This week we are studying Ezekiel 16, the longest chapter in the book by far. Ezekiel’s extended allegory is 63 verses, which makes this one chapter longer than the books of Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Malachi, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai. Because of this, we will divide Ezekiel 16 into two parts. This week, we focus on the initial 43 verses, which are reflective. In the next episode, we will study the last 20 verses which look to Israel’s future.
Hosea
Ezekiel 16 presents a parable using marital terminology to explain the broken covenant relationship between God and his people. His exilic audience was already familiar with the marriage metaphor. Several centuries earlier, God had commissioned the prophet Hosea to marry the promiscuous Gomer as a symbol of the Northern Kingdom’s infidelity (Hos. 2:3-15). Hosea and Gomer’s marriage was a living parable. Just as Hosea endured heartache from his wayward wife, Israel snubbed God’s love. Yet, Hosea’s love for Gomer was unfailing, just as God’s love for Israel remained steadfast.
Hosea’s real-life marriage may have inspired Ezekiel’s marriage parable. However, in typical Ezekiel fashion, the prophet amplified and stretched the teaching to its furthest and most disturbing extreme. While Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was an adulterer, the woman Ezekiel depicted was a nymphomaniac.
If Spotify listed Ezekiel 16, they would mark it as “explicit” for language and theme. For this reason, you’ve probably never heard these chapters preached on a Sunday morning. English translations have tried to soften the more pornographic descriptions in the text, but fully masking the chapter’s crudeness would require a complete alteration of its content.
This week we are studying Ezekiel 16, the longest chapter in the book by far. Ezekiel’s extended allegory is 63 verses, which makes this one chapter longer than the books of Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Malachi, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai. Because of this, we will divide Ezekiel 16 into two parts. This week, we focus on the initial 43 verses, which are reflective. In the next episode, we will study the last 20 verses which look to Israel’s future.
Hosea
Ezekiel 16 presents a parable using marital terminology to explain the broken covenant relationship between God and his people. His exilic audience was already familiar with the marriage metaphor. Several centuries earlier, God had commissioned the prophet Hosea to marry the promiscuous Gomer as a symbol of the Northern Kingdom’s infidelity (Hos. 2:3-15). Hosea and Gomer’s marriage was a living parable. Just as Hosea endured heartache from his wayward wife, Israel snubbed God’s love. Yet, Hosea’s love for Gomer was unfailing, just as God’s love for Israel remained steadfast.
Hosea’s real-life marriage may have inspired Ezekiel’s marriage parable. However, in typical Ezekiel fashion, the prophet amplified and stretched the teaching to its furthest and most disturbing extreme. While Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was an adulterer, the woman Ezekiel depicted was a nymphomaniac.
If Spotify listed Ezekiel 16, they would mark it as “explicit” for language and theme. For this reason, you’ve probably never heard these chapters preached on a Sunday morning. English translations have tried to soften the more pornographic descriptions in the text, but fully masking the chapter’s crudeness would require a complete alteration of its content.
Ezekiel 16:1-43
Welcome to Bible Fiber, where we are encountering the textures and shades of the biblical tapestry through twelve Minor Prophets, two reformers, and one exile. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
This week we are studying Ezekiel 16, the longest chapter in the book by far. Ezekiel’s extended allegory is 63 verses, which makes this one chapter longer than the books of Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Malachi, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai. Because of this, we will divide Ezekiel 16 into two parts. This week, we focus on the initial 43 verses, which are reflective. In the next episode, we will study the last 20 verses which look to Israel’s future.
Hosea
Ezekiel 16 presents a parable using marital terminology to explain the broken covenant relationship between God and his people. His exilic audience was already familiar with the marriage metaphor. Several centuries earlier, God had commissioned the prophet Hosea to marry the promiscuous Gomer as a symbol of the Northern Kingdom’s infidelity (Hos. 2:3-15). Hosea and Gomer’s marriage was a living parable. Just as Hosea endured heartache from his wayward wife, Israel snubbed God’s love. Yet, Hosea’s love for Gomer was unfailing, just as God’s love for Israel remained steadfast.
Hosea’s real-life marriage may have inspired Ezekiel’s marriage parable. However, in typical Ezekiel fashion, the prophet amplified and stretched the teaching to its furthest and most disturbing extreme. While Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was an adulterer, the woman Ezekiel depicted was a nymphomaniac.
If Spotify listed Ezekiel 16, they would mark it as “explicit” for language and theme. For this reason, you’ve probably never heard these chapters preached on a Sunday morning. English translations have tried to soften the more pornographic descriptions in the text, but fully masking the chapter’s crudeness would require a complete alteration of its content.
As a rhetorical strategy, Ezekiel used graphic language to shock his audience. His retelling of Israel’s history was a lewd expose, but the intent was to foster empathy for the faithful husband betrayed by his wanton wife. This way, Israel could witness the ugliness of their sin through the same lens as Yahweh. The audience was supposed to be shocked by their rebellion against God, not Ezekiel’s impropriety.
Acting as God’s mouthpiece, Ezekiel let the rage overtake him. Recall that prior to this parable, Ezekiel was a carefully guarded priest. He had never even once eaten unclean food (4:14). Although preaching hard truths was part of his calling, the filth that came out of his own mouth must have surprised even him.
Origin Story
Ezekiel 16 begins with a critical look at Israel’s humble origins. He presented a revised version of their history that focused on their pagan roots as a nation and the pre-Israelite population in Jerusalem. Addressing Jerusalem, he said, “Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite” (16:3). In his retelling, Israel was born of pagan parents because they occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years before David conquered the city from the Jebusites (2 Sam. 5:6-9).
Israel’s lore usually begins with God’s election of Abraham from all the people on earth and his promise to Abraham that his descendants would make a great nation. Ezekiel disrupted this shared narrative that bound Israel together by pushing the origin point back to a more unflattering start. The pre-Israelite city had a pagan foundation, and the nation of Israel was born from a mixed pagan ancestry. Through this satirical retelling, he pulled the rug out from under their patriotic ideals and insulted their self-perception. He wanted them to stop being overconfident in their current position with Yahweh based on their past.
Israel’s selling card was not that they were racially distinct from neighboring groups. Nor did Israel accomplish anything exceptional—culturally or architecturally—that distinguished them from their pagan neighbors. God did not choose them because of their patronage or because they merited his favor. He chose them to be his own because of his good grace.
From abandoned infant to royal queen
Ezekiel retold the entire biography of Israel’s election and subsequent rebellion against Yahweh in a manner that most certainly caught his audience off guard. In the allegory, he cast Israel as a helpless orphan girl scorned from birth. Her absentee parents denied her any of the normal care given to a newborn to protect her health. They left her naval chord uncut and did not cleanse or swaddle her (16:4). Abandoned in a field, the unwanted and unnamed child wallowed in her own blood and amniotic fluids. Ezekiel states, “you were abhorred on the day you were born” (16:5).
A passerby, representing Yahweh, took pity on the struggling infant. He claimed her when no one else would, rescuing her from the brink of death. Yahweh narrates, “I passed by you and saw you flailing about in your blood. As you lay in your blood, I said to you, ‘Live! and grow up like a plant of the field” (16:6-7). By his command, Yahweh spoke life into her, rescuing her with a beautiful act of compassion.
When the orphan girl grew to a marriageable age, her savior married her in another act of selfless love. In the biblical period, parents normally arranged marriages for their children. Because of her ignoble birth, she was at a disadvantage. Yahweh claimed her as his wife by spreading his cloak over her, a marriage ritual that also occurred in the book of Ruth (Ruth 3:8-9). Yahweh said, “I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you” (16:8).
Yahweh did everything for his new wife that her parents denied her on the day of her birth. He washed her with water and anointed her with oil (16:9). Yahweh extravagantly cared for his wife, showering her with resources. She had clothes made of embroidered fabrics and sandals of fine leather (16:10). She wore gold and silver jewelry on her neck, arms, ears, and nose. He even placed a crown on her head, the first sign that her benefactor-turned-husband was also a king (16:13). Even her daily diet was made up of lavish foods.
Ezekiel’s unwanted orphan child rose to the status of queen. This rags-to-riches plotline is common to so many other fairy tales, like an ancient Near Eastern version of Cinderella. A poor and unloved girl grabs the attention of a royal, and her fortune changes. The snag in Ezekiel’s fairy tale is that the girl was entirely undeserving. Although she grew in beauty and stature, it was only surface changes. The gifts did not increase her interior strength or transform her for the better. Once her station in life improved, she betrayed the king even though he was the one responsible for her rise.
From queen to prostitute
Instead of demonstrating her gratitude to her husband, she used her splendor to seduce other lovers. Ezekiel said, “You trusted in your beauty and prostituted yourself because of your fame and lavished your prostitutions on any passerby” (16:5). Every gift that Yahweh generously provided his wife was abused to betray him, the giver. Ezekiel illustrated how much Israel had lost touch with all God had done for her throughout history. One by one, she exploited the provisions from her husband to seduce new lovers. Her superior garments decorated the “high places,” wording that alluded to Judah’s proliferation of idolatrous shrines on hilltops (16:16). Shamelessly, Judah no longer even tried to hide her pursuit of other gods from Yahweh. She melted down her jewelry and reshaped it into male idols (16:17). She offered her food, incense, and oil as sacrifices to false gods (16:19).
Worst of all, she took her children, the children she shared with her husband, and sacrificed them as food for the idols (16:20-22). As Yahweh’s indictment against his adulterous wife built, this was the climax of her list of misdeeds, the most revolting act of treachery. 2 Kings attests that, at least during the reigns of the heathen kings Ahaz and Manasseh, the Israelites sacrificed their children to the pagan god Molech (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). This horrific act defied God’s laws laid out in the Torah (Lev. 18:21; 20:1-5). Yahweh was clear that he hated child sacrifice, and any such deviation permanently desecrated the land (Deut. 12:31; Ps. 106:38).
Israel’s advancement from orphan to queen was Yahweh’s doing. Yet, she spurned his love and disavowed her royal status. Although he withheld nothing from her, she repaid him with heartache. God attributed her disloyalty to her self-selective memory; she forgot the days of her youth (16:22, 43).
Yahweh did not charge his wife, Israel, with a one-off affair. She was a serial cheater. Ezekiel even clarified that the queen did not prostitute herself out of hunger or poverty (16:31). Yahweh had already spoiled her with every resource she could need. Difficult circumstances did not force her into a life of prostitution. She wasn’t the victim or a prostitute for hire. She was the one bribing men to be her lovers, not vice versa (16:34).
Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon as lovers
Not every component of Ezekiel’s message is symbolic. By naming the three major historical empires in the ancient Near East, the political meaning becomes clear. Ezekiel’s focus on spiritual adultery shifts to Israel’s lack of political allegiance. Rather than trusting solely in Yahweh, Israel pursued the protection of other nations. God had pledged to provide for Israel’s security, but she solicited treaties and formed alliances with stronger nations.
Yahweh accused his wife of “multiplying” her prostitutions by going after Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon (16:25). The theme of adultery continued to explain the motivations behind Israel’s political maneuverings. She tried to lure neighboring nations into bed with her. At every public square and street corner, she sat on a platform and grotesquely exposed herself to passersby. The prophet lacks any sense of decorum when describing the insatiability of her sexual appetite (16:28). Even the Philistines—hardly champions of virtuous living—were offended by Jerusalem’s lusty overtures (16:27).
Because they lacked faith in Yahweh, the Israelites repeatedly appealed to foreign armies for protection. Assyria was a historical enemy and no longer a threat to Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE.[1] Instead, Egypt and Babylon were the two major powers battling for control of Jerusalem. After the Babylonian invasion that resulted in Ezekiel’s exile, Jerusalem sought a military alliance with Egypt as their only chance to fend off another Babylonian attack. Like Ezekiel, the prophet Jeremiah inveighed against Jerusalem’s courtship of foreign empires. Jeremiah warned that reliance on Egypt for help would ultimately be futile (Jeremiah 2:36-37, 37:5-10). He was right, of course, and the Babylonians decimated Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
When Ezekiel described the queen paying off her lovers for sexual favors, he was likely referring to the times Judah and Israel had to pay tribute to their neighbors for political protection (2 Kings 16:8). Yahweh’s fundamental problem with Jerusalem’s political alliances was that every time they sought the favor of another kingdom, they appealed to that kingdom’s patron deity. When God transported Ezekiel to Jerusalem, he observed the apostate worshipers imitating Egyptian and Babylonian religious practices (8:12-16).
Punishment
As the indictment against Jerusalem gained momentum, Ezekiel pushed the boundaries of decency even further. He wanted his audience to empathize with Yahweh’s agony and understand God’s sense of betrayal. God’s generosity towards Israel was immense, but just as a scorned husband has limits, so did God.
After listing the excesses of her adultery in a long and frustrated outburst, God pronounced judgement on his adulterous wife (16:35-36). He was divorcing her. In the divorce proceedings, he would humiliate her just as she had humiliated him (16:37). No one would come to her defense or object to her punishment.
Israel’s laws considered adultery a capital offense. The prescribed punishment involved public stripping and stoning (Lev. 20:10-12; Deut. 22:22). In Ezekiel 16, a mob of her lovers gathered to administer the stoning, but they went even further and cut her to pieces with their swords (16:40). The lovers were also the agents of her death. In a frenzy of violence, they plundered every beautiful object Yahweh had given her. Without God and the protections of their mutual covenant, she returned to her original state: bloodied, naked, and alone (16:39).
After the violent episode, Yahweh’s wrath was spent. He said, “So I will satisfy my fury on you, and my jealousy shall turn away from you; I will be calm and will be angry no longer” (16:42).
Yahweh had intended for his chosen nation to represent him well, like a noble queen brings honor to the royal household. His hope was that the nations would be drawn to him by the example of his bride, Israel. However, the adulterous queen turned Yahweh’s name into a mockery. Like the allegory, Israel sullied the king’s reputation and brought him no glory. Rather than becoming a source of pride, she was a thing of shame.
Conclusion
Without God’s intervention, we as Christians would be like the baby in the field, destined to die in our own sin. He did not leave us for dead but came to rescue us.
The allegory is not only relevant to Israel and her past. As Christians, we must also take caution not to abuse the gifts Jesus has freely given to us. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he described the Church as the bride of Christ, and may even have been alluding to Ezekiel’s parable and God’s sacrificial love. Paul exhorted, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:25-27).
Does our confidence come from our gifts and resources, or does it come from our identity in Christ? Every accusation laid out against the queen rings true for our own situation. The root problem of her perverse behavior was that she forgot the mercy and kindness of Yahweh. As the bride of Christ, we are also at risk of spiritual amnesia, losing all memory of his sacrifice. We cannot forget our own origin story. We must allow ourselves to be transformed daily by God’s lavish love.
Thank you for listening and please continue to take part in this Bible Reading Challenge. Next week, we are reading the rest of Ezekiel 16.
And please keep the nation of Israel in your prayers. As we constantly pray for the Israeli hostages in Gaza, I find that Ezekiel, an Israelite also living in exile, is the ideal prophet to read and study.
For all the Biblical references each week, please see the show transcript on our blog or by signing up for our emails at www.thejerusalemconnection.us/I do not say all the references in the podcast but they are all in the transcript.
Send me a message. I will respond. Bible Fiber is available on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Shabbat Shalom
Ezekeil 16:44-63
Welcome to Bible Fiber, where we are encountering the textures and shades of the biblical tapestry through twelve Minor Prophets, two reformers, and one exile. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
This week we are studying Ezekiel 16:44-63, the last third of the longest oracle in the book. Ezekiel moves on from the story of the generous king and his adulterous queen, replacing them with new characters and a different plotline. In the marriage metaphor, Yahweh adopted Jerusalem as an infant and betrothed her when she matured. Ezekiel’s new allegory inspects other branches of Jerusalem’s family tree, her genetic relationships. Ezekiel conducts his own version of a sibling study: three sisters separated at birth all make the same mistakes and pay a similar price.
Ezekiel introduced his second allegory by first mocking Jerusalem, implying that the city was the butt of a popular joke. He wrote, “See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you, ‘Like mother, like daughter”(16:44). Ezekiel commented that just as Jerusalem’s mother had hated her husband and children, Jerusalem also hated her husband and children (16:45). Jerusalem was guilty of repeating the immoral choices of her mother, as often happens when families get caught up in generational sin.
Big sister and little sister
Jerusalem’s neglectful mother had abandoned her in a field and left her to die, but apparently there were two other siblings who suffered from the same difficult origin. Ezekiel said, “Your big sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; your little sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters” (16:46).
When Ezekiel referred to Samaria as Jerusalem’s “big sister,” he did not mean older sister, but larger sister. Ezekiel likely had in mind the relative size of the two nations, not their age. Jerusalem’s foundation predated that of Samaria by a century. Still, Samaria once serviced a larger nation, the ten tribes of Israel, while Jerusalem was the capital only for the two tribes of Judah. Ezekiel referred to Sodom as the “little sister,” but God destroyed Sodom a thousand years before King David even founded Jerusalem as Judah’s capital. Sodom was certainly not the little sister in terms of age, so here too Ezekiel likely referenced the size of the city.
Ezekiel also laid out the geographic placement of Sodom and Samaria in relation to Jerusalem. He described Samaria as to Jerusalem’s north and Sodom to her south, positioning Jerusalem accurately in the middle. When Ezekiel denoted Sodom and Samaria’s “daughters,” he was using an ancient idiom for a city’s satellite towns. Although he only used the direct names for the three big sister cities, the oracle also incorporated all their surrounding settlements.
Before expositing Ezekiel’s allegory, it is helpful to first rehearse the history of Sodom and Samaria as presented in the biblical record.
In 880 BCE, after the evil King Omri won a power struggle for the throne, he established Samaria as his capital to solidify his authority (1 Kings 16:24). Samaria was a hilltop location in the central highlands of Israel between the territories of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. This strategic location provided several advantages, including defensive fortifications and access to trade routes. For two centuries, Samaria flourished and grew in prominence, politically and economically. Spiritually, however, Samaria rotted from the inside. The people of Samaria turned away from Yahweh worship and instead practiced idolatry, worshiping the false gods of their neighbors. Throughout the biblical narratives, especially in the books of Kings and the prophets, there are frequent condemnations of Samaria’s spiritual abominations. Despite warnings and calls for repentance from the prophets, the Northern Kingdom never repented, which eventually led to their divine judgment at the hands of the Assyrians. By the time Ezekiel ministered, well over a century had passed since Samaria’s demise. Yet, the memory of the Northern Kingdom’s decimation was still fresh to Ezekiel’s contemporaries.
Sodom was an ancient Canaanite city that preexisted the Israelite nation. By Ezekiel’s day, the story of Sodom’s downfall had reached the status of well-known lore, the perennial example of what happens when a nation’s wickedness goes too far. According to the Genesis account, the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah reached such a pitch that it struck the ear of heaven (Gen. 18:20). When God sent two angels in human form to Sodom to investigate the city’s sinfulness, the debauched citizenry tried to gang rape the visitors. Only Lot and his family emerged from the investigation looking righteous. After Lot and his daughters escaped the city, God rained down fire and brimstone, destroying the cities and all their inhabitants, including Lot’s wife. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah served as a warning of the consequences of human sinfulness. Sodom became a byword for depravity.
Why Ezekiel built an allegory comparing the fate of Jerusalem to the end result of Samaria makes sense. Samaria truly was Jerusalem’s sister city in the sense that the twelve tribes had once made up one kingdom, under one monarchy, before they ruptured. However, both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms stayed aware that they were all descendants of Jacob and part of the covenant people chosen by Yahweh.
The comparison between Jerusalem and Sodom as sister cities seems initially puzzling, especially considering Sodom’s antiquity. Also, Sodom was a Canaanite city, not a nation of blood relatives like Samaria. God destroyed Sodom long before Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land. The two nations never crossed paths other than the legendary story of God’s punishment on Sodom in their holy text. Still, nothing could be more insulting than the idea that Israel, the nation meant to be example of covenant life for the whole world, was put on par with Sodom.
Ezekiel’s allegories were anything but predictable. He frequently heaped insults on his listeners to shock them out of their spiritual apathy. Comparing the holy city of Jerusalem to Sodom was a low blow, but it was also a jarring rhetorical device to convey the seriousness of Jerusalem’s sin. Judging from his repeated use of “you,” the second-person pronoun, he clarified his audience was the subject of the accusation (16:44-52). His audience did not need reminding that Sodom and Samaria were object lessons of what happened to nations that did not fear God.
Identifying the most wicked sister
According to Ezekiel, Jerusalem not only followed in the path of her sisters; she was more blameworthy than Samaria and Sodom (16:47). Her wickedness surpassed that of the two long-destroyed cities.
Ezekiel first made the case that Jerusalem was worse than Sodom, a shocking accusation considering the citizenry of Sodom once tried to gang rape visiting angels. As Ezekiel inventoried Sodom’s sins, he first listed “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy” (16:49). He was likely referencing their sexual immorality when he accused Sodom of also conducting “abominable things” (16:50). It is interesting that the first offenses he highlighted were social sins. Anyone living in the modern industrialized world likely feels the discomfort of guilt when reading Ezekiel’s charge of gluttony, complacency, and oppression. I include myself among the convicted.
As for Samaria, Ezekiel did not take the time to list her offenses, either because they were implied or already so familiar to his audience. Ezekiel claimed Jerusalem was twice as wicked as Samaria (16:51). Such a charge must have rocked the Judahite exiles’ understanding of their status before Yahweh. By their estimate, Samaria abandoned the Davidic kingship, Levitical priestly line, and refused to acknowledge Jerusalem as the proper place of Yahweh worship. All the divinely appointed systems that God setup, Samaria overlooked in favor of idolatry. Therefore, it made sense to the Judahites that God would in turn reject them. Or at least that is how they interpreted Jerusalem’s continued survival, and Samaria’s destruction.
Ezekiel told his audience that because Jerusalem had increased its abominations, her guilt outweighed that of Samaria and Sodom. In fact, Jerusalem’s corruption made the sister cities appear righteous by comparison. He said, “You have committed more abominations than they and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed” (16:51). This is Ezekiel’s version of putting salt in the wound. In typical prophetic style, he reiterated three more times in a row that Jerusalem was worse than her sisters (16:51-52). Possibly, Ezekiel repeated his points because his listeners protested the idea that they were as debauched as Sodom or as idolatrous as Samaria. Because the Jerusalemites thought of themselves as the more pious city, Ezekiel’s assessment seemed preposterous. Surely, his audience pushed back.
In exile, the Judeans likely comforted themselves with the justification that even if they had been punished, at least they were not as bad as other godless nations. However, what Ezekiel implied was that God’s justice required that Jerusalem suffer a punishment even worse than Sodom and Samaria.
What Ezekiel demonstrated through allegory was that God did not see Jerusalem as she saw herself. In God’s eyes, Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem had all been guilty of spiritual abominations. Both Jerusalem and Samaria reneged on the covenant. God’s justice would not be evenhanded if he punished two wicked sisters and not the other. God extinguished Sodom with fire and brimstone. According to the prophet Hosea, the Assyrians invaded the city by sword, dashing the children to the ground and ripping the pregnant woman open (Hos. 13:16). Those two fates portended the coming devastation of Jerusalem.
Turn to hope
Ezekiel’s judgement speech intended to evoke shame and repentance among the exiles. In the exiles’ warped understanding, God had failed them, but Ezekiel clarified it was the other way around. He explained, “I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath, breaking the covenant” (16:59). Judah betrayed her covenant with Yahweh, which Ezekiel presented as a marriage contract. God had no choice but to punish her for her adultery. Only once his audience was humbled and only once their pride had been thoroughly rebuked could he change his message of doom to one of hope. When Jerusalem recognized her iniquity, her shame quieted her pride and she realized she had no reason to be prideful. Shame was part of the process in teaching Israel how deserving she really was of her punishment. She had fallen so far from the covenant ideal.
The Christian path to redemption also insists that we fully recognize the darkness and enormity of our sin. The apostle Paul preached, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). We can only appreciate the importance of God’s rescue plan for us if we also see the hopelessness of our sin.
Ezekiel eventually reassured the exiles that restoration was still possible. The catch was that Jerusalem would share the process of restoration with her sisters, Sodom and Samaria. When the time arrived, God would redeem all three together. Ezekiel prophesied, “I will restore their fortunes, the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and I will restore your own fortunes along with theirs” (16:53). Even though it felt like Sodom and Samaria had been permanently destroyed, not even their restoration was impossible for God.
For two centuries, the prophets had many times spoken of the restoration of Samaria alongside Judah. God promised one day to bring back the dispersed exiles from all over. Sodom, however, was newly placed in the vision of Israel’s future. Like Jerusalem and Samaria, God said he would return the city to its “former state” (16:55). One theory is that since Sodom had been annihilated over a thousand years earlier, God meant he would restore the desolate land of Sodom, not the actual nation. Another theory is that he did not mean he would bring back the literal Sodom. Instead, Sodom represented God’s expanding covenant to other nations. If that is the right interpretation, Christians can read ourselves into the story. If the new covenant is so wide that it even redeems and includes Sodom, there is certainly room for us.
Judgement was not going to be God’s last act or the final chapter in Israel’s story. Just as Yahweh had sent the rainbow after the flood as a sign of his promise, he told Ezekiel that he would establish a new and everlasting covenant (16:60). Ezekiel prophesied, “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, in order that you may remember and be confounded and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God” (16:62-63). The prophet Jeremiah, almost at the same time as Ezekiel, also prophesied the launch of a new and unbreakable covenant. Jeremiah said, “It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband” (Jer. 31:32). God was not going to just press restart on the Sinaitic covenant claimed God would write the new covenant on their hearts and put his law within them (Jer. 31:33).
Jerusalem had taken for granted its protected status as the city that Yahweh founded (Isa. 14:32). One way to humble those who feel entitled is to welcome in the formerly excluded. Samaria had been Judah’s former enemy and now God was reabsorbing her into the eternal covenant. The point was that no city merited God’s rescue. Redemption sprang only from God’s great mercy.
Wedding feast
Ezekiel’s allegory of the redemption of three unrighteous sisters calls to my mind Jesus’s parable of the wedding feast. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus used the imagery of a wedding banquet to explain how God chose who he invited into his eternal kingdom. Jesus described a king who prepared a grand banquet for his son’s wedding. He sent out invitations to many guests, but those initially invited refused to come. They were the religious elite who prioritized their own agendas over the divine invitation. In response to their rejection, the king extended his invitation to everyone, regardless of status. His servants announced the feast out in the streets and gathered them all in the banquet hall. When the king entered the feast, he noticed a guest who was not wearing wedding clothes. Wedding clothes were a symbol of righteousness. Despite being invited to the feast, this guest had not put on the righteousness that came from faith in Christ. The king ordered his servants to cast him into outer darkness. Jesus concluded the parable by stating, “For many are invited, but few are chosen” (Matt. 22:14). Through this parable, Jesus illustrated how the kingdom of heaven was open to all, regardless of social status or background, but he emphasized the importance of responding to God’s invitation with faith and a full commitment to righteous living.
Conclusion
Thank you for listening and please continue to take part in this Bible Reading Challenge. Next week, we are reading the rest of Ezekiel 17.
And please keep the nation of Israel in your prayers. Ezekiel was also a hostage living in exile and what better prophet to read and study as we empathize with the Jews who are once again living their nightmare.
For all the Biblical references each week, please see the show transcript on our blog or by signing up for our emails at www.thejerusalemconnection.us/I do not say all the references in the podcast but they are all in the transcript.
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Shabbat Shalom
[1] Ezekiel’s hearers likely remembered that King Ahaz once formed an alliance with Assyria to counter the threat from the alliance of Arameans and the Northern Kingdom (2 Kings 16:7-9).