.

## Protestant Usage

The Hebrew word Ezekiel uses, *zemorah*, means "branch" or "vine-shoot" and is used elsewhere in the Old Testament without any sexual overtones — Numbers 13:23 (grape cluster branches from Eshcol), Isaiah 17:10 (cuttings), Ezekiel 15:2 (vine branches). The NWT's own footnote at Ezekiel 8:17 flags that the original reading was "*my* nose" rather than "their nose," a scribal correction called the Emendations of the Sopherim, which indicates this was a Hebrew idiom for insulting Jehovah, not a phallic rite. Daniel Block's NICOT *Ezekiel* commentary (Eerdmans 1997) surveys the options and concludes the verse is either a sun-worship gesture (consistent with verse 16, where worshippers face east toward the rising sun) or a rude provocation idiom directed at Jehovah — neither connected to the cross. The phallic-cross genealogy has no standing in contemporary Semitics or Egyptology; it is Hislop restated with different flavouring.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Cross Is Not Pagan — And Paul Boasted In It](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/cross-pagan-symbol-rebuttal.md) — Galatians 6:14 / 1 Corinthians 1:18 / Colossians 2:14 [Practice]