Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on Ezekiel 16 and 23 in this sermon from The Gospel Coalition Library
Tonight I’m reading only one chapter, although there are two on the screen: chapters 16 and 23. They’re both very long and the second one I can summarize, about halfway through the message, in just a couple of sentences. The main thrust will come out of chapter 16.
I don’t know if you’ve been reading Ezekiel all along the line. If so, I hope that you will have already picked up that chapters 15 to 17 move into a kind of series of word pictures. People say that a picture is worth a thousand words; if we can’t have the pictures themselves, then perhaps word pictures are the next best things.
In chapter 15, Jerusalem is introduced to us as a kind of useless vine. This vine image is very common in the Old Testament, partly because the vine, in the Old Testament, is fruit-bearing, valuable, highly esteemed, and so, ideally, is Israel. But it turns out that this vine doesn’t bear good fruit. It’s not strong enough to serve as construction lumber. It has already been charred, so it’s absolutely useless. You might as well just throw it away and finish the job of burning it.
That theme of Israel as the vine recurs again and again in the Old Testament, and every time that it appears as a sustained metaphor, in every case, Israel turns out to be a fruitless vine. That’s the way it is, for example, in Psalm 80 or in Isaiah 5, where Isaiah breaks out his guitar and sings a little ballad of the vine, which turns out to be Israel: absolutely fruitless, just producing stinkers.
That’s the way it runs all the way through the Old Testament, until Jesus comes along and says, “I am the vine.” It’s part of a sustained development that Jesus claims to be the true Israel. The real fruit-bearing branches are all the ones that are in Jesus. That’s Ezekiel 15.
In chapter 17, there’s another extended picture that is drawn for us, this time of two eagles and a vine. The first eagle is Nebuchadnezzar. He comes to Judah, described as Lebanon, here, because of the treetop imagery (Lebanon had a lot of trees). In verse 3, he snatches away the top of the cedar (that is, the nobility) and takes it far off. That includes the nobility, the aristocracy, the priestly classes, and so on.
He also takes some of the seed of the land (that is, members of the royal family, namely Jehoiachin’s uncle, Zedekiah, if you recall) and plants it in a seed bed in Jerusalem, Judea. There, it is supposed to grow into a low-spreading vine. Unfortunately, this vine sends out its roots down to another eagle (namely, down in Egypt). It becomes a way of describing the kind of rebellion that this small nation then executed against Babylon and toward Egypt, which finally precipitated the final holocaust. So that’s another image.
Now in chapter 16 (and later in chapter 23), there is another extended metaphor. It is shocking, forceful, and, in some ways, quite horrible. It is meant to be horrible. It depicts Jerusalem and, in principle, the covenant people of God, as a wretchedly ungrateful whore. Yet this language is linked, in the Bible, to something quite wonderful as well. So then, listen to what the text says.
“The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices and say, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, ‘Live!’ I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.
Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.
I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.
So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.
But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. Such things should not happen, nor should they ever occur.
You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them. And you took your embroidered clothes to put on them, and you offered my oil and incense before them. Also the food I provided for you—the fine flour, olive oil and honey I gave you to eat—you offered as fragrant incense before them. That is what happened, declares the Sovereign Lord.
And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols. In all your detestable practices and your prostitution you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, kicking about in your blood.
Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign Lord. In addition to all your other wickedness, you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square. At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and provoked me to anger with your increasing promiscuity.
So I stretched out my hand against you and reduced your territory; I gave you over to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were shocked by your lewd conduct. You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied. Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied.
How weak-willed you are, declares the Sovereign Lord, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute! When you built your mounds at the head of every street and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute, because you scorned payment.
You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! Every prostitute receives a fee, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors. So in your prostitution you are the opposite of others; no one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give payment and none is given to you.
Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because you poured out your wealth and exposed your nakedness in your promiscuity with your lovers, and because of all your detestable idols, and because you gave them your children’s blood, therefore I am going to gather all your lovers, with whom you found pleasure, those you loved as well as those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around and will strip you in front of them, and they will see all your nakedness.
I will sentence you to the punishment of women who commit adultery and who shed blood; I will bring upon you the blood vengeance of my wrath and jealous anger. Then I will hand you over to your lovers, and they will tear down your mounds and destroy your lofty shrines. They will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you naked and bare. They will bring a mob against you, who will stone you and hack you to pieces with their swords.
They will burn down your houses and inflict punishment on you in the sight of many women. I will put a stop to your prostitution, and you will no longer pay your lovers. Then my wrath against you will subside and my jealous anger will turn away from you; I will be calm and no longer angry.
Because you did not remember the days of your youth but enraged me with all these things, I will surely bring down on your head what you have done, declares the Sovereign Lord. Did you not add lewdness to all your other detestable practices?
Everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are a true daughter of your mother, who despised her husband and her children; and you are a true sister of your sisters, who despised their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Your older sister was Samaria, who lived to the north of you with her daughters; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you with her daughters, was Sodom.
You not only walked in their ways and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done. Bear your disgrace, for you have furnished some justification for your sisters. Because your sins were more vile than theirs, they appear more righteous than you. So then, be ashamed and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.
However, I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and of Samaria and her daughters, and your fortunes along with them, so that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all you have done in giving them comfort. And your sisters, Sodom with her daughters and Samaria with her daughters, will return to what they were before; and you and your daughters will return to what you were before.
You would not even mention your sister Sodom in the day of your pride, before your wickedness was uncovered. Even so, you are now scorned by the daughters of Edom and all her neighbors and the daughters of the Philistines—all those around you who despise you. You will bear the consequences of your lewdness and your detestable practices, declares the Lord.
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters, but not on the basis of my covenant with you.
So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord. Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.’ ”
This is the Word of the Lord.
What I propose to do this evening is to follow the main line of chapter 16, first of all, and fill in a few background explanations. Then I want to think through, theologically, what this is saying to us today. This is not the normal kind of reading that you have in family devotions with a lot of young children around, but we’ll see that at a certain level, there is an immense realism to the whole thing just the same. Let me follow the main line of the first part of the text: Ezekiel 16:1–43. That’s the main line, and it can be broken down into several parts.
1. The rescue of the foundling.
Verses 1 to 7. God sets this thing out as an extended parable, if you like, an extended metaphor. “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices and say …” Then gradually, this is unpacked.
God begins with the origins of the nations in verse 3. “Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.” There is sarcasm here. At the level of mere genealogy, this isn’t the case. Abraham did not descend from the Amorites or the Hittites. At the level of genealogy, that’s not the point.
The Canaanites were known for their lewdness, for their pagan worship, and for their child sacrifice. The Israelites like to think of themselves as a cut above all of that. The Amorites were one of the tribes among the Canaanites. They were some of the most brutal. The Hittites were originally from Asia Minor (modern Turkey), but some had settled in Canaan. They, too, were pagan.
Just as in the ancient world, son of someone meant you had the characteristics of that person … or son of an abstract idea, such as son of foolishness meant that you were acting like a fool … so son of an Amorite or son of a Hittite meant you were acting like a pagan. In other words, the whole genesis of the Israel nation hadn’t come about because the people of God were so spectacularly pure, theologically ideal, reverential, and full of worship for the one true God. Rather, their origins, likewise, were in paganism.
All along the line, they had drifted toward paganism. Even when they were rescued from Egypt, after all, what was the first thing they did? They constructed a golden calf. They had so been infected by the paganism of Egypt that although nominally, they were the people of God, in fact, they were pagans in their hearts, through and through. So their genesis, in other words, was pagan.
In fact, throughout their history, they constantly borrowed from the practices, religions, and morality of the nations around them. Read the book of Judges. Some of that isn’t bedtime reading either. You can’t read the last three chapters in public without at least a few blushes. “So don’t pat yourself on the back and think of your wonderful origins,” the text is saying.
No, no, no. This is what really happened. You were like a baby that was going to be thrown out on the garbage tip. In days before systematic abortion, then, to get rid of babies, you threw them out in the garbage tip if you didn’t want them. That’s what is described here. “On the day you were born your cord was not cut …” Well, it was obviously cut from the mother, but then the baby’s umbilical cord wasn’t cut off and clamped and so on.
The practices described in verses 4 and 5 are the kinds of things that happened to newborn babies in those days. Once the cord was cut, the midwife rubbed the infant with salt and wrapped him or her up tight for seven days with a mixture of saltwater and oil, then gave that little tyke a bath (about time, I would have thought), and then repeated the whole thing for another seven days, repeating the whole thing until the 40th day. The salt served as a kind of antiseptic. So all of that represents, then, care for a newborn.
“But that’s not what happened to you. You were just ready to be thrown out. You were despised. You were slaves in Egypt. In fact, Pharaoh had given orders that all your male babies should be killed. You were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Just as you were coming to birth as a nation, you were a nothing.”
Then verses 6 and 7 are just a wee bit like My Fair Lady. “Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, ‘Live!’ I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.”
Outside the metaphorical world, what it means, of course, is that God nurtured the foundling and brought the nation into existence until it really did grow to a beautiful, attractive, small nation. It was, in some ways, the envy of the nations around. God did all of that. So that’s the first section.
2. Marriage, honor, and adornment.
Verses 8 to 14. This is the next part of the story. In the metaphorical world, God now finds the waif of marriageable age. He deploys the customary act of spreading his long, flowing tunic over her. That was a symbol-laden thing. You can find it, also, in the book of Ruth, where Boaz cast his long, flowing garment over Ruth as a sign that he is committed to marrying her. Then there is all the care that is lavished on her in verses 9 to 14.
Verse 8 has a deliberate play, of course, on the word covenant, which keeps coming back, again and again, in this chapter. In the metaphorical world, it’s a marriage covenant. Of course, in the world to which the metaphor points, God entered into a covenantal relationship with his people Israel at Sinai.
So you get this play on words: “Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.”
Verse 14, then, is the critical climax: “Your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.” We’re coming, now, of course, to the high days of Israel. After the terrible times of growing up under the judges … then, finally, under Saul, a corrupt king … mighty David came to the throne and the nation become secure and established. Under Solomon, it became rich and wealthy and influential, the lovely jewel of the Near East.
The point of all of this, of course, is that this didn’t happen by accident. It happened because Israel was chosen, not because Israel was choice. Historically, that is exactly what happened. Thus, for example, back in Deuteronomy 7, God tells Israel through his servant Moses, just before they enter into the Promised Land:
“The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations …”
Or, again, in Deuteronomy 9, verses 4 and following, “After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
In many other places, likewise, in the book of Deuteronomy, the point returns. At the end of the day, Israel is given the land because, first, the nations there are wicked, and second, God has set his affection on Israel, not because Israel is good or beautiful or strong or numerous or powerful, but because God chose them. God chose them in love. That’s it.
I want to make just a small excursus at this point and talk for a moment about the love of God. The Bible talks about the love of God in several different ways. If you absolutize any one of those ways, you will introduce some ridiculously stupid theology. You must not absolutize any one of those ways. You must let each way speak for itself in the right context.
A. God’s providential love.
One of the ways that the Bible speaks of the love of God is in the realm of providence. God graciously sends his rain upon the just and upon the unjust, we’re told. In other words, without distinguishing between the good and the bad, God keeps this whole world ticking over at a providential level because he’s that kind of God. He doesn’t have to do that, but he does.
B. God’s love for the whole world.
Then he’s the kind of God, also, who yearns for the repentance and conversion of wicked people. So he’s the God who is described, in the Old Testament, for example, as crying out, “Turn! Turn! Why will you die? For the Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” “God so loved the world that he gave his Son …” and the world in John’s gospel is not thought of, first and foremost, as a big place.
In John’s terminology, the world is primarily a bad place. We are to admire God’s love in John 3:16, not, in the first instance, because the world is so big but because the world is so bad. God doesn’t owe this world anything, but God so loved the world … this wicked world in rebellion against him … that he gave his Son.
C. God’s electing love.
In addition, God also displays his electing love. He chooses people in love. For example, we read in Deuteronomy that God chose the people not because they were worthy or righteous but just because God set his affection on them. Or in Malachi 1, we are told explicitly, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Now morally, there was an awful lot in it from time to time between the two, but even before either was born, God chose the younger over the older. Read Paul’s exposition of this point in Romans 9. There is an electing love.
D. God’s conditional love.
Then, in addition, there is what might be called a conditional love, a love relationship between God and his covenant people that is somewhat like the love of a father or mother for their children. At one level, that’s unconditional, but at another level, there are some conditions.
If I say to my daughter, “I want you home by midnight, otherwise there will be sanctions,” and she comes in at 12:30 or 1, at one level, well, I hope that I will love her regardless of what she does. I hope that if she becomes a prostitute on the street that I will still love her. She’s my daughter.
However, there is another sense in which if she comes home in defiance of the house rules, she will meet with certain sanctions, which she will not meet if she obeys the house rules. In exactly the same way, Jude says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God,” I expect my Tiffany to keep herself in the love of Dad.
In one sense, of course, my love for her is unconditional (at least I want it to be), but at a certain kind of relational level within the structure of the family, she has to obey some rules or she will face some sanctions. In exactly the same way, in John 15, Jesus insists to his disciples, “Just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love, so you must obey my commands and remain in my love.”
So if we disobey the commands of Jesus, we don’t remain in his love, which means that we get clobbered. It’s called discipline. It’s still because God loves us, at a certain level. That’s another way of talking about the love of God. What I mean to point out by this is that the Bible talks about the love of God in different ways. I’ve mentioned only four. There are more, but just take those four for a moment.
If you take, let’s say, God’s electing love and absolutize it, as if it’s the only way the Bible speaks of the love of God, then pretty soon, you trap yourself in a theological system in which you have God’s love for the elect and his hatred for everybody else. That just won’t square with the Bible’s vision of God, who stands there crying, “Turn! Turn! Why will you die? For the Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”
On the other hand, suppose you take that text (God yearning for the salvation of men and women), make that absolute, and forget all the other kinds. Pretty soon, you have a picture of dear ol’ God, having tried the best he can, now begging you to please do him the favor of turning to him, but the dear ol’ chap can’t do much about it if you don’t. This doesn’t quite sound like the God of the New Testament who turns the hearts of the children to their fathers and who chooses men and women out of his grace.
If, instead, you take God’s conditional love (that is, his love conditioned upon our obedience that is part of this parental relationship) and make that absolute, then pretty soon, you generate a kind of merit theology. Have I obeyed enough today for God to love me? If I’ve tried hard enough, God will love me. If I fail, maybe God won’t love me today. Pretty soon, you degenerate into a horrible merit theology in which God’s love for you is conditioned entirely upon how
.
This is also why, with respect to my daughter, although there may need to be some sanctions if she comes in at 12:30 when I’ve said 12:00, I don’t want her to think that I’m so flipping angry with her, every time she goes a little bit out of line, that there is not some deep, formidable, principial way in which I love her regardless of what she does. She’s my daughter. You cannot absolutize one form of love (even in human relationships) and make it everything, or you will distort everything.
If, instead, you make God’s love equivalent, more or less, to his providence, well, then, God loves everybody the same (the birds and the bees and the happy pagans and me and you and everybody) and we’re all sort of here enjoying and basking in God’s sweet love, which is, more or less, the notion of love that is percolating out there in gaga land. It’s what is going on.
Have you looked at the movies of a science-fiction sort recently? They can be divided into roughly two kinds. There’s the shoot-’em-up kind, where nothing significant is being said of a philosophical nature. You have to have bad aliens so that you can kill them. They have to be nasty so that you can kill them. There are any number of movies like that, such as Independence Day.
In the ones where they’re not knock-down, drag-out, shoot-’em-up types, have you noticed that the recent science-fiction films are of the sentimental, twaddly sort. An example would be Jodie Foster’s Contact. This god (or being or “other”) is gentle, wise, providential, kind, and smarmy. Everything is going to turn out all right. It’s part of the growing New Age glowy pantheism that’s all over the place. God must love me because I’m sort of nice. Maybe even cute! (Well, maybe in your case, but not in mine!)
Then what do you do with the God of the Bible whose love is to be fitted into his wrath, his holiness, and the different ways that the Bible speaks of his love. If you take any one of them and absolutize it, then pretty soon, you generate a view of God that is pretty ridiculous from the Bible’s perspective. So it’s very important to hear what the Bible says in its various contexts.
In this context, the focus is on God’s electing, transforming love. He chose Israel, just as, according to Paul and John, he chose people of the new covenant too. He chose them and set his love upon them. “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” Jesus dares say of his disciples in John 15. Sometimes, we learn that even in our experiences. We sang in one of our hymns tonight:
I sought the Lord, and afterward, I knew
He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me.
There’s something glorious and antecedent about the love of God, but Israel had forgotten all of that. Israel thought that somehow, she deserved God’s smile.
3. Harlotry and whoredom.
Verses 15 to 34. The things that God had given her, she deployed in her own downfall. In verse 15, we are told that she is now relying on her beauty. She was not thankful to the One who gave it to her, but she was relying on it. Also mentioned are her garments (verses 16 to 18), her jewelry (verse 17), and the food that was provided.
Of course, in many of these extended metaphorical expressions, the text is talking both ways. When you start talking about the food that was given her, you’re talking about all the farm produce in Israel itself that God gave the people through the rain and the good harvest. The text is often working at both levels at once.
The people didn’t keep covenantal loyalty to God. Instead, they prostituted themselves to all of the surrounding deities. In other words, they had absolutely forgotten what else God had said in Deuteronomy (chapter 6, verse 12): “… be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” That’s a common Deuteronomic theme. All that Ezekiel has done is played it out forcefully in an extended metaphor.
Deuteronomy 6:13–16 continues: “Fear the Lord your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the Lord is your God is among you, and he is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not test the Lord your God.”
“You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution.” That is, the people wove tents and hangings for the Asherah, for some of the local pagan Canaanite gods. It’s described explicitly in 2 Kings 23. We’re told there that they even did it within the temple precincts.
Verses 20 and 21: “You took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols.” One of the gods, the god Molech, was sometimes pictures as sort of a squat god, holding in his hands a stone basin. Under the stone basin, they would light a fire until the stone got red-hot and glowed.
Then amongst the screams of the frenzied people, as they were whipped up by the priests of Molech, they would throw their babies into this burning stone basin, offering them up to the god as a sacrifice to him. Israel had sunk that that level. We’re told explicitly that King Ahaz did this (2 Kings 16). He was in the Davidic line. King Manasseh did it (2 Kings 21).
Verses 23 to 25. There were pagan cults and shrines all around Jerusalem, including the fertility cults that I mentioned earlier on, the gardens of Tammuz. “… offering your body …” we’re told. The expression is literally opening your feet. There is a connection between immorality and pagan worship in respect the fertility cults, and thus, the image of prostitution cuts both ways. There is a kind of sexual prostitution bound up with the religious prostitution that is forgetting who God is. The two get tied together.
Verse 26 to 29. Not only religious infidelity was thus introduced, but also political intrigue. In fact, very often the two were connected. Small states often turned to larger states for their security, but instead of looking to God for their security, as they did under the best kings (under David, for example), now these people would make alliances with Egypt, or with Assyria on the north, and then take on board some of their gods as well.
It was all part of the political climate. You form a kind of system of states in an entente that would be politically stable. But God warned about alliances with pagans. It wasn’t just a question of survival. Pretty soon, the nation is playing the game, loving the sensations, the infidelity, the false feelings of power, and the manipulation. The language is strong. Israel is pictured like a slut in heat.
Verses 30 to 34. Here is the low point of infidelity. Adultery is awful betrayal, but at least it’s often tied to powerful emotions, which, if not excusable, at least are understandable. Prostitution is an abysmal profanation of God’s image bearers and of the family, the culture, and the individual, but at least we recognize that some prostitutes feel they are trapped by pimps or desperate for money. You can understand them.
However, we’re told in these verses that the covenant people of God are worse that both. How? They actually pay to sleep with people. That is to say, at the religious level, it’s not as if these pagan religions are being forced upon them, it’s that these people are wanting to do it. They’re prostituting themselves before God, and they’re wanting to do it and are paying good money to move it that direction.
Does our surrounding culture force us to secularism? Does it force us to syncretism? Does it force us to neo-paganism? No, no, no. We want to go in that direction. We don’t even have the excuse of being decent prostitutes.
4. The punishment.
Verses 35 to 43. The dreadful language of the extended allegory is maintained, but the historical implications are pretty plain. Israel will be destroyed, abashed, stripped, impoverished, and debased by the very lovers she courted. That is to say, not only the mighty Assyrians that took off the northern tribes (the northern tribes are sometimes called Israel and sometimes called Samaria) but also, now, by the Babylonians with the final overthrow of 587 BC, now just around the corner.
There were also many regional powers that joined in. Ezekiel 25, a little further on, mentions the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, and the Philistines. What happened was once the mighty Babylonian army began to converge on Jerusalem, all the little nations all around joined in and said, “We’d like to form an alliance; we’ll help you.” Basically, they wanted to mash Jerusalem.
So all of these former lovers … that is, these centers of religious prostitution … now are coming in to strip Jerusalem bare. It’s all terrible judgment. Look at verse 42: “Then my wrath against you will subside and my jealous anger will turn away from you; I will be calm and no longer angry.” This shows, of course, that this anger from God is not just bad temper. It’s judicial. It must be satisfied, and then at the end of it, it is requited.
That’s the flow of the argument in verses 1 to 43. Then there are several brief modifications of this storyline.
1. Add a mother and two sisters.
Verses 44 to 52. God begins with a proverb in verse 44. Today, we say, “Like father, like son.” The proverb, there, was, “Like mother, like daughter.” The mother, still using the language of the mother was a Hittite and wasn’t faithful, so also the daughter isn’t.
The sister, here, is the northern 10 tribes called Samaria. Samaria wasn’t faithful. She eventually was done in by her lover, Assyria. Now Judah is left. In fact, there’s another sister here: Sodom. The city of Sodom was destroyed before Israel was a whole nation. It was way down in the south. Samaria was to the north. So Samaria did detestable things; their idolatry is described in verse 51.
Sodom’s sin is described in verses 49 and 50: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I slew them. Now you’ve done even worse things.” One commentator says that evangelical Jerusalem had sunk so low that she makes liberal Samaria and pagan Sodom look good by comparison. Now you get the flavor of what’s being said here. It’s a bit over the top, but you get the idea.
2. Add restoration after the shame.
Verses 53 to 58. I don’t have time to unpack that section.
3. Add the promise of a new covenant.
Verses 59 to 63. You see, the basic storyline (verses 1 to 43) is now getting bits added on to this extended metaphor to make various points. In verses 59 to 63, now there is promise of a new covenant that God will make. That was introduced earlier, and it comes out even stronger in Ezekiel 36 and elsewhere. I will return to that in a moment.
4. Add two more sisters.
Chapter 23. Then there is further modification of the storyline in chapter 23. I’m not going to unpack it except to say this. In that chapter, there are two sisters: Oholah and Oholibah. Oholah is Samaria: the northern 10 tribes. She goes off, subdued by the Assyrians (verses 1 to 10), which took place about 175 years earlier. Oholibah is Judah, who is about to go off. The second sister, Oholibah, has learned nothing from the conduct of the first.
Now then, what lessons should we learn from a passage like this, with its frankly shocking word pictures?
1. In our politically correct age, it’s important to say something about the sensitivities that almost anybody feels in reading a passage like this today.
The strongest feminist interpretations of these passages run something like this (you’ll find them, for example, in a book called On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible published by Brill in 1993):
They argue that this chapter has many parallels to contemporary pornographic literature, in which female sexuality serves as a symbol of evil. “This preserves male domination through a denial, or a misnaming, of female experience.” Even though the metaphor stands for all of Israel, men and women (which they acknowledge), it is the choice of this metaphor, in which the woman is portrayed as evil, that makes it so sexist and that must be rejected and removed from Scripture because of its totalization.
Athalya Brenner goes farther and compares similar passages in Jeremiah with the modern pornographic piece, The Story of O. In The Story of O, a young woman becomes a sex slave of two men. O stands for nothing (that is, she’s a nothing) and for orifice. How should we respond to this kind of analysis? (I have to tell you, is very common today in the commentaries and the literature; it’s everywhere.)
A. In the larger biblical context, the Word of God is no less scathing of male sexual profligacy that of female sexual profligacy.
For example, in the account of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, it’s Judah who is made to appear disgusting, not the woman. In the matter of King David and Bathsheba, it’s David’s sin that is expounded upon.
In my heart of hearts, I have to believe that Bathsheba knew what she was doing when she was bathing next to the house of the king. I mean, you don’t have a house next door to the White House and not have any idea who is going to be looking out over your window, but that text says nothing of that. It focuses only on David.
In the terrible rape of Tamar by Ammon, all the sin is Ammon’s. Thus, abuse of women is real. We should condemn it as the Bible does again and again. Repeatedly, in Scripture, sexual profligacy is condemned in both men and women. To take one passage as if it is the total Bible’s voice on sexuality is a terrible reductionism from a methodological point of view.
B. No metaphor may be allowed to walk on all fours.
This is an extended metaphor, but you can’t make any metaphor walk on all fours. For example, elsewhere in Hosea 5:12, God is likened to a moth and to dry rot. Clearly, there are some limitations on that kind of metaphor, but it is not demeaning either God or dry rot to use language in that way. Metaphors inevitably have built-in limitations.
In Jeremiah 14:9, God is likened to a confused man, maybe drunk. There are limitations to that metaphor too. In the context, it is perfectly clear what is meant, but you don’t extrapolate out and extrapolate out until you milk it for all that it’s worth. Elsewhere, he’s like a dangerous lion. The scope and purpose of a metaphor is invariably delimited by its context. So also here. This is no more condemning all women than accounts condemning David’s sin condemn all men.
If one says, “Yes, yes, but remember the book of Proverbs where folly is always presented as a woman!” Yes, but so also is wisdom. It’s the way the language structures worked at the time. You cannot take one, the negative one, and make it the total picture as if there is a constant depreciation of women in the whole thing. It is simply not honest, even-handed scholarship.
C. Was Ezekiel a misogynist?
Was he interested in male dominance? What would be his motives for this? Where is the evidence in the book? He’s part of the despised class. In fact, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, who are both often tarred with the same brush in this regard, were both despised prophets, Jeremiah even more than Ezekiel.
They had no interest in domination at all. Their sympathies were entirely and demonstrably with the oppressed. In short, to read these texts as misogynist takes offense where none is given and is not listening very carefully to the wholeness of Scripture.
D. The extended harlot metaphor is appropriate because it plays on the theme of God as ideal husband, and that’s a theme that runs from one end of the Bible to the other.
I’ll come to that one in just a moment.
2. We must learn, also, from this extended metaphor, how unbearably ugly and appalling apostasy is.
Most of you aren’t married, but cast your imagination to your coming marriage. We live in hope, so let us assume that it is a wonderful marriage. I don’t just mean the day, but a really good, happy, honest, clean, godly marriage. Let us assume that it is full of fulfillment, not only in the sexual arena but in the binding together of two personalities that really do cherish each other, grow, are shaped by each other, and delight in each other’s company.
Then you find out that your spouse has another partner. Some of you have been hurt just by being jilted by dates. Let me tell you that it’s nothing compared to this kind of hurt. It’s awful. You’re stripped away and betrayed. God wants us to know that that is the way he feels when his covenant people reject him and opt, instead, for other lovers. That’s why God uses this language. You cannot just flirt with sin and say, “Well, God’s a big God; he’ll absorb it.” It’s just not the way he looks at things.
3. In the Old Testament, God is repeatedly portrayed as Yahweh, the Husband of Israel.
It’s only one metaphor among lots of other metaphors, but it is one that is picked up by the prophets again and again. This is partly because we speak of marriage covenants, and then we speak of the covenant that God entered into with his people. It is partly because there are questions of purity, questions of fidelity, and questions of love.
Some books actually pick this up in some pretty big ways. Think of the prophet Hosea. Have you read Hosea recently? There, God presents himself as a cuckold! I remember when my wife’s mother attended our church in Cambridge for the first time. You must understand that my wife, Joy, came out of a nice, middle-of-the-road, don’t-believe-anything-Anglican background. She was converted at university.
Her mother attended the church we were going to because she came down to visit us. By this time, we were engaged. She came down to visit us, and she came to this church. The preacher that day was just beginning a series on Hosea. It had the same sort of flavor as this passage. Afterward … I shall not soon forget … as we were walking away from the church, Joy’s mother quietly asked her, “Is Hosea found in the Anglican Bible?” She couldn’t believe that anything that disgusting could be found in the Anglican Bible.
Do you see the point? This is the imagery that God has given us so that we can see the sheer awfulness of apostasy and betrayal before God. On the other hand, however, there is this other side of it. Marriage, when it is good … when it is mature, right, and clean … is a wonderful sort of thing, and there’s the marriage between Yahweh and his covenant people.
Then you come to the New Testament, and the same imagery is merely transposed to Jesus and the church. When Jesus says, “You wicked and adulterous generation,” he doesn’t mean that the Pharisees were sleeping around more than other generations. He’s still using the same language as Ezekiel and Jeremiah. He’s talking about the whole matter of their spiritual fidelity to the God of the covenant. That’s what he’s saying. So if we don’t like it in Ezekiel, then we’re also criticizing Jesus.
Then along comes Paul, and he writes to one of the local churches, the Corinthians, “I have betrothed you as a pure virgin to Christ.” He’s not talking about the individual people in it, but rather the whole church has been betrothed to Christ. Now what are we waiting for? The marriage supper of the Lamb. That is one of the images of the book of Revelation 21 and 22.
What is the most intimate, most endearing, most passionate, most deeply felt intimacy that a human being may enjoy? I tell you frankly: it is sexual union within a trusting, trusted, committed marriage. God dares use that as a still-feeble symbol of what the union of Christ and the church will be on the last day. We will dance on the streets of gold. Don’t individualize it now. It’s not just, “I’ll be with Jesus, and Jesus will be with me.” It doesn’t overtake sexual connotations at this point.
What the metaphor points to is the whole church of Christ, now, in an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, forever, because he has secured them. He has bought them. He has cleaned them up. He has done everything for them. He chose them out of his love and now it’s coming to fruition in the marriage supper of the Lamb. You either can have to go the route of adultery and apostasy, or you go the route of being betrothed as a pure virgin to Jesus Christ.
4. Finally, have you noticed how often, in this chapter, there is an emphasis on remembering (or more precisely, failing to remember)?
Chapter 16, verse 22: “In all your detestable practices and your prostitution you did not remember the days of your youth …” Or verse 43: “Because you did not remember the days of your youth but enraged me with all these things …”
It is found repeatedly in verses 59 and following: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant …” God will remember, but we don’t. God remembers. “Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed …”
Verse 63: “When I make atonement for you …” We do the sin; God makes the atonement. “When I make atonement for you and for all that you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth …”
So on the night that he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and he broke it and said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ After the supper, he took the cup, and he said, ‘Drink, all of you, of it. Do this in remembrance of me.’ ” Have you ever thought how shocking that is? Here is Jesus, going to the cross to pay our guilt and reconcile us to God, and he has to tell us to remember it. God help us! It’s a good think that he left us with that rite because, otherwise, we would very quickly forget.
In our churches, we get into praise choruses. We get into the color of the carpets. We get into marriage counseling classes, leadership courses, and family training. We get into old covenant Scriptures and studying the book of Hosea. This goes on and on and on, until, finally, we’re doing everything but focusing on the very heart of everything: the gospel. The cross. “I will make atonement for you and you will be mine and you will remember.” There is no fidelity without remembering.
A shocking thing, this, that we should forget
The Savior who gave up his life—
To turn from the cross, indifferent, and let
Our minds veer toward self-love and strife.
This Table, this rite, is habit—and yet
Christ’s words pierce our shame like a knife:
While breaking the bread, the Lord Jesus said,
Do this in remembrance of me.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Enamored with power, surrounded by praise,
We set out ecclesial plans.
Efficiency hums, and we spend our days
Defending, promoting our stands.
Techniques multiply, our structures amaze—
The gospel slips out of our hands.
While breaking the bread, the Lord Jesus said,
Do this in remembrance of me.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Oh, remember, remember the cross.
From my side issued water and blood.
This was no accident;
I bore the wrath of my God.
Remember my bed, the dank cattle shed,
Though glory was all my domain.
Remember the years of service and tears
That climaxed in lashings of pain.
By God’s own decree, your guilt fell on me,
And all of my loss was your gain.
While breaking the bread, the Lord Jesus said,
Do this in remembrance of me.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Remember my tears, Gethsemane’s fears;
Recall that my followers fled,
That I was betrayed, disowned and arraigned—
The Prince of Life crucified, dead.
Remember your shame, your sin, and your blame;
Remember the blood that I shed.
While lifting the cup, the Savior spoke up,
Do this in remembrance of me.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Oh, remember, remember the cross.
From my side issued water and blood.
This was no accident;
I bore the wrath of my God.
So now when we eat this feast simply spread
I blush I forget to recall.
For this quiet rite means once more we’ve fed
On bread that gave life once for all;
Memorial feast—just wine, broken bread—
And time to reflect on Christ’s call:
While breaking the bread, the Lord Jesus said,
Do this in remembrance of me.
While lifting the cup, the Savior spoke up,
Do this in remembrance of me.
Do this in remembrance of me.
