Ezekiel 23

Today’s Passage: Ezekiel 23

This is a hard chapter, and an old one in its grief, for the LORD tells the story of His people under the picture of two sisters who were joined to Him and then turned away. The older is Oholah, who stands for Samaria and the northern kingdom of Israel; the younger is Oholibah, who stands for Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah. Both were His, and both proved unfaithful, chasing after the idols and the armies of the great empires around them, first Assyria and then Babylon, rather than trusting the God who had made them His own. The older sister has already fallen to the very nation she pursued. The younger watched it happen and yet sinned worse than her sister, and so this chapter tells us plainly that she too will be handed over to the powers she lusted after. The prophet handles the picture bluntly because the sin is ugly, but the point beneath the picture is one every heart needs to hear: unfaithfulness to God is deadly, and it always ends by delivering us into the hands of whatever we chased in His place.

As you read, hold this: To give the trust and love that belong to God to the world’s idols and powers is spiritual adultery, and it ends by handing us over to the very things we chased.

Ezekiel 23:1–10 (BSB)

¹ Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ² “Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother, ³ and they played in Egypt, prostituting themselves from their youth. Their breasts were fondled there, and their virgin bosoms caressed. ⁴ The older was named Oholah, and her sister was named Oholibah. They became Mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. As for their identities, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem. ⁵ Oholah prostituted herself while she was still Mine. She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors ⁶ clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all desirable young men, horsemen mounted on steeds. ⁷ She offered sexual favors to all the elite of Assyria. She defiled herself with all the idols of those for whom she lusted. ⁸ She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when men slept with her in her youth, caressed her virgin bosom, and poured out their lust upon her. ⁹ Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians for whom she lusted. ¹⁰ They exposed her nakedness, seized her sons and daughters, and put her to the sword. Thus she became a byword among women, and they executed judgment against her.

We should read this movement gently and quickly, for its meaning is graver than its shock. Two sisters, one mother, and both of them, the LORD says, “became Mine.” That is the tender center under all the harshness: these were His, joined to Him in covenant love, given sons and daughters and a home. And yet the older sister, Samaria, gave her heart away. She looked at Assyria, at its handsome soldiers in blue and its officers on horseback, and she wanted them: their power, their gods, their protection. That is what the painful picture means. To turn from the living God and put your trust in the strength and the idols of the nations is not a small misstep; it is unfaithfulness (זָנָה) zanah, pronounced zah-NAH. Strong's H2181, to be unfaithful, to play the harlot, to go whoring after. This is the word that runs through the whole chapter, and though it names a shameful thing, the prophets use it above all for a spiritual reality: the sin of a covenant people who give to another the love and trust they owe to God. To grasp why the LORD reaches for so painful a word, remember what the covenant was. It was a marriage, a binding of the heart, God saying to His people, you are Mine and I am yours. Against that backdrop, running to Assyria’s armies and Babylon’s gods for security was not neutral. It was the betrayal of a love, and Scripture will not dress it up in gentler clothes. Yet zanah is not spoken to crush but to wake. It tells us that our hearts were made for one Husband, that every trust we place in the world’s power or wealth or approval instead of in God is a kind of faithlessness, and that the God who names it so plainly does so because He still wants us back. Learn this word, and you learn how seriously God takes the love of the heart He has claimed as His own. of the deepest kind, the breaking of a bond of love. And notice how the story ends for her. The very Assyrians she chased are the ones who stripped and destroyed her. She was handed over to her lovers, and they were her ruin. This is the first and simplest warning of the chapter: what we forsake God to embrace will, in the end, be the thing that undoes us.

Ezekiel 23:11–21 (BSB)

¹¹ Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet in her lust and prostitution she was more depraved than her sister. ¹² She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors dressed in splendor, horsemen riding on steeds, all desirable young men. ¹³ And I saw that she too had defiled herself; both of them had taken the same path. ¹⁴ But Oholibah carried her prostitution even further. She saw the men portrayed on the wall, images of the Chaldeans, engraved in vermilion, ¹⁵ wearing belts on their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like officers of the Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth. ¹⁶ At the sight of them, she lusted for them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. ¹⁷ Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. But after she had been defiled by them, she turned away in disgust. ¹⁸ When Oholibah openly prostituted herself and exposed her nakedness, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. ¹⁹ Yet she multiplied her promiscuity, remembering the days of her youth, when she had prostituted herself in the land of Egypt ²⁰ and lusted after their lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions. ²¹ So you revisited the indecency of your youth, when the Egyptians caressed your bosom and pressed your young breasts.

Here the sorrow deepens, for the younger sister, Jerusalem, had every reason to know better. She “saw this,” the LORD says. She watched her older sister chase the empires and be destroyed by them, and the plain lesson lay open before her eyes. Yet she did the same and worse. She courted Assyria as her sister had, and then she found a new fascination, the Chaldeans of Babylon, drawn in by the mere sight of their painted images on a wall, the belts and turbans and splendor of them, and she sent for them and gave herself to their power and their gods. This is the tragedy of a warning ignored. To see another soul ruined by grasping after the world and then to reach for the very same thing is a hardness of heart the prophet does not soften. We need not linger over the coarse detail, for its purpose is only to show how far a heart can wander once it has left its true home. The point is the wandering itself: a people who had watched idolatry destroy their own kin still could not stop chasing the strength of the nations rather than resting in their God.

Ezekiel 23:22–35 (BSB)

²² Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘I will incite your lovers against you, those from whom you turned away in disgust. And I will bring them against you from every side— ²³ the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them—all desirable young men, governors and commanders, officers and men of renown, mounted on horses. ²⁴ They will come against you with a host of peoples, with weapons, chariots, and wagons. They will array themselves against you on every side with buckler and shield and helmet. I will delegate judgment to them, and they will punish you according to their own standards. ²⁵ And I will set My jealous rage against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and ears, and your survivors will fall by the sword. They will seize your sons and daughters, and your remnant will be consumed by fire. ²⁶ They will strip off your clothes and take your fine jewelry. ²⁷ So I will put an end to your indecency and prostitution, which began in the land of Egypt, and you will not lift your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.’ ²⁸ For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Surely I will deliver you into the hands of those you hate, from whom you turned away in disgust. ²⁹ They will treat you with hatred, take all for which you have worked, and leave you naked and bare, so that the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your indecency and promiscuity ³⁰ have brought these things upon you, because you have prostituted yourself with the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. ³¹ Because you have followed the path of your sister, I will put her cup into your hand.’ ³² This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘You will drink your sister’s cup, a cup deep and wide. It will bring scorn and derision, for it holds so much. ³³ You will be filled with drunkenness and grief, with a cup of devastation and desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria. ³⁴ You will drink it and drain it; you will dash it to pieces, and tear your breasts. For I have spoken,’ declares the Lord GOD. ³⁵ Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Because you have forgotten Me and have cast Me behind your back, you must bear the consequences of your indecency and prostitution.’”

Now comes the judgment, and it lands with a terrible fitness. The lovers she chased will be the instruments of her ruin. “I will incite your lovers against you,” the LORD says, and He names them: Babylon and the Chaldeans, the very ones whose painted images had captured her heart. The nation she admired most will besiege her, strip her, and carry her people away. Read that slowly, because it is the great warning of the chapter made plain. Sin is not only punished from the outside; it carries its own judgment within it. The thing we grasp after in the place of God becomes the very thing that turns and consumes us. The strength we trusted becomes the hand that strikes us. And notice the two phrases the LORD sets at the root of it all: she had “forgotten Me” and “cast Me behind your back.” That is idolatry in its plainest terms, not merely worshiping a carved thing but pushing the living God out of the center of the heart and putting something else there. Then there is “the cup,” the sister’s cup of grief and desolation now placed in Jerusalem’s own hand, the same judgment the northern kingdom already drank. We do not read this to gloat, for there is no joy in it. We read it soberly, and we let it teach us how weighty a matter it is to forget the God who made us His.

Ezekiel 23:36–49 (BSB)

³⁶ Then the LORD said to me: “Son of man, will you pass judgment against Oholah and Oholibah? Then declare to them their abominations. ³⁷ For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols. They have even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to Me, in the fire as food for their idols. ³⁸ They have also done this to Me: On that very same day, they defiled My sanctuary and profaned My Sabbaths. ³⁹ On the very day they slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered My sanctuary to profane it. Yes, they did this inside My house. ⁴⁰ Furthermore, you sisters sent messengers for men who came from afar; and behold, when they arrived, you bathed for them, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with jewelry. ⁴¹ You sat on a couch of luxury with a table spread before it, on which you had set My incense and My oil, ⁴² accompanied by the sound of a carefree crowd. Drunkards were brought in from the desert along with men from the rabble, who put bracelets on your wrists and beautiful crowns on your head. ⁴³ Then I said of her who had grown old in adulteries: ‘Now let them use her as a prostitute, for that is all she is!’ ⁴⁴ And they slept with her as with a prostitute; they slept with Oholah and Oholibah, those lewd women. ⁴⁵ But righteous men will sentence them to the punishment of those who commit adultery and bloodshed, because they are adulteresses with blood on their hands. ⁴⁶ This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Bring a mob against them and consign them to terror and plunder. ⁴⁷ The mob will stone them and cut them down with their swords. They will kill their sons and daughters and burn down their houses. ⁴⁸ So I will put an end to indecency in the land, and all the women will be admonished not to imitate your behavior. ⁴⁹ They will repay you for your indecency, and you will bear the consequences of your sins of idolatry. Then you will know that I am the Lord GOD.’”

In this last movement the LORD gathers the whole indictment and names the sin without disguise. It was never really about foreign politics; it was “adultery with their idols,” and it reached its most horrifying depth in the sacrifice of their own children in the fire to false gods, and in the profaning of God’s own house. Hear how grieved the LORD is by that last offense: on the very day they had shed innocent blood for their idols, “they entered My sanctuary to profane it. Yes, they did this inside My house.” They kept up the outward forms of worship, the incense and the oil that were His, while their hearts were given wholly away. That is the deepest ugliness of idolatry, a religion of the lips laid over a betrayal of the heart. And so the judgment falls, sober and complete. Yet even here, at the bottom of it, comes the refrain that echoes through all of Ezekiel: “Then you will know that I am the Lord GOD.” Judgment itself is meant to teach the truth that idolatry blinds us to, that He alone is God, that there is no other, and that a heart was made to rest in Him and nowhere else.