Imagery

Imagery - (Easton's Bible Dictionary)

Only in the phrase "chambers of his imagery" (Ezek. 8:12). (See [292]CHAMBER.)

Imagery - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

IM'AGERY, n. im'ajry. Sensible representations, pictures, statues.

Rich carvings, portraitures and imagery.

1. Show; appearance.

What can thy imagery and sorrow mean?

2. Forms of the fancy; false ideas; imaginary phantasms.

The imagery of a melancholic fancy.

3. Representations in writing or speaking; lively descriptions which impress the images of things on the mind; figures in discourse.

I wish there may be in this poem any instance of good imagery.

4. Form; make.

im'-aj-ri (maskith, "carved figure"): Only in Eze 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) (Le 26:1, the Revised Version (British and American) "figured stone"), "pictures" (Nu 33:52, the Revised Version (British and American) "figured stones"; Pr 25:11, the Revised Version (British and American) "network"); twice it means imagination, conceit, i.e. a mental picture (Ps 73:20; Pr 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