I think the important thing is to see that this confirm with 1000% percent certainty that Book 3 of Against Marcion was developed from an original treatise (written by someone else) against the Jews. For the same core argument appears in Tertullian's Against the Jews but without the idiotic 'Ezra was saying that the Cross would be T shaped' inference.
In Against Marcion 3 we read the original context has been wholly altered. Now the Ezekiel reference appears in the middle of a string of 'proofs to the Marcionites' that Old Testament prophesies were fulfilled by the gospel. So the chapter begins:
You can see also how there were prophecies of the work of the apostles: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel
of peace, that preach the gospel of good things,a not of war or of evil things. The psalm also echoes this ...
The reference to Ezekiel 9 comes as a clarification of this string of prophesies:
So by setting it down first, and repeating it in like terms afterwards, that even Christ has suffered, he prophesied that his righteous ones too would have the same sufferings, first the apostles, and afterwards all the faithful, sealed with that mark of which Ezekiel speaks: The Lord said unto me, Pass through in the midst of the gate in the midst of Jerusalem, and set the mark TAU on the foreheads of the men.i For this same letter TAU of the Greeks, which is our T, has the appearance of the cross, which he foresaw we should have on our foreheads in the true and catholic Jerusalem, in which the twenty-first psalm, in the person of Christ himself addressing the Father, prophesies that Christ's brethren, the sons of God, will give glory to God the Father: I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise to thee.j For with good reason did he assert that he himself would be the doer of that which in our day was destined to be done in his name and in his spirit. So a little later, My praise is from thee
in the great congregation:k and in the sixty-seventh psalm, Bless ye the Lord God in the congregations:l so that the prophecy of Malachi had to be in agreement, / desire it not, saith the Lord, and I will not accept your sacrifices: because from the rising of the sun even to its setting, my name is glorified among the gentiles, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to my name, even a pure sacrificem—the rendering of glory, and benediction and praise and hymns. And since all these are found in use with you also, the sign on the foreheads, and the sacraments of the churches, and die pureness of the sacrifices, you ought at once to break forth and affirm that it was for your Christ that the Creator's Spirit prophesied.
So the argument that not only Jesus's appearance in Jerusalem with the Cross but the contemporary signing with a T in the churches (early third century) are attributed to Ezekiel.
I think we can safely say - given to the Latin letter 'T' and the underlying moronic logic - that it was Tertullian who reshaped an original reference to Ezekiel by another author. That author's text was original directed against the Jews not the Marcionites as the Tertullian text Against the Jews testifies. We read there that this original reference to Ezekiel chapter 9 develops in the middle of section devoted to Ezekiel's prediction of the coming of Jesus at the end of a longer argument that the prophesies foretold the gospel. The original text must have been quite early (early - mid second century) and I have highlighted the changes made by a second hand too:
Now, if the hardness of your heart shall persist in rejecting and deriding all these interpretations, we will prove that it may suffice that the death of the Christ had been prophesied, in order that, from the fact that the nature of the death had not been specified, it may be understood to have been affected by means of the cross and that the passion of the cross is not to be ascribed to any but Him whose death was constantly being predicted. For I desire to show, in one utterance of Isaiah, His death, and passion, and sepulture. "By the crimes," he says, "of my people was He led unto death; and I will give the evil for His sepulture, and the rich for His death, because He did not wickedness, nor was guile found in his mouth; and God willed to redeem His soul from death," and so forth. He says again, moreover: "His sepulture hath been taken away from the midst." For neither was He buried except He were dead, nor was His sepulture removed from the midst except through His resurrection. Finally, he subjoins: "Therefore He shall have many for an heritage, and of many shall He divide spoils: " who else (shall so do) but He who "was born," as we have above shown?--"in return for the fact that His soul was delivered unto death? "For, the cause of the favour accorded Him being shown,--in return, to wit, for the injury of a death which had to be recompensed,--it is likewise shown that He, destined to attain these rewards because of death, was to attain them after death--of course after resurrection. For that which happened at His passion, that mid-day grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying, "And it shall be," he says, "in that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall set at mid-day, and the day of light shall grow dark over the land: and I will convert your festive days into grief, and all your canticles into lamentation; and I will lay upon your loins sackcloth, and upon every head baldness; and I will make the grief like that for a beloved (son), and them that are with him like a day of mourning." For that you would do thus at the beginning of the first month of your new (years) even Moses prophesied, when he was foretelling that all the community of the sons of lsrael was to immolate at eventide a lamb, and were to eat this solemn sacrifice of this day (that is, of the passover of unleavened bread) with bitterness; "and added that "it was the passover of the Lord," that is, the passion of Christ. Which prediction was thus also fulfilled, that "on the first day of unleavened bread" you slew Christ; and (that the prophecies might be fulfilled) the day hasted to make an "eventide,"--that is, to cause darkness, which was made at mid-day; and thus "your festive days God converted into grief, and your canticles into lamentation." For after the passion of Christ there overtook you even captivity and dispersion, predicted before through the Holy Spirit.
For, again, it is for these deserts of yours that Ezekiel announces your ruin as about to come: and not only in this age --a ruin which has already befallen--but in the "day of retribution," which will be subsequent. From which ruin none will be freed but he who shall have been frontally sealed with the passion of the Christ whom you have rejected. For thus it is written: "And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, thou hast seen what the elders of Israel do, each one of them in darkness, each in a hidden bed-chamber: because they have said, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath derelinquished the earth. And He said unto me, Turn thee again, and thou shall see greater enormities which these do. And He introduced me unto the thresholds of the gate of the house of the Lord which looketh unto the north; and, behold, there, women sitting and bewailing Thammuz. And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen? Is the house of Judah moderate, to do the enormities which they have done? And yet thou art about to see greater affections of theirs. And He introduced me into the inner shrine of the house of the Lord; and, behold, on the thresholds of the house of the Lord, between the midst of the porch and between the midst of the altar, as it were twenty and five men have turned their backs unto the temple of the Lord, and their faces over against the east; these were adoring the sun. And He said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Are such deeds trifles to the house of Judah, that they should do the enormities which these have done? because they have filled up (the measure of) their impieties, and, behold, are themselves, as it were, grimacing; I will deal with mine indignation, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I pity; they shall cry out unto mine ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, nay, I will not pity. And He cried into mine ears with a loud voice, saying, The vengeance of this city is at hand; and each one had vessels of extermination in his hand. And, behold, six men were coming toward the way of the high gate which was looking toward the north, and each one's double-axe of dispersion was in his hand: and one man in the midst of them, clothed with a garment reaching to the feet, and a girdle of sapphire about his loins: and they entered, and took their stand close to the brazen altar. And the glory of the God of Israel, which was over the house, in the open court of it, ascended from the cherubim: and the Lord called the man who was clothed with the garment reaching to the feet, who had upon his loins the girdle; and said unto him, Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and write the sign Tau on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over all the enormities which are done in their midst. And while these things were doing, He said unto an hearer, Go ye after him into the city, and cut short; and spare not with your eyes, and pity not elder or youth or virgin; and little ones and women slay ye all, that they may be thoroughly wiped away; but all upon whom is the sign Tau approach ye not; and begin with my saints." Now the mystery of this "sign" was in various ways predicted; (a "sign") in which the foundation of life was forelaid for mankind; (a "sign") in which the Jews were not to believe: just as Moses beforetime kept on announcing in Exodus, saying, "Ye shall be ejected from the land into which ye shall enter; and in those nations ye shall not be able to rest: and there shall be instabilityof the print of thy foot: and God shall give thee a wearying heart, and a pining soul, and failing eyes, that they see not: and thy life shall hang on the tree before thine eyes; and thou shalt not trust thy life."
And so, since prophecy has been fulfilled through His advent--that is, through the nativity, which we have above commemorated, and the passion, which we have evidently explained--that is the reason withal why Daniel said, "Vision and prophet were sealed; "because Christ is the "signet" of all prophets, fulfilling all that had in days bygone been announced concerning Him: for, since His advent and personal passion, there is no longer "vision" or "prophet; "whence most emphatically he says that His advent "seals vision and prophecy." And thus, by showing "the number of the years, and the time of the lxii and an half fulfilled hebdomads," we have proved that at that specified time Christ came, that is, was born; and, (by showing the time) of the "seven and an half hebdomads," which are subdivided so as to be cut off from the former hebdomads, within which times we have shown Christ to have suffered, and by the consequent conclusion of the "lxx hebdomads," and the extermination of the city, (we have proved) that "sacrifice and unction" thenceforth cease.
Sufficient it is thus far, on these points, to have meantime traced the course of the ordained path of Christ, by which He is proved to be such as He used to be announced, even on the ground of that agreement of Scriptures, which has enabled us to speak out, in opposition to the Jews, on the ground of the prejudgment of the major part. For let them not question or deny the writings we produce; that the fact also that things which were foretold as destined to happen after Christ are being recognised as fulfilled may make it impossible for them to deny (these writings) to be on a par with divine Scriptures. Else, unless He were come after whom the things which were wont to be announced had to be accomplished, would such as have been completed be proved?
There is one overriding difference between the two interpretations of the tav alluded to (but explicitly referenced in Ezekiel) in Against Marcion 3 the signing is said to be carried on in the Christian churches; in Against the Jews the signing is applied to Jews who escape the holocaust at the end of the Jewish War. Even if the emboldened section is argued to have been added by the secondary hand which corrected (Justin's?) original statement to the Jews about the end of the Jewish War being prophesied by Ezekiel into a reference to 'the end times' generally, I think the sense is still there in the citation .
