Ez 15:1-8

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The unfaithfulness of Jerusalem (Eze 16:1-43)

In this chapter Ezekiel describes Judah’s relationship with Yahweh by means of a long and colourful illustration. The ancient nation Israel began life in Canaan as a hated people of mixed blood and mixed culture. It was like an unwanted baby girl thrown out at birth and left to die (Eze 16:1-5).

Then a passing traveller (Yahweh) picked the baby up and gave it a chance to live. The girl survived and grew, though without training or upbringing (Eze 16:6-7).

Many years later, by which time the girl had reached an age when she might marry, the same traveller happened to see her again. She had not been washed or clothed since birth. The man then lovingly bathed her, clothed her, married her, and made her so beautiful that her fame spread to other nations. So likewise, after the Israelites had spent centuries away from God in Egypt, he saved them from shame and made them his own people by covenant at Mt Sinai (Eze 16:8-14).

But the woman was not faithful to the marriage covenant. Israel was unfaithful to the one who had done so much for her. Leaving him to serve other gods, she became a spiritual prostitute. She built shrines and altars to other gods, and offered to those gods the things that Yahweh had freely given her (Eze 16:15-19).

To make matters worse, she participated in the pagan practice of offering her children as human sacrifices (Eze 16:20-22).

As a prostitute uses brothels to attract her customers, so Israel built idol shrines throughout her towns and villages (Eze 16:23-25).

She further demonstrated her spiritual prostitution by forsaking God and making political alliances with other countries. Even those nations, Israel’s lovers, were ashamed of her immoral behaviour, but Israel kept lusting for more (Eze 16:26-29).

In fact, her lust was so great that it was abnormal. Usually the customer pays the prostitute, but in the case of the prostitute Israel she paid the customer, so that she could multiply her immoral acts (Eze 16:30-34).

According to Israelite practice, the punishment for an adulteress was to be stripped naked, paraded in public and then stoned to death. Judah would therefore be punished, with its countryside stripped bare and the nation destroyed by enemy invaders. The nations who would inflict this disaster upon her would be the very nations whose favour she had tried to win by her prostitution (Eze 16:35-41).

All this would be at the direction of God himself, whose love for Israel was the reason for his anger with her (Eze 16:42-43).