Chapter 23
Per the MSB outline, today's chapters are the last two dealing with prophecies of the coming destruction of Jerusalem.
Starts with a new word. There were two women - Oholah and Oholibah...In verse 4 they are precisely identified. Oholah, the older sister, is Samaria, and Oholibah is the younger. In Egypt, they are not nice ladies. They play the whore. This continues the idea that while Jacob was in Egypt, God was dealing with them, and letting them know He wanted their worship exclusively, and did not want to share it with the false gods of Egypt. Yet they still went after idols.
2026 - This conclusion:
9 Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. [Eze 23:9 ESV]. This theme is seen many times in the Bible. Look what God does. For ages, for generations, he sends prophets and messengers and corrections and disasters to make people see that their pursuits that feed their flesh with all the lusts of the body are not in fact in their best interest. But if they don't turn back to the commandments, the morals of God, what does he do? He lets them have indulge in the baseness to whatever depth they sink, and he lets those they admire used them for their own perverse pleasure. They think they are large and in charge. Turns out they are sex dolls for those they admire.
Possible FB post...but needs rewording at the end.
(((Idols...A great tool of Satan at that time to lure Israel away from God. He twisted it - the natural bent of men to seek God - into a perverse thing that led to the shedding of innocent blood as children were sacrificed by their own parents to these false gods. So no wonder there is that verse where God "excises" this temptation from Israel. He just takes it away, so that Satan can no longer use it to corrupt them. He says He did it "just this once". We just don't see it much today. This should be written up. I've never heard it preached.)))
After Egypt, Oholah continues her whoring with Assyria. She goes after the young strong warriors of that nation, and they spend their "whoring lusts" on her. This word picture is adults only. She is consumed with physical desire to worship their idols and endear herself to them. As a result, God judges her, and Assyria conquers her, reduces her to a "byword" among her sisters. She becomes as nothing. The end result of infidelity - both physically and in the larger spiritual sense also - is emptiness, scorn from others, abandonment, desolation.
You would think this would serve as an example. But this is the next verse:
11 "Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. [Eze 23:11 ESV] Oholibah, to me, seems to act contrary to common sense. Denial runs in her veins, as she refuses to see the clear, apparent object lesson God presents before her very eyes. It goes on to say that both sisters took the same way, lusting after the Assyrians.
2023 - These verses:
14 But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, 15 wearing belts on their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them having the appearance of officers, a likeness of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. [Eze 23:14-15 ESV]. Is this God describing the Ishtar Gate of Babylon through Ezekiel's prophecy? Sure, Ezekiel may have seen it, it was very famous, and what an appropriate symbol for this prophecy to use! I went and found a pic of the current version of that gate. It is blue, and has those Babylonian lions top to bottom in gold. There are no "men portrayed on the wall" in the current version. Wonder how they know what it looked like? Hmm...I also found this, which seems to be a piece of the original gate, in a museum in Berlin. Wonder if that orangey color was closer to "vermillion" in Ezekiel's day? Those look like "turbans" to you? and you see those belts hanging down? Wow!
Vss 14-21 are most definitely rated R. Oholibah lusts after the Assyrians, they come to her whoring in droves to discharge their lusts. Bu she goes still further, turning also to the Chaldeans - to Babylon - and whores around with them also, indulging her lusts for the warriors, governors, men of Babylon. After all this - perhaps after the fall of Assyria to Babylon, and then realizing that her whoring was gaining nothing, she turns from them both in disgust. It does say from "them", so Judah was submitting to both Assyria and Babylon. Two lovers, instead of her own God. It is at the time that Judah turns from these two and embraces Egypt yet again that God turns from Judah. This is the last straw, the one God knew was coming, but waited for Judah to play out, making her judgment as wholly justified as it could possibly ever be. She had turned back to the idols and gods and polytheism of of the country God had brought her out from. She has gone home to her first lover again. She turns from them to the Egyptians, her previous lovers, and she gives herself to them. The sexual "pictures" here are graphic in a way I didn't know was even in the Bible. And the Egyptians readily participated in the whoring. It is worse than what her sister did, and as God had turned from Oholah in disgust, so He turns from Oholibah.
God turns the lovers against Oholibah. They will attack her from every side. The Chaldeans will come from the north and surround her. And God does this:
24 ...and I will commit the judgment to them, and they shall judge you according to their judgments. [Eze 23:24 ESV] God gives these barbaric, ruthless peoples free reign to treat Oholibah as they will. God steps back, not protecting the innocent, not judging the guilty, but letting the Babylonians make the decisions. That is, instead of God insuring justice and mercy to the faithful and the sword and pestilence to the "whores", He lets the random, man-made, "justice" of an evil nation the law of the land.
That may well be what is going on in the US today. We've been turned over to evil men, and they have been made our overseers, our judges, and so on. We fair weather, quiet, non-witnessing Christians have been given all the time we are going to get, and now we will live and die by the judgment of evil, random, corrupt men.
Next verse says they will deal with her in fury. This will put an end to the whoring. It says that God's justice for the infidelity will be for Oholibah to be disabused in the worst possible ways by those former lovers she has turned away from. He will put the spurned in charge of the one who spurned them. Can there be a more merciless scenario than this?
2020-I have been thinking a lot lately about that "progression" of corrective steps God told Israel about. I think it was while they were still at Sinai. He told them what things would come, and the birth pangs analogy was used. How can you look at what is going on in the US right now and not recognize our troubles as birth pangs. More things are happening, and more often, and more serious, and more long term than ever before. (Or maybe not...I've seen those stories about being born in like 1905 and going through two world wars and the Spanish flu.) I need to find that passage though....It is in Leviticus 26:14-46. I read through it again, and it seems more about invasion from without, by enemies that conquer and enslave, than it does about the things we are seeing...though maybe where the US is today is just a verse or two of Lev 26 and not the whole thing. And also, these were covenant consequences to Israel, not to the US in 2020. But God is consistent...
Also 2020...So much of God's anger with Israel and Judah has been about these idols. We are seeing in Ezekiel that the idolatry really started in Egypt, as the descendants of Jacob for generations were taught to worship as their captors worshiped. They were "corrupted" over to the polytheism of Egypt, even though God had brought Abraham out of Ur as a uniquely monotheistic man. Abraham believed in one God, and was blessed for that, and promises were made because of that. But in Egypt, his descendants went backward, and then continued to wallow in idolatry of all kinds even when God brought them out of that. It is the continuing, cumulative, progressive idolatry of Samaria and Judah that is ultimately their undoing. All the corruption and perversion and so on is a direct result of the idolatry they practice. Surely Satan was the instigator, and promoter of all that and he did as much as he could to make them seem "real". But God knew, and it was this idolatry that brought on the devastating punishment. I never really saw this as the common thread of all that went on with Israel. God demanded fidelity from them. They constantly played the whore instead.
This also makes it impossible to deny that the Bible is a wholly patriarchal book. Males are in charge. They are always in charge. The graphic descriptions of the behavior of Israel and Judah make very clear that God is male. So stop trying to make excuses for it - excuses like "well, the King's Mom's name is always mentioned". "Well, those sisters were given an inheritance because no males were left, so God recognized females". Those happened, but they are in here more likely as standard writing and not to show that God promotes equality for women. He does, and the New Testament makes it clear that where salvation is concerned, gender, race, station, etc are completely inconsequential to God. BUT, heaven will be patriarchal I think. Because a male - God - will be in charge.
2023 - This:
27 Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore. [Eze 23:27 ESV]. This reminds me of the passage in Chapter xx where God said he gave them the Law to make them more guilty. Doesn't this tie right in with that, saying that God in fact had condemned Israel for embracing the idols of Egypt while they were still there? And the Law was given to show them just how absolutely guilty before God they were, and to show how even when they had in writing what they should do, they still refused to be holy, and in fact ran the other way, hell bent on going to hell? This verse says that the Babylonian captivity was going to be the end forever of idolatry in Israel. And we know that it was. AD 70 was still to come...but idolatry ended in Babylon.
2023 - I also must say that vss 18-21 are absolutely rated R, at least! God leaves no doubt about the depths Israel is plumbing!
God pronounces His sentence on Judah as follows:
31 You have gone the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. 32 Thus says the Lord GOD:
"You shall drink your sister's cup
that is deep and large;
you shall be laughed at and held in derision,
for it contains much;
33 you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow.
A cup of horror and desolation,
the cup of your sister Samaria;
34 you shall drink it and drain it out,
and gnaw its shards,
and tear your breasts;
for I have spoken, declares the Lord GOD. [Eze 23:31-34 ESV]
I punctuated this as it is shown in ESV. It must be some kind of "verse", or have some special emphasis in the original. Perhaps it is italicized or underlined?
I want to show this, because it is at least the second time God has phrased it this way. This is the best argument I have ever seen that Christians cannot support abortion and claim to be "ok" with God while doing it:
37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. [Eze 23:37 ESV]
Children belong to God. Before accountability, they are His. They are not ours to "use", to offer to other gods, of any kind. Babies in the womb are God's, and it is NEVER for us to decide whether they live or die. NEVER! (Find that other section that has the same thought. It was earlier in Ezekiel I think...though it might have been Jeremiah. Find it.)
Adding to their sin, showing a complete lack of regard for God, there is this:
39 For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house. [Eze 23:39 ESV]
You cannot sin on Saturday night, and come into God's house on Sunday morning unrepentant, and think you do not anger God. This sin seems characterized as worse than other sins. It profanes God's house. Would you throw up in your neighbors kitchen? Defecate in his living room? This is what they were doing.
God intends a result for the wrath He will pour out on Oholah and Oholibah. It is still more than just wrath, more than just justice. Even in this, He intends to excise sin from them. The chapter ends with these two verses:
48 Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. 49 And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord GOD." [Eze 23:48-49 ESV]
2022 - Such depressing chapters. So direct the message from God to Jerusalem through Ezekiel. And they did not heed, did not fear, and so Judah and Jerusalem fell.
2024 - Just some summary thoughts from today's reading in Eze 22 and 23. This metaphor of a prostitute is repeated over and over. And there is also this verse right towards the end of the reading:
48 Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. [Eze 23:48 ESV]. So...is this saying that the women in Judah - Oholibah - are to see this connection with what the nation itself has done and with the way they themselves have behaved? Is this implying that the women of Judah are giving themselves to whomever will have them, that there is no faithfulness left in them at all? They are about pleasure and personal gain and are using sex to get it, as if all the women of the nation behave as whores...or is this just a warning that when they see the consequences to the nation for behaving as a whore then they will be warned not to do the same? To me, the first is much more likely because why would such a warning be thrown in here if it wasn't already a pretty big problem. These two chapters are brutal in their accusation, and graphic in their portrayal of unforgivable and rampant immorality. Judah has looked to foreigners, and bowed to the God's of foreigners, to gain materially. They are consumed with gain, and will even sacrifice their own children for "food". Were they eating their own children, is that what it means, or does it mean they sacrificed their children so they could live more cheaply? Judah was willing to make limitless compromises when it came to "greasing the skids" of commerce by which they could be enriched. And realizing they were doing so, that they were turning their backs on the God of their fathers, they went as far as they possibly could in the other direction, that they might not feel guilty for their sins. The worse your sins are this week, the less guilty you have to feel about last week's sins, because after all, they were nothing compared to this week.
God is just truly, thoroughly done with Judah at this point. These chapters are awful because God is making plain just how far they have gone in unfaithfulness, just how much they have hurt him, and made him a ridicule in the eyes of those who worship other gods, who are in fact far more loyal to those gods of wood and stone than Judah is to the living God. He brought them out of Egypt to show the whole world, all nations, what kind of God he was - his power, his love of his people, his faithfulness to his own promises. He did things idols can never ever do. And they have still chosen to run off with the idols, with the bad boys. As women lust after the bad boys, so nations. Short term, momentary, self-pleasure overrides faithfulness and eyes on the better prize.
That is a good "yardstick" with which to measure nations today. Are they focused on me and right now, or are they focused on God and treasure in heaven. Yes. This is the contrast, and the US doesn't come out smelling any too good by this yardstick!