Yahweh’s word came again to me, saying,
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Yahweh’s word came again to me, saying,
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The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
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And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Eze 23:1 The word of the LORD came again…
Eze 23:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
Ver. 1. The word of the Lord.] See Eze 18:1.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain God had often spoken to Ezekiel, and by him…
God had often spoken to Ezekiel, and by him to the people, to this effect, but now his word comes again; for God speaks the same thing once, yea, twice, yea, many a time, and all little enough, and too little, for man perceives it not. Note, To convince sinners of the evil of sin, and of their misery and danger by reason of it, there is need of line upon line, so loth we are to know the worst of ourselves. The sinners that are here to be exposed are two women, two kingdoms, sister-kingdoms, Israel and Judah, daughters of one mother, having been for a long time but one people. Solomon's kingdom was so large, so populous, that immediately after his death it divided into two. Observe, 1. Their character when they were one (Eze 23:3): They committed whoredoms in Egypt, for there they were guilty of idolatry, as we read before, Eze 20:8. The representing of those sins which are most provoking to God and most ruining to a people by the sin of whoredom plainly intimates what an exceedingly sinful sin uncleanness is, how offensive, how destructive. Doubtless it is itself one of the worst of sins, for the worst of other sins are compared to it here and often elsewhere, which should increase our detestation and dread of all manner of fleshly lusts, all appearances of them and approaches to them, as warring against the soul, infatuating sinners, bewitching them, alienating their minds from God and all that is good, debauching conscience, rendering them odious in the eyes of the pure and holy God, and drowning them at last in destruction and perdition. 2. Their names when they became two, Eze 23:4. The kingdom of Israel is called the elder sister, because that first made the breach, and separated from the family both of kings and priests that God had appointed - the greater sister (so the word is), for ten tribes belonged to that kingdom and only two to the other. God says of them both, They were mine, for they were the seed of Abraham his friend and of Jacob his chosen; they were in covenant with God, and carried about with them the sign of their circumcision, the seal of the covenant. They were mine; and therefore their apostasy was the highest injustice. It was alienating God's property, it was the basest ingratitude to the best of benefactors, and a perfidious treacherous violation of the most sacred engagements. Note, Those who have been in profession the people of God, but have revolted from him, have a great deal to answer for more than those who never made any such profession. "They were mine; they were espoused tome, and to me they bore sons and daughters;" there were many among them that were devoted to God's honour, and employed in his service, and were the strength and beauty of these kingdoms, as children are of the families they are born in. In this parable Samaria and the kingdom of Israel shall bear the name of Aholah - her own tabernacle, because the places of worship which that kingdom had were of their own devising, their own choosing, and the worship itself was their own invention; God never owned it. Her tabernacle to herself (so some render it); "let her take it to herself, and make her best of it." Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah bear the name of Aholibah - my tabernacle is in her, because their temple was the place which God himself had chosen to put his name there. He acknowledged it to be his, and honoured them with the tokens of his presence in it. Note, Of those that stand in relation to God, and make profession of his name, some have greater privileges and advantages than others; and, as those who have greater are thereby rendered the more inexcusable if they revolt from God, so those who have less will not thereby be rendered inexcusable. 3. The treacherous departure of the kingdom of Israel from God (Eze 23:5): Aholah played the harlot when she was mine. Though the ten tribes had deserted the house of David, yet God owned them for his still; though Jeroboam, in setting up the golden calves, sinned, and made Israel to sin, yet, as long as they worshipped the God of Israel only, though by images, he did not quite cast them off. But they way of sin is down-hill. Aholah played the harlot, brought in the worship of Baal (Kg1 16:31), set up that other god, that dunghill-god, in competition with Jehovah (Kg1 18:21), as a vile adulteress dotes on her lovers, because they are well dressed and make a figure, because they are young and handsome (Eze 23:6), clothed with blue, captains and rulers, desirable young men, genteel, and that pass for men of honour, so she doted upon her neighbours, particularly the Assyrians, who had extended their conquests near them; she admired their idols and worshipped them, admired the pomp of their courts and their military strength and courted alliances with them upon any terms, as if her own God were not sufficient to be depended upon. We find one of the kings of Israel giving a thousand talents to the king of Assyria, to engage him in his interests, Kg2 15:19. She doted on the chosen men of Assyria, as worthy to be trusted and employed in the service of the state (Eze 23:7), and on all their idols with which she defiled herself. Note, Whatever creature we dote upon, pay homage to, and put a confidence in, we make an idol of that creature; and whatever we make an idol of we defile ourselves with. And now again the conviction looks back as far as the original of their nation: Neither left she her whoredoms which she brought from Egypt, Eze 23:8. Their being idolaters in Egypt was a thing never to be forgotten - that they should be in love with Egypt's idols even when they were continually in fear of Egypt's tyrants and task-masters! But (as some have observed) therefore, at that time, when Satan boasted of his having walked through the earth as all his own, to disprove his pretensions God did not say, Hast thou considered my people Israel in Egypt? (for they had become idolaters, and were not to be boasted of), but, Hast thou considered my servant Job in the land of Uz? And this corrupt disposition in them, when they were first formed into a people, is an emblem of that original corruption which is born with us and is woven into our constitution, a strong bias towards the world and the flesh, like that in the Israelites towards idolatry; it was bred in the bone with them, and was charged upon them long after, that they left not their whoredoms brought from Egypt. It would never out of the flesh, though Egypt had been a house of bondage to them. Thus the corrupt affections and inclinations which we brought into the world with us we have not lost, nor got clear of, but still retain them, though the iniquity we were born in was the source of all the calamities which human life is liable to. 4. The destruction of the kingdom of Israel for their apostasy from God (Eze 23:9, Eze 23:10): I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers. God first justly gave her up to her lust (Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone), and then gave her up to her lovers. The neighbouring nations, whose idolatries she had conformed to and whose friendship she had confided in, and in both had affronted God, are now made use of as the instruments of her destruction. The Assyrians, on whom she doted, soon spied out the nakedness of the land, discovered her blind side, on which to attack her, stripped her of all her ornaments and all her defences, and so uncovered her, and made her naked and bare, carried her sons and daughters into captivity, slew her with the sword, and quite destroyed that kingdom and put an end to it. We have the story at large Kg2 17:6, etc., where the cause of the ruin of that once flourishing kingdom by the Assyrians is shown to be their forsaking the God of Israel, fearing other gods, and walking in the statutes of the heathen; it was for this that God was very angry with them and removed them out of his sight, Eze 23:18. And that the Assyrians, whom they had been so fond of, should be employed in executing judgments upon them was very remarkable, and shows how God, in a way of righteous judgment, often makes that a scourge to sinners which they have inordinately set their hearts upon. The devil will for ever be a tormentor to those impenitent sinners who now hearken to him and comply with him as a tempter. Thus Samaria became famous among women, or infamous rather; she became a name (so the word is); not only she came to be the subject of discourse, and much talked of, as the desolations of cities and kingdoms fill the newspapers, but she was thus ruined for her idolatries in terrorem - for warning to all people to take heed of doing likewise; as the public execution of notorious malefactors makes them such a name, such an ill name, as may serve to frighten others from those wicked courses which have brought them to a miserable and shameful end. Deu 21:21, All Israel shall hear and fear.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain The word of the Lord came unto me,.... The…
The word of the Lord came unto me,.... The word of prophecy, as the Targum; another prophecy, one upon the same subject, as in Eze 16:1,
saying; as follows:
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The apostacy of Israel and Samaria from God, ver.…
The apostacy of Israel and Samaria from God, ver. 1-8. Their ruin, ver. 9, 10. The apostacy of Judah and Jerusalem from God, ver. 11-21. Their ruin, ver. 22-35. The joint wickedness of them both, ver. 36- 44. And their joint ruin, ver. 45-49.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain The idolatries of Samaria and Jerusalem are represented in…
CHAPTER XXIII
The idolatries of Samaria and Jerusalem are represented in this
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chapter by the bad practices of two common harlots, for which
God denounces severe judgments against them, 1-49.
See the sixteenth chapter, where the same metaphor is enlarged
upon as here, it being the prophets view to exude the utmost
detestation of the crime against which he inveighs.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXIII
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain The seventh word of judgment. The allegory of Aholah…
The seventh word of judgment. The allegory of Aholah and Aholibah.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain (b) Judah and Israel’s Ripeness for Judgment (Ezekiel 23.)
(b) Judah and Israel’s Ripeness for Judgment (Ezekiel 23.)
1And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 2Son of man, there were 3two women, the daughters of one mother; And in Egypt they played the wanton; in their youth they wantoned, there were their breasts pressed, and 4there were the teats of their virginity bruised. And their names were “Oholah,” the great [greater], and “Oholibah” her sister; and they were mine, and bare sons and daughters; and their names were Samaria—Oholah, 5and Jerusalem—Oholibah. And Oholah when under me played the wanton, 6and doted upon her lovers,—on Assyria, her neighbours, Clothed in purple, captains and rulers, all of them comely young men, knights riding on 7horses. And she bestowed her wantonness upon them, all the choice of the sons of Assyria; and with all on whom she doted, with all their idols she 8polluted herself. And her whoredoms brought from Egypt she did not leave; for they lay with her in her youth, and they bruised her virgin breasts, 9and poured their whoredoms upon her. Therefore I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the sons of Assyria, upon whom she doted. 10These discovered her nakedness [shame]; they took her sons and daughters, and herself they slew with the sword, and she became a name to women, and 11they executed judgment upon her. And her sister Oholibah saw it, and made her wantonness more corrupt than she, and her whoredoms more than 12the whoredoms of her sister. She doted on the sons of Assyria,—captains and rulers, her neighbours, clothed gorgeously, knights riding upon horses, all 13of them comely young men. And I saw that she was defiled; they had both 14one way. And she still added to her whoredoms; and she saw men portrayed 15upon the wall, likenesses of the Chaldeans, painted with vermilion, Girdled with a girdle on their loins, flowing turbans on their heads, all of them having the appearance of leaders, the likeness of the sons of Babylon, of the Chaldeans 16in the land of their birth. And she doted upon them as soon as her17eyes saw them, and sent messengers unto them to Chaldea. And the sons of Babylon came to her into the bed of love, and defiled her through their whoredoms; and she was polluted with them, and her soul was estranged 18from them. And she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness; and My soul was estranged from her, as My soul had been estranged 19from her sister. And she multiplied her whoredoms, so that she remembered the days of her youth, when she played the wanton in the land of Egypt. 20And she doted on their paramours, whose flesh is the flesh of asses, and their 21issue the issue of horses. Yea [and] thou didst seek after the lewdness of thy youth, when the Egyptians bruised thy teats on account of thy youthful 22breasts. Therefore, Oholibah, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will stir up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy soul is estranged, and I will 23bring them against thee from every side; The sons of Babylon, and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, and Shoa, and Koa, all the sons of Assyria with them, comely young men, captains and rulers all of them, leaders and men of renown, every one riding on horses. 24And they shall come against thee with weapons, chariot and wheel, and with an assembly of peoples; target and shield and helmet they shall set against thee round about; and I will set judgment before them, and they shall judge thee with their judgments. 25And I will set My jealousy upon thee, and they shall deal with thee in fury; they shall take away thy nose and thine ears, and thy remnant shall fall by the sword; they shall take thy sons and thy daughters, 26and thy remnant shall be devoured by the fire. And they shall strip thee of 27thy clothes, and take away thy fair jewels. And I will make thy lewdness to cease from thee, and thy whoredom from the land of Egypt; and thou shalt not lift up thine eyes to them, nor remember Egypt any more. 28For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deliver thee into the hand of those whom thou hatest, into the hand of those from whom thy soul is estranged. 29And they shall deal with thee in hatred, and shall take away all thy earning, and leave thee naked and bare; and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, and thy lewdness and thy wanton courses. 30This shall be done unto thee because thou hast gone a-whoring after the 31heathen, because thou hast defiled thyself with their idols. In the way of thy sister thou hast gone, and I give her cup into thy hand. 32Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The cup of thy sister, the deep and wide, thou shalt drink; it shall be for laughter and mockery according to its measure. 33Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow; a cup of wasting and desolation is the 34cup of thy sister Samaria. And thou shalt drink it and suck it out; and thou shalt gnaw its sherds, and tear off thy breasts; for I have spoken,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah. 35Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou hast forgotten Me, and hast cast Me behind thy back, do thou 36also bear thy lewdness and thy whoredoms. And Jehovah said to me, Son of man, wilt thou judge Oholah and Oholibah, then show them their abominations. 37For they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands, and with their idols they have committed adultery; and also their sons whom 38they bare unto Me they have made to pass through the fire to them. This besides they did to Me; they defiled My sanctuary in the same day, and profaned 39My Sabbaths. And when they had slain their sons [children] to their idols, they came to My sanctuary on the same day to profane it; and lo! 40thus have they done in the midst of My house. Yea, they sent even to men coming from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and, lo, they came, for whom thou didst wash thyself, paint thine eyes, and deck thyself with ornaments; 41And thou satest upon a stately bed, and a table was laid before it, 42and My incense and My oil didst thou set upon it. And the voice of a loose crowd [was] in her [Jerusalem], and to people of the multitude were brought drunkards from the wilderness, who put bracelets on their hands, and a 43beautiful crown upon their heads. And I said of her worn out with adulteries, 44Will they now commit her adulteries? And she [also]? And they went in to her as they go in to a harlot. Thus they went in to Oholah and 45to Oholibah, the lewd women. But righteous men, they shall judge them with the judgment of adulteresses, and the judgment of those that shed blood; for they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands. 46For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will bring up a company against them, and give them to maltreatment and spoiling. 47And the company shall cast stones upon them, and cleave them with their swords; their sons and their daughters 48they shall slay, and burn their houses with fire. And I will cause lewdness to cease out of the land, so that all women shall be warned, and shall not do after your lewdness. 49And they shall recompense your lewdness upon you, and ye shall bear the sins of your idols, and ye shall know that I am the Lord Jehovah.
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Eze_23:3. Sept.: ... ἐπεσον οἱ μαστοι … διεπαρθενευθησαν.
Eze_23:12. … ἐνδεδυμενους εὐπαρνφα—Vulg.: indutis veste varia—
Eze_23:13. … μεμιανται ὁδος μια—
Vet. 15. διεζωσμενους τοικιλματα … τιαραι βαπται … ὀψις τρισση.
Eze_23:20. κ. ἐπεθου ἐπι τους Χαλδαιους, ὡν ἠσαν ὡς … αἰδοια—Vulg.: insanivit libidine super concubitum …
Eze_23:21. Sept., Vulg., Syr. read: במצרים.
Eze_23:23. … παντας τρισσους κ. ὀνομαστους—nobiles, tyrannosque et principes … duces et magistratus … principes principum et nominatοs—
Eze_23:24. … ἀπο βοῤῥα, ἁρματα κ.τροχοι, ἱπποι, μετα … κ. βαλει ἐπι σε προφυλακην κυκλω.
Eze_23:29. … τους πονους σου κ. τους μοχθους σου—
Eze_23:31. Sept., Syr., Arab, read: בידיך.
Eze_23:32-33. … το πλεοναζον του συντελεσαι μεθην, κ. ἐκλυσεως πλησθηση—Eris in derisum … subsannationem, quæ est capacissima … repleberis, calice mœroris et tristitiæ—
Eze_23:34. Sept.: ... κ.τας ἑορτας κ. τας νουμηνιας αὐτης ἀποστρεψω—
Eze_23:37. … δι’ ἐμπυρων;
Eze_23:41-42. … προ προσωπου αὐτης … ἐξευφραινοντο ἐν αὐτοις, κ. φωνην ἁρμονιας ἀνεκρουοντο—vox multitudinis exultantis … in ea et in viris qui de … adducebantur et veniebant de deserto—
Eze_23:41. Vulg. reads: לפניך. Syr., Chald., Arab, read: לפניהם.—42. Some codd.: ידיהם; some also: דאשיהם.
Eze_23:43. K. εἰπα·οὐκ ἐν τουτοις μοιχωνται; ἐργα γυναικος πορνης ἐποιεις; Vulg.: ei, quæ attrita est in … Nunc fornicabitur in fornicatione sua etiam hæc.
Eze_23:44. Another reading: ויבאו.
Eze_23:46. Many codd.: עליהן.
Eze_23:47. λιθοις ὀχλων.
Eze_23:49. Codd. and Syr.: ונתתי.
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
The allegory in which the ripeness for judgment of Judah and Israel is represented, is closely allied to that of Ezekiel 16. The remarks made on it are to be compared with the present chapter. In contradistinction to Ezekiel 16, which gave prominence to the love borne to the faithless one by her lawful husband, Ezekiel 23 directs our attention rather to the seductive power and splendour of the lovers for whom Jehovah was forsaken. The prospect of pardon presented by the earlier chapter here disappears behind the penal judgment.
[Fausset: “The imagery is similar to that in Ezekiel 16; but here the reference is not, as there, so much to the breach of the spiritual marriage-covenant with God by the people’s idolatries, as by their worldly spirit, and their trusting to alliances with the heathen for safety, rather than to God.”—W. F.]
Eze_23:1-4. Preface
Eze_23:2. The one mother may be presupposed from Ezekiel 16 as the Hittite. Comp. at Eze_23:3; Eze_23:44 sq. As, however, it is not the present object to give prominence to the ancestry in the sense of Ezekiel 16, the word simply describes the original unity of the people. This also explains what is said in Eze_23:3 relative to Egypt. The two kingdoms which form the theme of the chapter are assumed as already two in Egypt; but in point of fact, what is said holds as to the yet undivided people. [Hengst., indeed, appeals to Genesis 49, in which the two tribes of Judah and Ephraim appear as two independent powers.]—On account of the legitimate relation in which the nation stood to God from its very origin, namely, of a marriage-covenant, the political and religious departure of both kingdoms from the principles laid down in the law, appears as wantonness (זָנָה), Eze_16:15 (Jam_4:4).—Here also (comp. Eze_20:7 sq.) they are said to be tainted with the spirit of Egypt. Comp. also at Eze_16:26. In their youth, points (comp. Eze_16:22; Eze_16:43) to their innate corruption, showing itself early in sinful lust.—Even when still unwedded (Eze_16:8), as Jehovah’s betrothed, the conduct of the people was to be judged according to Deu_22:23. Comp. farther, Eze_16:7; Hos_2:4 [2].—עִשּׂוּ, the Egyptians (Eze_23:8). Egypt was the means of exciting the first carnal impulses of the youthful people to a heathenish mode of feeling and action, whereby they were robbed of their virgin purity. The Sept. explains their virginity according to Deu_22:20. Hitz. repels the idea of any allusion to idolatry, and makes the reference to be to the oppression by the Egyptians.
Eze_23:4. Oholah = her tent, i.e. either generally (Hengst.): that has a house of her own, an independent existence, or (on account of the contrast to Oholibah): who possesses her wilfully erected sanctuary (1Ki_12:28 sq., 16), which makes it unnecessary to think of an abbreviation of אָהֳלָהִ־בָהּ, her tent in her. Häv., while maintaining the Hittite reference, Eze_16:3, etc., makes prominent the allusion found in it to the history of Esau, and explains Oholibah relative to Gen_36:2, inasmuch as Aholibamah [Oholibamah], who is called Judith in an earlier passage (Gen_26:34), could most appropriately represent the kingdom of Judah. While Aholibamah merely means (tent of the high place): My tent (house, family) is a height (“I have a high tent”), in the name Oholibah—My tent (namely, Jehovah’s, who speaks) in her—the reference is taken from the tabernacle; whereby one is reminded of the habit which prevailed among the exiles of naming their children from the temple and similar objects (1Ch_3:20; Ezr_2:43; Ezr_2:59), to express their yearning for restoration. (Moreover, the members of a family in the East often bear the same or like-sounding names.) The kingdom of Judah had also the advantage of possessing the one true sanctuary, which, however, made its guilt the more aggravated. The great is to be rendered, as in Eze_16:46, and not with Hengst.: the elder, with an allusion to Joseph’s precedence, Gen_49:26, to that of Ephraim in the time of Joshua and the judges, and to that of Benjamin which belonged to the ten tribes in the time of Saul, while Judah attained supremacy only in the time of David (Psalms 78.). Häv. combines with the political importance of Samaria, owing to its greater extent, its priority in sin as well as in punishment.—Comp. Eze_16:8; Eze_16:20. Häv. translates וַתִּהְיֶינָה לִי: “And they belonged to me as wives,” with emphasis.—The explanation of the names as those of Samaria and Jerusalem (representing Judah as hitherto) closes this introduction.
Eze_23:5-10. Oholah’s Adulterous Wantonness (Eze_23:5-8) and Punishment (Eze_23:9-10)
Eze_23:5-8. The Harlotries
Eze_23:5. Comp. at Eze_16:32. Hitz.: “When she turned her back on me” (?). So also the Chaldee. But rather is the marriage relation pointed to, in the line of Eze_23:4 (Hos_4:12). Umbr.: “While she rests under her husband, her thoughts run wantonly after others.”—עָגַב, found only in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, means: to desire, to burn. The description of the Assyrians begins with קְרוֹבִים. If is in apposition, like all that follows. The nearness is to be taken neither locally, nor yet morally—of inward relationship, but it brings into prominence the historical element, the time when the Assyrians became neighbours of Israel; comp. 2Ki_15:17 sq., Eze_16:9, Eze_17:3. [The supposition of a loose connection of the words=“and neighbours,” who were somewhere in her neighbourhood, is not consistent with what follows. Others: Who came near her lustfully (Gen_20:4). Häv.: “So closely related, intimate, trusted friends,” that alliances were made with them, and their favour courted, until, from being bosom friends, they became deadly enemies. There is nothing of all this in the context, which only states that on the first opportunity, namely, when the Assyrians approached, Israel was captivated by the carnal glory of the world-power, which is then portrayed with greater minuteness.]—This political power is Assyria, which does not come into view, in the first place, on the side of its idolatry; but when Israel wantoned after it from political motives, this infidelity to the idea of their complete dependence on God could not fail to issue, from the first, in apostasy from God, and the other natural consequences of the forbidden relationship.
Eze_23:6. Description of the Assyrians from the view-point of Israel’s apostate heart, to whom this world-power seemed most imposing, as Hengst. remarks: “with a touch of irony.” The impressions are entirely such as are made on the mind of a carnal woman, whereby the previously mentioned doting gaze is accounted for.—תְּכֵלֶת, either from its thick, hard shell, or from its dark colour, is the name of a mussel (helix ianthina) with a purple shell, from which a blue or violet purple was made.—פֶּחָה is a foreign word, denoting the military governor of a province. Similarly םָגָן (םֶגֶן) = the representative of the prince, commander-in-chief. (Something like governors and generals.)—The special mention of horses is intended to distinguish the noblest and proudest class of riders from those riding on asses and camels.
Eze_23:7. מִבְחַר briefly resumes Eze_23:6, in order, perhaps, to suggest, besides the “choice,” etc., those who were of less account; at all events, she doted also on others, as the Egyptians, who are presently mentioned.—וּבְכֹל׳ בְּכָל׳, the one illustrating the other; the political confederation with the heathen led to idolatry. (Hengst.: The idols of the world-powers are not beyond and above them, but themselves made objective.)
Eze_23:8. Thither Jeroboam’s calf-worship pointed back, so that their ancient deliverance from Egypt, instead of remaining a fact, had become a mere tradition. As to the political application (Rashi), 2Ki_17:4 is to be compared. Hitzig takes it in an exclusively political sense.
Eze_23:9-10. The Punishment
Eze_23:9. The recompense for Eze_23:7 : “And she bestowed,” “Therefore I gave.” Comp. 2 Kings 17
Eze_23:10. The shame of her wantonness is succeeded by the shame of punishment, executed by her paramours themselves. Comp. besides, Eze_16:37. So in the figure; as to the fact, it was accomplished by the captivity of the people, the slaughter of those on whom the existence of the kingdom depended, of the men who were able to bear arms, so that Israel became notorious among the nations on account of its shameful overthrow, Eze_16:41.
Eze_23:11-35. Oholibah’s Guilt (Eze_23:11-21) and Punishment (Eze_23:22-35)
Eze_23:11-21. The Guilt
Eze_23:11. She saw both the transgressions and their recompense. The former should have filled her with loathing, by the latter she should have been warned. But her corrupt conduct was still worse than that of Samaria (Eze_16:47).
Eze_23:12. Comp. 2Ki_16:7 sq.; 2Ch_28:19 sq.—Comp. at Eze_23:6; Eze_23:5.—מִכְלוֹל (in Eze_23:6, תְּכֵלֶת) means: perfection, therefore: splendour; not exactly (Sept.): “with beautiful (purple) fringe,” as Hitz. Ewald: “clothed in martial coats of mail.”
Eze_23:13. And I saw, counterpart to וַתֵּרֶא, Eze_23:11. (Comp. Jer_3:8) The way and end of both sisters were the same.
Eze_23:14. The description of Judah’s baser conduct follows. Her relations with the Assyrians were similar to those of Samaria. They had in reality approached the kingdom of Judah, as they had the kingdom of Israel. In regard to the Chaldeans, on the other hand, the relation to them was brought about by means of likenesses, which Judah saw,—מְחֻקֶּה, partic. Pual, something engraven or sketched, painted. (Häv.: probably coloured bas-reliefs), in vermilion (which would be all the more appropriate for warriors); or perhaps in ochre, as frescoes of this description for the glorification of the Chaldean commanders and their victories were sufficiently common in Ezekiel’s neighbourhood. The representation here, therefore, may possibly be the mere drapery of the thought, that the bare report of the military prowess of the Chaldeans had inflamed the imagination and the senses of Judah. So Hengst. Owing to the undeniable intercourse between nations in the Old World, which certainly obtained between Palestine and Babylon, it is not in itself unimaginable that such wall-pictures of representatives of foreign nations may have existed in the royal palaces of Judah. Hitz. here takes note of “the influence (of pictures) on a woman’s imagination,” under which figure Judah is personified. Häv. cites Eze_8:10, and thinks of “pictorial representations from the circle of Chaldean mythological ideas.” The Chaldean embassy of 2Ki_20:12 sq., 2Ch_32:31 (comp. Delitzsch on Isaiah 39), shows that the Chaldeans kept up intercourse with Judah, even when Assyria was still the dominant world-power. May not this embassy have been perpetuated by a painting as the occasion of an alliance with the Chaldeans against Assyria? Ewald supposes: “beautiful idol-pictures, which, as e.g. Mithras, were represented in the human form,” and cites Eze_8:16.
Eze_23:15. The flowing turbans are such as may be seen on the monuments of ancient Nineveh, with which the following descriptions correspond throughout. See Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon. [טָבַל refers not so much to the colour (gay), but rather means originally to twist round. Layard remarks, by the way: “The general was clothed in embroidered robes, and wore on his head a fillet adorned with rosettes, and long tasselled bands.” Probably, waving head-bands. The Kurds, who still preserve the most ancient Eastern customs, wear on their bright-coloured turbans, appendages which hang over their neck and shoulders.]—שָׁלִישׁ in the plural betokens the charioteers, of whom there were three, in each chariot, one driving, one bearing the shield, and a third fighting. (Appearance and likeness; see Eze_1:5.) The emphasizing of: the land of their birth, according to Hengst., is intended to form a contrast to the Assyrians, whom Judah saw in her own land,—to point perhaps to Ur (Gen_11:28) of the Chaldees (Abraham’s native land), so that the original blood - relationship may have been alluded to in this political intercourse (?). Häv.: “The Chaldean’s fatherland theirs,” which sarcastically places side by side, the original home of the once fierce and warlike people, and the idolatrous pictures, which resemble them, but not the existing faineant Babylonians. The statement made by the sentence is simpler: that even they were not farther removed than Abraham, the founder of the Jewish people,—“whose fathers served strange gods in Ur of the Chaldees (Jos_24:2), so that he was called thence,” etc., as Cocc. remarks.
Eze_23:16. Apodosio to Eze_23:14 : “And she saw,” resumed by: as soon as her eye saw. The messengers mentioned here can scarcely be those of Jer_29:3. “They were probably,” says Hengst., “the occasion of the embassy sent from the Chaldeans, who were to take a view of the resources of the people proposing an alliance.” This side of the history of Judah is not described elsewhere. Enough that Judah, as is in itself probable, made the first advances (Eze_16:29).
Eze_23:17. The political alliance led to religious defilement—was itself, in fact, religious defection; and after the defilement was effected, it led again to political hostility. Judah found that it had only changed its masters. Jehoiakim and Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon, 2 Kings 24.—In נָקַע (the weaker form is יָקַע, from which the fut. is derived) there lies the idea of satiety and loathing; in this sense the meaning of the verb is: to push away any one, to break a relationship, to be alienated from any one. Comp. 1Co_6:16; Eze_18:6; Eze_18:11.
Eze_23:18. Yet the satiety was not absolute. Others take the connection thus: “and when she had discovered,” etc., “then was,” etc. But more is meant to be stated as the ground of Jehovah’s estrangement, for Judah’s alienation from the Chaldeans might also have led her back to Jehovah. More general prostitution, however, was the result, by which is especially meant alliances with the lesser states against Babylon, and at the same time breaches of faith towards men, Eze_17:15. Jehovah’s estrangement from Judah is a suggestive parallel to Judah’s from the Chaldeans.
Eze_23:19. Comp. Eze_23:3; Eze_23:8, Eze_16:51. But Judah multiplied, etc. Instead of remembering the misery of her youth, and the grace then shown (Eze_16:22; Eze_16:43), she thought only of renewing quite another “first love” than that of Jehovah.
Eze_23:20. עַל is unjustifiably pressed by some interpreters (“beyond,” more than the neighbouring people of Egypt, or, “together with,” Eze_16:37), as its construction with עָגַב in the chapter sufficiently shows. Nor does this single masculine form of פִּלֶּגֶשׁ, which is elsewhere fem., justify the interpretation of Kimchi, that Judah wished to be the concubine of the Egyptians. It is rather a derision of the Egyptian eunuchs, i.e. courtiers and officers who mediated the alliance with Egypt. (פִּלַּגְשֵׁיהֶם does not mean the men-concubines, which the Egyptians are, nor is it to be taken in the sense of eunuchus imbellis, or puer mollis, or polyandry.) The representation which follows is sufficiently explained by the particularly lecherous character of the animals mentioned, and describes the obscene character of the Egyptians (Eze_16:26). Hengst.: “The falling power of Egypt sought to provide a prop for itself by diplomatic art.”
Eze_23:21 sums up. “The sudden transition to the address in Eze_23:21 is explained by this, that the prophet has the actual state of affairs (the union with Egypt) before his eyes” (Hengst.).—בְּ explains זִמַּת׳ in accordance with Eze_23:3, to which the inexperienced sensuousness and carnality of the youthful people presented the inducement.
Eze_23:22-35. Oholibah’s Punishment
Eze_23:22. She is punished by those with whom she had wantoned. Comp. Eze_23:9. The following verse shows who are meant. Those from whom she would (Eze_23:17) escape out of loathing, will not allow her to escape punishment.
Eze_23:23. The sons, etc., are more definitely personified. Ewald regards the three names as the proper names of three subordinate Chaldee tribes, which are placed together from similarity of sound. As there is no proof of this, nor even of their being nomina propria, modern interpreters for the most part regard them as the titles of Chaldee dignitaries (Hengst.: “Pekod =supremacy; Shoa = the chief; Koa, of uncertain meaning”), or three classes of the people, three branches of the military force, or three ranks in it (Hitz.: “noble and prince and lord”). From the description, the assembly which is to be gathered together to execute punishment, shall be great and imposing. The Assyrians figure as part of it, and are ironically represented in the manner of Eze_23:12 (6).—אוֹתָם, therefore the שָׁלִשִׁים form Eze_23:15 are named. קְרוּאִים, Ew.: renowned, which Hitz. questions. For the purpose in hand, the word is either formed after Num_1:16; Num_16:2 : formally “appointed,” or means generally: “summoned.”
Eze_23:24. The assembly was not more conspicuous for its numbers than for the completeness of its equipments, הֹצֶן (חצן) ἁπ. λεγ. (something hard, cutting, sharp), signifying indefinitely: weapon, so that a threefold equipment is specified. [Meier: battle-axe. Hengst.: sabre (a Chaldee military word). Ewald: “with shoulder, bridle, and wheel,” as the three modes in which soldiers advance,—shouldering (with bent arm), riding, and driving.] The missing בְּ is easily understood; but it is not required, as the three expressions standing for the concretes, foot, horse, and chariots, could be the subject to וּבָאוּ.—וּבּקְהַל׳ (ו explic.), since the assembly of peoples in the manner of the Israelitish congregation (Eze_23:23) supplies the proper element for the judgment which is to be held. To indicate that they (while on Jehovah’s mission) are secured against any anxiety as to the result, three pieces of exclusively defensive armour are now mentioned, which correspond to the above threefold description,—the shield which covered the whole person, the smaller shield of the light-armed soldier, and the helmet. They received from God the right to judge according to their judgments, their ideas of judgment. Thus it was a divine judgment. They were judges in God’s stead. But with a reference, at the same time, to the fact that Judah had been in fellowship with them politically, religiously, and morally.
Eze_23:25. The jealousy of God was turned against Israel; in consequence of it the judgments of the heathen were fierce. The mutilation is to be understood in conformity with common Asiatic and Chaldee usages, but, in the present connection, of the “severing of portions of the national body-corporate” (Hitz.), or with Hengst., of the annihilation of their military strength, which is to a people what “nose and ears” are to a woman. The older interpreters understood Judah’s royal splendour, or (Kimchi) kingdom and priesthood. The remnant is defined the first time by “nose” and “ears,” so that there is pronounced, on the one hand, mutilation, and on the other, slaughter; the meaning of the expression in the second instance is defined by the carrying away of the children, so that it can only refer to the empty houses (Eze_16:41).
[Henderson: “Eze_23:25-26. Punishment by cutting off the nose and ears was inflicted for adultery, not only among the Chaldeans, but also among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. It was therefore most appropriate to represent that which adulterous Judah was to suffer, under the image of such ignominious and cruel treatment. They were also to be stripped of what lewd females set most value upon—their rich dresses and costly jewels, by which they attract the notice of their paramours, Eze_16:39.”—W. F.]
Eze_23:26. Eze_16:39; Eze_16:17. The plundering is either symbolical or actual.
Eze_23:27. The lewdness is made to cease by God as to subject and object.
Eze_23:28. Comp. Eze_16:37.—See Eze_23:17; Eze_23:22.
Eze_23:29. Hatred (Eze_23:28) and counter-hatred instead of all the former intimacy. Despoiling by the Chaldeans till she is reduced to her original condition in Egypt (Eze_16:7), from which results the discovery of her guilt and accumulated infamy (Eze_16:37).
Eze_23:31 (Eze_23:13). The figure of the cup, to represent the final issue, under the idea of drinking out.
Eze_23:32. The cup described as containing much. תִּהְיֶה is the 3d, not the 2d pers., and the subject to it, is either the cup or מִרְבָה (amplitude, wideness); but the former is preferable, with the latter as epexegetical. The cup, from its capacity, occasions the derisive laughter of the enemies,—that the person, formerly so wide-mouthed and haughty, now become so insignificant, requires to swallow so much.
Eze_23:33. What the cup contains for those who have to empty it, and hence what cup it is. Stupefaction with sorrow and woe, until they are distracted by the wasting and desolation ! (The verse begins with שִׁכָּרוֹן, and ends with שֹׁמְרוֹן.)
Eze_23:34. Not so much an intensification of the figure (Keil), as of the drunkenness, arising from the anguish of thought. In the madness of her pain she licks up the last drops of the cup. Her affliction is her thirst.—The sherds point to an earthen cup—nothing is gilded or splendid in this Nemesis-song—and presuppose a breaking in pieces, which is incidentally set forth in the madness which follows; but the word is especially intended to fit in with תְּנָרֵמִי, which expresses the idea of crushing or gnawing the sherds with the teeth, in order to suck out the last drops of moisture left in them. (Hengst. says merely: “Thou shalt break the sherds thereof, as one who, having taken a very disagreeable potion, shatters the vessel in ill-humour.”) The tearing of the breasts is placed beside the breaking of the sherds, as if it were done by means of the sherd-fragments. Or it may even have been done in frenzy by her own nails. See Eze_23:3; Eze_23:8, in reference to the breasts. “We find a historical illustration of this in the treatment they gave Gedaliah, the Chaldean governor, for which they were compelled to suffer, Jeremiah 41.” (Hengst.)
Eze_23:35. Eze_22:12.—She followed after the heathen and their gods (Eze_23:30).—Eze_16:43; Eze_16:52; Eze_16:58.
Eze_23:36-49. Oholah’s and Oholibah’s Abominations together. Eze_23:36-45. The Abominations. Eze_23:46-49. The Judgment
Eze_23:36-45. The Abominations
Eze_23:36. Eze_22:2; Eze_20:4. Since the ripeness of both of them for judgment is evident, this refrain is most appropriate.—(Eze_16:2)
Eze_23:37. Adultery with the idols, and blood-shedding, as in Eze_22:3, etc. Eze_16:38. The latter illustrated by the bloody sacrificing of children. (Eze_23:4. Eze_16:20; Eze_20:31)
Eze_23:38. Eze_20:27.—Eze_5:11. (2Ki_21:4-5; 2Ki_21:7) In the same day, makes the shocking contrast more obvious. Desecration of the sanctuary and Sabbath, as in Eze_22:8.
Eze_23:39. (Eze_16:21.) To their idols, explains “to them” at the close of Eze_23:37.—The doing of the one and the other,—this was the special affront to Jehovah. Not that children were sacrificed in the temple, but Jehovah was repaired to after Moloch, each in their several places. That which was “defilement” of the sanctuary in Eze_23:38, when the idea of offering to Moloch was included, is here called “profanation,” when both are treated separately. To profane it, however, seems to mean something more, namely: that they came to the temple to profane it also by alien rites of all sorts, as the clause: and lo … in the midst of My house, evinces (Eze_8:3 sq.). The immediately following change from the plural to the singular shows that the background is here supplied, by the period subsequent to the destruction of Israel; Judah appears before the prophet’s eye for Israel, partly on account of the temple, but also in consideration of all Israel’s relations to Judah both before and after (2Ch_15:9; 2Ch_30:11).
Eze_23:40. Climax, a non plus.—תִּשְׁלַחְנָה is not the 2d plur. (address), but is said of both, although it could also be the 3d sing. The signification of the imperf. shows the conduct as continuous; not once and again, but they were wont to do so. Ew.: “They sent repeatedly.” Unless it be merely a repetition of Eze_23:16 from a new point of view? The point of the coming from afar is not in its contrast to the near (Eze_23:5; Eze_23:12), but in the exertions which it presupposes, so that it is expressly added: to whom a messenger was sent, although this was already involved in: they sent. And, lo, they came, seems to say this, that those who were far off were at last moved, and actually came. Which may apply to others besides the Chaldeans. To this correspond the special exertions she makes to prepare herself for those whom she has addressed, as “washing;” then painting the eyes (כָּחַל, to make dark)—staining the eyelashes and eyebrows with a powder, so as to make the glance of the eye more brilliant (comp. Winer, Realw.); and finally the attire in general, 2Ki_9:30; Jer_4:30.
Eze_23:41. “Sitting” is the most natural rendering with מִטָּה, couch, cushion; with which also the rest harmonizes. The placing of the table betokens the preparation of a meal (according to the prevalent custom). Hengst.: “Eating and drinking play an important part in harlotry, either in the usual or the spiritual sense.” (ל—הָ, to be referred, not to שֻׁלְחָן, which is masc., but to מִטָּה.) Every effort was made to fill the heart’s emptiness in relation to Jehovah, by other and remote associations. For this purpose she placed even Jehovah’s holy incense (Exo_30:1 sq.) and oil beside herself on the couch, so that nothing was any longer sacred to her. Comp. Eze_16:18. [Hengst.: The bed is made fragrant by the incense and oil; whereby are meant the rich gifts by which Judah sought to purchase the favour of the heathen sovereigns, Isa_30:6; Isa_57:9 (?). Hitz.: The oil is used at table for anointing, and the incense kindled to excite sensuous feeling. Adultery through commercial intercourse is meant, so that it can be the merchant’s table, where oil could be exchanged for incense. Häv. understands it of the lascivious worship of the Babylonish Mylitta. The wanton Israel is described as preparing herself for one of the high festivals of this goddess, and as abandoning herself to strangers like the young women of Babylon; incense and oil, therefore, for the purposes of a religious ceremony.]
Eze_23:42. הָמוֹן (הָמָה), a humming; hence, from the sound of the noise it makes: a crowd. Loose, in a bad sense. In her, pointing away from the figure to the fact. [Hengst.: “Secure murmur,” arising from the self-confident intercourse of the adulterers with the adulteresses, from the festivals which were held for the sealing of political friendship. Ew.: “While a godless shouting resounded thereat.” Keil: “The loud noise became still” (!?). Häv. recalls the reckless wantonness which characterized the worship of Aphrodite in the East.] The loud, dominant voice, which is alone heard in Jerusalem, is further explained as loose, from the fact that it is the voice of the great (godless) multitude, rich and poor, high and low, with whom those brought from the wilderness (Eze_23:40, “men coming from afar”) associate themselves (מוּבָאִים, Hoph. makes a paronomasia with סוֹבָאִים). By this the coalition against Nebuchadnezzar, already frequently referred to, must be meant, not (as Hengst.) “the great anti-Assyrian coalition in the time of Hezekiah,” which can be no element in the ripeness for judgment referred to in this chapter. [According to Hengst., סוֹבָאִים is a mixed form that signifies both Sabeans and topers, loose barbarians, besides many others from all the world; and the verse should be referred to political connections with Ethiopia. (Isa_37:9; Isa_43:3; Isa_45:14; 2Ki_19:9; Isaiah 18)] That the people of the multitude, who are the same as the “men coming from afar” of Eze_23:40, represent the Assyrians (Keil) cannot be evidenced by Isa_39:3, since those mentioned there are Babylonians, therefore Chaldeans; nor can the drunkards from the wilderness (here Keil makes מִמִּדְבָּר correspond to מִמֶּרְחָק (!)) be the Chaldeans, who are afterwards called “righteous men.” The addition: “from the wilderness,” does not (as Häv.) refer to the Arabian-Syrian wilderness, which separated Babylon from Palestine, but must be taken as an antithesis to בָהּ,—from the region outside Jerusalem. Jerusalem accordingly appears as a political harlot-house, in which the counterpart to the native multitude, with their noisy watch-cry, is formed by the foreign dissolute rabble, the political sots of the coalition against Babylon. [Hitz. supposes the Arabians, Dedanites, and Sabeans, who had in their hands the commerce between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. But commercial relations are not in question, apart from the fact whether such could be depicted as harlotry. As the commercial highways did not pass through Jerusalem, they must have been induced (according to Hitz.) to go thither by special circumstances. Ew. regards סוֹבָאִים as a pathetic repetition of מוּבָאִים, since he translates: “And for men … brought from the wilderness, they laid bracelets,” etc.] The giving of the bracelets and the crown suggests how the combination against Nebuchadnezzar, referred to, promised to reunite Judah and Israel as one kingdom (therefore “crown,” in the singular), and generally, as the expressive parallel in Eze_16:11-12 shows, to restore them to their ancient glory. Such was the harlot-reward given to the adulterous women on this side. [According to Häv., the words betoken the self-adornment of the women with an eye to the crowd (?). Jerome supposes that the women had so adorned their lovers, that even men wore bracelets. Hitz. finds in it that both lands had become not only rich, but also luxurious, through commerce.]
Eze_23:43. The judgment-boding sentence of God upon such abominations. If וָאֹמַר be taken with לַבָּלָה, the translation would be. And I said to, or of, etc. The older translators connect the latter word with נִאֻפִים, and supply בְּ, in adulteries; the more modern take it in the same connection, but accusatively: In relation to, no more capable of, etc. Hitz. as a question: “Does the faded one prosecute adultery?” So also Hengst.: “Are adulteries to the faded? i.e. shall her adulteries still go on to the worn out?” The subject to יִזְנֶה (for which the Qeri reads: עַתָּה יִזְנוּ) is, according to some, the woman in question (?); as Ewald: “Now she also prosecutes her whoredoms,” i.e. Judah is as Samaria; according to others: תַזְנוּתֶיהָ, taken generally as adulterous character and conduct; and וָהִיא personifies her still surviving, indestructible lewdness, although the woman herself has become shrivelled: “Now shall her lewdness itself go a-whoring” (Hitz.). It is less forced to assume a question, which applies the resultant בָּלָה נְאֻפִים to paramour, adulteries, and adulteress, which expresses what should be the consequence of sin, even before judgment decrees and executes punishment. [Hengst.: “Shall adulteries be still committed even with her?” The Lord cannot possibly suffer this, He must at length make an end (Eze_23:45). Philippson renders וָהִיא: “when she is so (withered)!” Rashi: “Yet she continues to play the wanton.”]
Eze_23:44. וַיָּבוֹא justifies our exposition of יִזְנֶה in the previous verse. On this account, therefore, judgment is influenced to descend upon those who are ripe for it. Jerusalem, as stated, and as is expressly added, represents the whole people. Comp. also Eze_16:30.—אִשֹּׁת, a unique plural.
Eze_23:45. The judges and executioners are called righteous—comp. at Eze_23:24—because they carry out God’s judgment conformably to the judgment appropriate to such women (Isa_49:24). A moral comparison between the Chaldeans and the Jews is not intended, nor are prophets and righteous men among the people themselves to be imagined.—Comp. Eze_16:38.—Comp. at Eze_23:37.
Eze_23:46-49. The Judgment
Eze_23:46. According to Hengst. and many others, an address to the prophet: “Bring up” in the might of prophecy. Others suppose the infin, absol to stand either for the indefinite 3d pers. fut., or (Hitz.) the 1st pers. (Eze_21:31).—The company retains the character of the previous description of the Chaldeans as “righteous,” Eze_16:40. The heathen are thus solicitous about that which Israel, as a congregation, had neglected to do (Judges 20).—As in the previous verse, the masc. suffix interchanges with the fem., the reference passing over from the figurative to the actual—the men in question. Comp. besides, Eze_7:21, and at Deu_28:25.
Eze_23:47. The company—the Chaldeans—again made specially prominent. Cleave (comp. at Eze_21:24) is here used in its natural sense.—Comp. Eze_23:25.
Eze_23:48. Eze_23:27, Eze_16:41.—וְנִוַּסְּרוּ, according to Gesen., for נִתְוַסְּרוּ, if the Rabbin, punctuation be maintained; otherwise it could be read: נוֹסְרוּ, Niph. instead of a mixed Nithpael. Deterrent beacon for all peoples, as Eze_23:10; Eze_5:15.
Eze_23:49 וְנָתְנוּ, according to some: the women, namely, with their tongues; according to most: the avengers noted in Eze_23:45,—in very deed. [Hitz.: “the heavenly powers.”] In consequence of this recompense, those who are thus judged bear in their punishment the sins of the idols, those occasioned by them, committed with, i.e. by means of them. (Eze_23:7; Eze_23:30; Eze_23:37)—Eze_16:58.
[“The closing part of the description represents the two women, and especially the one that personated the people of Judah, as persevering to the last in their wicked and profligate courses. Like persons in the final stages of abandonment, they went on rioting in the ways of evil, unchecked by all the troubles and humiliations they had experienced in the past; and now, therefore, as utterly reprobate and hardened and hopeless, they must be adjudged to the doom appointed against such incorrigible and shameless offenders. So the doleful story ends. The prophet looks only, from first to last, to the course of crime and its deserved recompense; and he allows the curtain to drop without one gleam of hope as to the future. He sees that the hammer of the law in its strongest form is needed to break the hard and stony heart of the people. So urgent was the call for a work of conviction, and so great the danger of that not being effectually wrought, that he would not drop a word which might lighten the impression of guilt upon their minds, or afford the least excuse for delay. His message was, Now or never. Judged by the sense of right and wrong current among men, your conduct toward God calls for judgment without mercy. And if there be not immediately awakened the contrition of sincere repentance, you have nothing to expect but the most unsparing visitations of wrath.”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, p. 257.—W. F.]
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
(See Doct. Reflec. on Ezekiel 20 and Ezekiel 16)
1. As contrast is an inherent element in all human development, so through the people κατ̓ ἐξοχην, among the peoples, a dualism immediately accompanies the evolution of the triad of the patriarchs to the dodecad, in its relativeness (of the 3 to the 4) to the world as a permeating influence. The two foci of the ellipse illustrate for us the history of the chosen people in their orbit. Even in Genesis 49 (comp. therewith Deuteronomy 33), Joseph, as against Judah, is prominent compared with the others. If the first position in the camp was allotted to Judah, and a signally large extent of territory in Canaan bestowed on it, to Joseph (and Ephraim took precedence of Manasseh, Genesis 48) belonged the distinction of furnishing the nation with Joshua, the leader of the host and conqueror of Canaan, as well as of long retaining the tabernacle in its midst. (For the independence of Ephraim in the time of the judges, comp. Jdg_8:12; Psalms 78) The jealousy which obtained between the two appears, after Saul’s death, in the kingdom of Ishbosheth. Only the centralizing personality of a David was capable of unifying the existing dualism. Yet the fire of discord, which continued to smoulder beneath outward harmony, nourished the rebellion of Absalom and the revolt of Sheba. Under Solomon, it is true, the glory of the nation silenced for the time the variance of the two tribes; but Solomon’s polytheistic aberration from the monotheistic path introduced an additional element of division. When sin, including that of Rehoboam and the seceding tribes, had in this way accomplished the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, this result of sin was at the same time a judgment of God; for which, however, the foundation was laid in that original dualism between Judah and Joseph-Ephraim, and the way paved, in the course of history. The form of the representation in our chapter rests on this view of the subject.
2. One may regard Solomon’s polytheistic aberrations (e.g. 1Ki_11:5) as a refined pantheism, or a more universal, more cosmical Jehovism; yet his marriage with Pharaoh’s daughter, at the very beginning of his reign, must have exerted some influence on the religious attitude of the kingdom of the ten tribes. And how could the calf-worship of Jeroboam have been introduced without meeting universal opposition, unless previously, during Solomon’s reign, religion and politics had taken a decided outward bias? Note also Solomon’s commercial relations with different countries, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and especially his alliance with the Phœnicians. Thus a toleration sprang up under the influence of trade and intercourse, which necessarily became a religious toleration, and which was still farther defined by politics as a doctrine. The example of the king acted on the people, and it is not surprising that Solomon’s connections with the world, and his heathen culture, found their echo in the craving of Ephraim and her associates for a heathen-worldly, revolutionary, anti-theocratic government. Solomon is herein to be compared to the church-father Augustine, to whom Roman Catholicism links itself, as the Reformation also falls back on him; so with Solomon are connected the Song of Songs and the form of the apostasy of the ten tribes.
3. The Egyptian bias of Solomon, which gained national expression in the worship of the calves, was seconded by the policy of Jeroboam, who, imitating the example of Aaron at Sinai, transplanted to Israelitish soil the worship which he ad seen at Memphis and Heliopolis, 1Ki_12:26 sq., 2. The Egyptian animal symbolism, which was thereby applied to Jehovah, was a new growth from old roots. Comp. Eze_23:8 in our chapter. This corrupt worship of Jehovah moved on the same line as ordinary idolatry (1Ki_14:9), so that the one was as closely related to the other, as the second commandment to the first. Hengst. remarks very justly: “By the introduction of the worship of images, a breach was made for heathenism, through which it rushed irresistibly.”
4. As Egypt has a very ancient, original significance for the sacred history, so on the Egyptian monuments, even at a very early time, the Assyrians, under the name “Shari,” are represented as in conflict with the Egyptians. The Assyrians, who first broke into the kingdom of Israel under Menahem, are, no doubt, to be considered in historical connection with that ancient kingdom; but their military valour, which they made Israel feel, and which excited its longing for association, appears, however, to point to a recent fresh revival of the ancient Assyrian glory. Pul, to whom Menahem was tributary, was succeeded by Tiglath-Pileser, who led into captivity a portion of the inhabitants of the kingdom of the ten tribes; to him Shalmaneser succeeded, who conducted a still more comprehensive deportation to Assyria, which became complete under his second successor, Esar-haddon, so that the Israelitish kingdom was then made a full end of.
5. The subversion of the kingdom of Israel under its last king, Hosea, whom Shalmaneser had made tributary, took place, besides, on account of the hankering of the people after alliances with Egypt, which one might call the hereditary sin of the whole people (Eze_23:8); the attempted combination with Egypt against Assyria had provoked a new expedition by Shalmaneser. The destruction of Israel was for Judah a “Remember whence thou art fallen,” a memento mori (Eze_23:10). But even before this, Ahaz, the Ahab of the kings of Judah, as he had offered one of his sons to Moloch, so also he regarded the might of the Assyrians as better than the help of Jehovah. Comp. the passage of Isaiah relative to him, and Eze_23:11 of our chapter. “Thy servant and thy son am I,” he had said to Tiglath-Pileser; “come up and deliver me.”
6. The Babylonian-Chaldean power, which, like Judah, was dependent on Assyria, affected the imagination of Jerusalem so seductively in the time of the pious son of the godless Ahaz, that even Hezekiah succumbed to the temptation. The expectations entertained from Egypt had faded away, and the Lord had overwhelmed the Assyrians by His hand before Jerusalem (2Ki_18:19); yet Hezekiah’s imagination lingers upon his treasures, and upon the embassy which the then vice-king of Babylon had sent to him (perhaps also, as Bunsen conjectures, Eze_23:14, frescoes of Babylonish heroes and warriors). The preponderating world-power seems to incline from Nineveh to Babylon. Perhaps the destruction of the Assyrian army under Sennacherib incited the Babylonians to revolt from Assyria. Niebuhr (The History of Assyria and Babylon) says concerning the relation of Babylon to Assyria: “Assyria was by no means the foremost and most ancient people. The inhabitants of Shinar, the Babylonians, were so. The Ninevites had elevated themselves above them through bravery and good fortune, and the older race, to whom belonged the religious metropolis, the most fertile soil, the origin of history, was compelled to submit to the younger. Their constantly repeated attempts at revolt showed how bitterly the Babylonians felt this disgrace,” etc. Ezekiel confirms what Isaiah had formerly predicted to Hezekiah, to cool his carnal expectations from Babylon. The Chaldeans, after destroying Nineveh in combination with the Medes, “stepped into the place of the Assyrians for Judah as well as generally, and this also on the same arena” (Hitz.). Egypt maintained the same attitude toward Assyria as toward Babylon, and the kingdom of Judah, like that of Israel, was subverted through its political harlotries (Eze_23:19 sq., 27) with Egypt.
7. Through this fatal significance of Egypt for the whole people, that motive of the Decalogue, “Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” acquires a striking political prominence.
8. When the people which had come out of Chaldea in Abraham, in the end returns to Chaldea, the circle of their natural history is completed. The beginning is also the end. “Moreover it is noteworthy,” says Ziegler, “that as the dispersion of mankind into all lands proceeded from Babylon, now the Jewish people, or at least the kingdom of Judah, is carried away to Babylon.” “The whole history, from the exodus till now, was a constant provoking of God; therefore it must at last drink a cup full of indignation.”
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze_23:1 sq. “We are called Christians, children of the one heavenly Father; but do we also bear ourselves worthily of the name?” (Stck.)—The two women, Oholah and Oholibah, in their resemblance and difference.—“Oh that all young women from their youth up would deport themselves modestly and chastely! What honour and peace of conscience it would procure for them in old age ! Job_27:6” (Stck.).—“One can fall from the greatest light into the greatest darkness and folly, if one be faithless to the grace which has been received” (Tüb. Bib.).—“That is spiritual adultery, when souls fall away from the Creator to the creature” (Luther).—“Since body and soul are the temple of the Holy Ghost, He wills that we should preserve both pure and holy, and forbids all unchaste deeds, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, and whatever may excite one thereto” (Heid. Cat., quest. 109).—The youth of a people in its charm and perils.—Harlotry, in all its forms, stains before God, burdens the conscience, and also brings disgrace before men.—The allurements of Egypt for Israel.—The coarseness of apostasy from God amid all the refinement of so-called culture.—For the sake of truth, God’s word speaks of fleshly things as they are, and as men practise them; discloses hidden things, and shows them in their naked deformity.—Plain speaking is not attractive; flowery ambiguities are of the devil.—True religion leads to fellowship with God.—“A Christian congregation is a spiritual mother, which should honour God through its sons and daughters” (Cr.).
Eze_23:5 sq. “Under the guise of piety they committed the worst abominations. As adulteresses foist the children which are the fruit of adultery upon their own husbands, so would Jeroboam also serve the true God under the calf-image” (Stck.).—“To yield oneself unreservedly to God is not to throw oneself away” (Hengst.).—“To expect help from men, to rely on them, to depart from God for the sake of profit, honours, etc., is adultery or harlotry in religion” (Stck.).—“To fear God is the true politics.”
Eze_23:6. “He who forsakes God is easily carried away by semblances, dress, splendour, honours, and such like” (Stck.).—“How highly the earthly and carnal mind values the friendship and favour of the rich and great!” (B. B.)
Eze_23:7. He who holds fellowship with the world must also go after its idols.—The friendship of the world is enmity with God, is idolatry.
Eze_23:8. “Behold the power of youthful habit! What has been instilled into one in the years of youth usually remains with one all life through” (Heim.-Hoff.).—[M. Henry: “This corrupt disposition in the children of Israel, when they were first formed into a people, is an emblem of that original corruption which is born with us and is woven into our constitution, a strong bias towards the world and the flesh. This sinful tendency of theirs was bred in the bone with them, and would never out of the flesh, though Egypt had been a house of bondage to them. Thus the corrupt affections and inclinations which we brought into the world with us we have not lost, nor got clear of, but still retain them, though the iniquity we were born in was the source of all the calamities which human life is liable to.”—W. F.]
Eze_23:9 sq. “God excites those against us for punishment, to please whom we have sinned” (O.).—Lovers and scourges.—Honour makes a name for one, so also does dishonour.
Eze_23:11 sq. Judah must therefore have been more corrupt, since she did not take warning by Israel’s punishment, and since she misused, or at least neglected to use, so much greater grace, which would have enabled her to resist.—“Those who go the same way also reach the same place ” (Stck.).—The dangerous power of the imagination.—“Worldly glory seduces the worldly mind” (Stck.).
Eze_23:14 sq. Seeing and longing.—“So men now-a-days are chiefly enamoured of that which is nothing; for what is all our honour, delight, external prosperity, nobility, dignity, and glory, our power and strength, but a picture in which there is no reality!” (B. B.)
Eze_23:16. “So it comes to pass, unless one makes a covenant with his eyes not to look on worldly glory, and that which is alien to him, that he is presently absorbed in it, and turns away from God” (B. B.).
Eze_23:17. One must not paint the devil on the wall.—Love becomes passion, and passion becomes satiety, yea, hatred.—“Estrangement is the usual end of impure love, of the selfishness concealed under it” (Hengst.).—“Friendship and fellowship in sin are of short duration” (St.).
Eze_23:18. He who gives himself up to false friends often loses thereby the true Friend, the Lord.
Eze_23:19 sq. It is sad when one goes back to his earlier sins.—“When one lives bestially, he cannot be pictured otherwise than as a beast” (B. B.).
Eze_23:21. “The falling back into the old sin is like a visit which is made to her whom one should hate and avoid” (Hengst.).
Eze_23:22 sq. The wicked are punished through the wicked.—At a death-bed there is often a great gathering from bygone days. Our sins, and those with whom we have sinned, surround us on every side.
Eze_23:25 sq. “The ungodly have no power over God’s people, unless they are given up to them by God” (St.).—Dreadful judgments presuppose dreadful sins.—“We should not wait till God drags us away from sin with violence” (O.).
Eze_23:27. “What God’s goodness and patience could not accomplish, that the wickedness and tyranny of men shall bring about” (Stck.).—Every one receives at last his due.
Eze_23:28 sq. He who surrenders himself to sin shall be surrendered to punishment. Hate spares not.—What love covers, hate discloses. The unclothing through punishment shows well what the clothing through grace is.
Eze_23:30 sq. Yea, he who expects to cleanse himself otherwise than through the blood and Spirit of Christ, pollutes himself still more by idolatry.—“Like sins, like punishments” (Tüb. Bib.).—“Him whom thou hast followed in life, thou shalt also follow in death” (Stck.).—“He who accepts not the cup of salvation, must drink the cup of wrath” (St.).
Eze_23:34. It must be drunk out. As we have sided with lust, God sides with punishment.—The dreadful nail-test.—“In righteous judgment God causes sinners to be punished in the members in which they have sinned” (St.).
Eze_23:35. “To remember God is the summary of all godliness, as, on the contrary, to forget God is a summary of all ungodliness; therefore God comprehends all in this one, at the close of the catalogue of sins” (Jablonsky).—“The sieve of man’s memory retains only husks—that which is useless” (St.).—[“Men need no more to sink them than the weight of their own sins; and those who will not part with their lewdness and whoredoms must bear them.”—M. Henry.]
Eze_23:36 sq. Comp. at Eze_20:4.—God is not silent with His sentence, and even the judgments of God hasten like His grace. That which seems to be delay is long-suffering; but during it, sin ripens all the more quickly for judgment.
Eze_23:37. As they literally shed blood, so also in the services of idolatry, fleshly impurity found place.—Judah and Israel as Medea.—He who serves Venus and Bacchus offers to them also his children.
Eze_23:38 sq. How largely profanation of the Sabbath is the fashion now-a-days also!—“To run from the harlot-house to God’s house, from murder to the place of prayer, from sin to singing, is not pleasing to God” (Stck.).—“Self-invented, hypocritical worship of God dishonours Him, more than love of the world” (Richt.).—From sin to sin,—thus ruin is reached; that was the way of Oholah and Oholibah.—“What holy thing is there which the sinner does not profane!” (Stck.)—“They considered neither place nor time” (Jerome).
Eze_23:40 sq. “The society of the ungodly should not be wished, still less sought for” (Stck.).—“Those who are separate from God go in quest of men” (Stck.).—“The sinner wishes in all things to be pleasing to men; why not to God?” (Stck.)—Washing themselves for men, remaining unclean before God: thus hypocrites act.—How much of the activity of social organizations is here literally described !
Eze_23:43 sq. “The longer a man continues in sin, the more shameless he becomes” (St.).
Eze_23:45. God’s righteousness makes even of the Chaldeans “righteous men.”
Eze_23:46. “When the judgment-hour strikes, judge and executioner are found so ready that they only require to be called” (Stck.).
Eze_23:48 sq. “Even still, although men will not depart from sin, they must depart from life” (L.).—Bad examples, through God’s overruling, may serve a good end.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain After another pause, the prophet enters on another elaborate…
After another pause, the prophet enters on another elaborate parallel, after the pattern of Ezekiel 16., but with a marked variation. There we have the history of one harlot, s.c. of Israel in its collective unity. There we have two sister harlots, the daughters of one mother, and they are Samaria and Jerusalem, as both belonging to Israel. For the purpose of the parable, they are represented as having had a separate existence, even during the period of the sojourn in Egypt. This was probably historically true, the line of cleavage caused by the claims of Ephraim to supremacy appearing again and again long before the revolt of the tea tribes under Jeroboam. (Jud_1:8:1 12:1; 2Sa_19:43) Both were alike tainted with idolatry, as in the history of the golden calf, when they came out of Egypt. (Eze_16:7 Eze_20:7, Eze_20:8) Yet even then Jehovah, like Hoses in the personal history which was to be to him as a parable of that of Israel, had compassion on them, harlots though they were. (Hos_1:2) They became his, and "bare sons and daughters.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
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Vers. 1-49. Inexcusable infidelity.
What it must have cost the patriotic prophet to write this chapter passes our power to imagine. The Jew was naturally and pardonably proud of his country and of its history. No thoughtful Jew could, indeed, be insensible to imperfections and flaws in the national character, to stains upon the nation"s annals. But in this passage of his prophecies the dark shading is relieved by no gleam of light. Israel is depicted as bad from the days of Egyptian bondage down to the days of Babylonian captivity. The figurative language employed is such as could only be justified by facts most discreditable to the character of the Hebrew people. That there were exceptions to the rule, Ezekiel was well aware. But the rule was that the people were, at every stage of their existence, prone to depart from the God to whom they owed every privilege, every blessing; that they resisted no temptation to idolatry; that they were incessantly provoking the anger and just condemnation of the theocratic king. To complete the horror of the representation, the northern and southern tribes are alike included in the indictment and in the guilt. Penetrating beneath the faithful but very repulsive, yet necessary and just, similitude employed by the prophet, to the moral and spiritual lessons thus conveyed, we may trace the story of the inexcusable infidelity of Judah and Israel as related without exaggeration by one of their own race.
I DISLOYALTY TO JEHOVAH WAS COMMON TO JUDAH AND ISRAEL. We have but to turn to the Books of Kings and of Chronicles to see that in this respect the northern and southern kingdoms were alike, if not equally, guilty. In the record we find, notwithstanding certain remarkable exceptions in the case of Judah, that kings and people continually forsook their Divine Deliverer and rightful King, and addicted themselves to the degrading idolatries practiced by the surrounding nations.
II DISLOYALTY TO JEHOVAH COMMENCED IN THE NATION"S YOUTH, DURING THE EGYPTIAN BONDAGE. The record of the wanderings in the wilderness is a sufficient proof of this. The worship of the golden calf is a well-known instance of the readiness of Israel to fall back into the Egyptian idolatry, which, it might have been supposed, they had forever left behind them when they crossed the Red Sea, and witnessed the powerlessness of the gods of Egypt to save Pharaoh and his mighty but misguided host.
III DISLOYALTY TO JEHOVAH WAS REPEATED WHEN ISRAEL WAS BROUGHT INTO CONTACT WITH THE ASSYRIANS. In the frank and painful language of the prophet is depicted the fatal readiness of the Israelites to yield themselves to the seductions of the Oriental idolatries, and even to go out of their way to court the corruption which they should have eschewed. Compared with the pure and stately rites instituted by Divine command, and celebrated in the temple courts of Jerusalem, the worship of the Assyrians was inexpressibly degrading. The length of time during which the Hebrews had enjoyed peculiar privileges increased their culpability in transferring, at this period, the allegiance they owed to the true God from him to the contemptible idols of Assyria.
IV DISLOYALTY TO JEHOVAH ALIENATED HIM FROM THE PEOPLE WHOM HE HAD CHOSEN. As the soul of a husband is estranged from the adulteress who has deserted him, so the Lord declared his soul to be alienated from her whom he had signalized by his favor. Israel had forsaken the one incomparably holy and gracious God, and had attached herself to the lords many and the gods many of the surrounding peoples; and such conduct could not but raise a barrier between Jehovah and the nation that had shown such insensibility to his favor, and such readiness to yield to the advances of his enemies.
V DISLOYALTY TO JEHOVAH WAS PUNISHED THROUGH THE AGENCY OF THE VERY PEOPLE THROUGH WHOSE INSTIGATION IT WAS COMMITTED. How remarkable the threat, "I will raise up thy lovers against thee!" By Assyria Judah and Israel were corrupted; and by Assyria they were chastened. They alienated the Lord, and yet found no help from the false gods for whose sake they had deserted him.
VI PARTNERS IN DISLOYALTY WERE PARTNERS IN PUNISHMENT. Alike they sinned, and alike they suffered. They incurred the same fate, and from the same sword. Samaria and Judah alike endured the sorrows of the Eastern captivity and the shock of the Eastern armies.
VII DISLOYALTY TO JEHOVAH WAS SEVERELY DEALT WITH. In various figures, each with its own dark shade of significance, the prophet portrays the impending fate of the guilty, apostate nations. They were mutilated; they were compelled to drink the cup of astonishment and desolation; they were consumed with fire and slain with the sword.
VIII THE AIM OF THUS PUNISHING DISLOYALTY WAS TO BRING IT TO AN END. "Thus will I cause lewdness i.e. idolatry to cease out of the land, that all women i.e. nations may be taught not to do after your lewdness.
IX JEHOVAH THUS VINDICATES HIS OWN CLAIM TO THE LOYALTY OF ALL MEN, AVENGING HIMSELF UPON THOSE WHO WRONG HIM. "Ye shall know that I am the Lord God." His honor he will not give unto another. To our reverence and our obedience, to our devotion and service, our Creator and Redeemer has an indisputable and indefeasible claim; and this he will assuredly assert and maintain. He will be honored, both by the condemnation of the unfaithful and rebellious, and by the salvation of the penitent, the submissive, and the loyal. T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Samaria is Aholah and Jerusalem Aholibah.
Eze_23:1-49
Samaria is Aholah and Jerusalem Aholibah.
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Aholah and Aholibah
I. Sin is self-polluting and therefore self-destroying. Constant contact with sin will pollute the conscience, and render it powerless to fulfil the end for which it has been implanted in the man. It will destroy the understanding in the sense that it renders it unable to see and know the things of God (Eph_4:18-19). Sin persisted in defiles the will, and makes it like a palsied limb which has no power to perform its functions. It pollutes the affections by bringing them in contact with debasing objects, until their power to love goodness is gone. And so the man, having destroyed all the forces of his being, stands before the universe with nothing left but his identity, which he cannot destroy.
II. Those who depart from God shall be punished by the world for changing their master. (Verse 22.) The deserter who comes over from the enemys camp is often regarded with suspicion and sometimes meets with contempt where he expected to find reward. His zeal in the service of his new master is looked upon as simply an effort to ingratiate himself for his own ends and he very often finds punishment instead of welcome. So the world to which the apostate from God returns becomes the instrument of his punishment. He must become a greater sinner than those to whom he joins himself in order to convince his new master that he is entirely with him.
III. When sinners can serve no other purpose in the world, they may render a service by being a warning to others. We have shadows here of the truth that Hell has its use in the universe, and that men beyond reach of recovery may be of this use. Convicts have their sphere of usefulness, though it is of such a nature as to send a shudder through the mind of other men. The chained eagle is a warning to those whose wings are free. (A London Minister.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Ezekiel 23
OHOLA AND OHOLIBAH
Ezekiel 23
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THE allegory of chapter 23 adds hardly any new thought to those which have already, been expounded in connection with chapter 16 and chapter 20. The ideas which enter into it are all such as we are now familiar with. They are: the idolatry of Israel, learned in Egypt and persisted in to the end of her history; her fondness for alliances with the great Oriental empires, which was the occasion of new developments of idolatry; the corruption of religion by the introduction of human sacrifice into the service of Jehovah; and, finally, the destruction of Israel by the hands of the nations whose friendship she had so eagerly courted. The figure under which these facts are presented is the same as in chapter 16, and many of the details of the earlier prophecy are reproduced here with little variation. But along with these resemblances we find certain characteristic features in this chapter which require attention, and perhaps some explanation.
In its treatment of the history this passage is distinguished from the other two by the recognition of the separate existence of the northern and southern kingdoms. In the previous retrospects Israel has either been treated as a unit (as in chapter 20), or attention has been wholly concentrated on the fortunes of Judah, Samaria being regarded as on a level with a purely heathen city like Sodom (chapter 16). Ezekiel may have felt that he has not yet done justice to the truth that the history of Israel ran in two parallel lines, and that the full significance of Gods dealings with the nation can only be understood when the fate of Samaria is placed alongside of that of Jerusalem. He did not forget that he was sent as a prophet to the "whole house of Israel," and indeed all the great pre-exilic prophets realised that their message concerned "the whole family which Jehovah had brought up out of Egypt". {Amo_3:1} Besides this the chapter affords in many ways an interesting illustration of the workings of the prophets mind in the effort to realise vividly the nature of his peoples sin and the meaning of its fate. In this respect it is perhaps the most finished and comprehensive product of his imagination, although it may not reveal the depth of religious insight exhibited in the sixteenth chapter.
The main idea of the allegory is no doubt borrowed from a prophecy of Jeremiah belonging to the earlier part of his ministry. {Jer_3:6-13}
The fall of Samaria was even then a somewhat distant memory, but the use which Jeremiah makes of it seems to show that the lesson of it had not altogether ceased to impress the mind of the southern kingdom. In the third chapter he reproaches Judah the "treacherous" for not having taken warning from the fate of her sister the "apostate" Israel, who has long since received the reward of her infidelities. The same lesson is implied in the representation of Ezekiel (Eze_23:2); but, as is usual with our prophet, the simple image suggested by Jeremiah is drawn out in an elaborate allegory, into which as many details are crowded as it will bear. In place of the epithets by which Jeremiah characterises the moral condition of Israel and Judah, Ezekiel coins two new and somewhat obscure names - Ohola for Samaria, and Oholibah for Jerusalem.
These women are children of one mother, and afterwards become wives of one husband-Jehovah. This need occasion no surprise in an allegorical representation, although it is contrary to a law which Ezekiel doubtless knew. {Lev_18:18} Nor is it strange, considering the freedom with which he handles the facts of history, that the division between Israel and Judah is carried back to the time of the oppression in Egypt. We have indeed no certainty that this view is not historical. The cleavage between the north and the south did not originate with the revolt of Jeroboam. That great schism only brought out elements of antagonism which were latent in the relations of the tribe of Judah to the northern tribes. Of this there are many indications in the earlier history, and for what we know the separation might have existed among the Hebrews in Goshen. Still, it is not probable that Ezekiel was thinking of any such thing. He is bound by the limits of his allegory; and there was no other way by which he could combine the presentation of the two essential elements of his conception-that Samaria and Jerusalem were branches of the one people of Jehovah, and that the idolatry which marked their history had been learned in the youth of the nation in the land of Egypt.
That neither Israel nor Judah ever, shook off the spell of their adulterous connection with Egypt, but returned to it again and again down to the close of their history, is certainly one point which the prophet means to impress on the minds of his readers (Eze_23:8, Eze_23:19, Eze_23:27). With this exception the earlier part of the chapter (to Eze_23:35) deals exclusively with the later developments of idolatry from the eighth century and onwards. And one of the most remarkable things in it is the description of the manner in which first Israel and then Judah was entangled in political relations with the Oriental empires. There seems to be a vein of sarcasm in the sketch of the gallant Assyrian officers who turned the heads of the giddy and frivolous sisters and seduced them from their allegiance to Jehovah: "Ohola doted on her lovers, on the Assyrian warriors clad in purple, governors and satraps, charming youths all of them, horsemen riding on horses; and she lavished on them her fornications, the elite of the sons of Asshur all of them, and with all the idols of all on whom she doted she defiled herself" (Eze_23:6-7). The first intimate contact of North Israel with Assyria was in the reign of Menahem, {2Ki_15:19} and the explanation of it given in these words of Ezekiel must be historically true. It was the magnificent equipment of the Assyrian armies, the imposing display of military power which their appearance suggested, that impressed the politicians of Samaria with a sense of the value of their alliance. The passage therefore throws light on what Ezekiel and the prophets generally mean by the figure of "whoredom." What he chiefly deplores is the introduction of Assyrian idolatry, which was the inevitable sequel to a political union. But that was a secondary consideration in the intention of those who were responsible for the alliance. The real motive of their policy was undoubtedly the desire of one party in the state to secure the powerful aid of the king of Assyria against the rival party. None the less it was an act of infidelity and rebellion against Jehovah.
Still more striking is the account of the first approaches of the southern kingdom to Babylon. After Samaria had been destroyed by the lovers whom she had gathered to her side, Jerusalem still kept up the illicit connection with the Assyrian empire. After Assyria had vanished from the stage of history, she eagerly sought an opportunity to enter into friendly relations with the new Babylonian empire. She did not even wait till she had made their acquaintance, but "when she saw men portrayed on the wall, pictures of Chaldaeans portrayed in vermilion, girt with waist-cloths on their loins, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them champions to look upon, the likeness of the sons of Babel whose native land is Chaldaea-then she doted upon them when she saw them with her eyes, and sent messengers to them to Chaldaea" (Eze_23:14-16). The brilliant pictures referred to are those with which Ezekiel must have been familiar on the walls of the temples and palaces of Babylon. The representation, however, cannot be understood literally, since the Jews could have had no opportunity of even seeing the Babylonian pictures "on the wall" until they had sent ambassadors there.
The meaning of the prophet is clear. The mere report of the greatness of Babylon was sufficient to excite the passions of Oholibah, and she began with blind infatuation to court the advances of the distant strangers who were to be her ruin. The exact historic reference, however, is uncertain. It cannot be to the compact between Merodach-baladan and Hezekiah, since at that time the initiative seems to have been taken by the rebel prince, whose sovereignty over Babylon proved to be of short duration. It may rather be some transaction about the time of the battle of Carchemish (604) that Ezekiel is thinking of; but we have not as yet sufficient knowledge of the circumstances to clear up the allusion.
Before the end came the soul of Jerusalem was alienated from her latest lovers-another touch of fidelity to the historical situation. But it was now too late. The soul of Jehovah is alienated from Oholibah (Eze_23:17-18), and she is already handed over to the fate which had overtaken her less guilty sister Ohola. The principal agents of her punishment are the Babylonians and all the Chaldaeans; but under their banner marches a host of other nations-Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and, somewhat strangely, the sons of Asshur. In the pomp and circumstance of war which had formerly fascinated her imagination, they shall come against her, and after their cruel manner execute upon her the judgment meted out to adulterous women: "Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister, and I will put her cup into thy hand. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The cup of thy sister shalt thou drink, -deep and wide, and of large content, -filled with drunkenness and anguish-the cup of horror and desolation, the cup of thy sister Samaria. And thou shalt drink it and drain it out, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord Jehovah" (Eze_23:31-34).
Up to this point the allegory has closely followed the actual history of the two kingdoms. The remainder of the chapter (Eze_23:36-49) forms a pendant to the principal picture, and works out the central theme from a different point of view. Here Samaria and Jerusalem are regarded as still existent, and judgment is pronounced on both as if it were still future. This is thoroughly in keeping with Ezekiels ideal delineations. The limitations of space and time are alike transcended. The image, once clearly conceived, fixes itself in the writers mind, and must be allowed to exhaust its meaning before it is finally dismissed. The distinctions of far and near, of past and present and future, are apt to disappear in the intensity of his reverie. It is so here. The figures of Ohola and Oholibah are so real to the prophet that they are summoned once more to the tribunal to hear the recital of their "abominations" and receive the sentence which has in fact been already partly executed. Whether he is thinking at all of the ten tribes then in exile and awaiting further punishment it would be difficult to say. We see, however, that the picture is enriched with many features for which there was no room in the more historic form of the allegory, and perhaps the desire for completeness was the chief motive for thus amplifying the figure. The description of the conduct of the two harlots (Eze_23:40-44) is exceedingly graphic, and is no doubt a piece of realism drawn from life. Otherwise the section contains nothing that calls for elucidation. The ideas are those which we have already met with in other connections, and even the setting in which they are placed presents no element of novelty.
Thus with words of judgment, and without a ray of hope to lighten the darkness of the picture, the prophet closes this last survey of his peoples history.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain THE SINS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH REPRESENTED UNDER THE…
THE SINS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH REPRESENTED UNDER THE FIGURE OF TWO HARLOTS. (Chap 23)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Samaria and Jerusalem are the capitals and representations of the two kingdoms Israel and Judah. These two cities are presented under the allegory of two harlots who are sisters, and who have practiced whoredom from the days of Egypt onwards. (Eze_23:2-4.)
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Eze_23:1-4. The two harlot sisters are briefly described.
Eze_23:2. “Two women, the daughters of one mother.” “These two cities had a common mother—the Hebrew people; regard being had to what they had become in the possession of that people.”—(Henderson).
Eze_23:3. “They committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth.” The prophet regards this two-fold divisions of the people as dating long before the time of the separation of the kingdoms. The two kingdoms existed virtually in Egypt in the tribes of Ephraim and Judah. The origin of their idolatry is to be traced to Egypt, where all the tribes alike fell into that sin. It was in the very “youth” of the people that they had become alienated from God. “There they bruised the teats of their virginity.” “At that time Israel was still unmarried. The marriage with Jehovah took place when the covenant was made at Sinai. But she was even at that time betrothed. This is proved by what God had done to the Patriarchs, and by the circumcision to which they had submitted; and hence their unchaste conduct fell under the judgment of (Deu_22:23, &c.). Their business was to prepare themselves as a pure virgin for marriage.”—(Hengstenberg). “On account of the legitimate relation in which the nation stood to God from its very origin, namely, of a marriage covenant, the political and religious departure of both kingdoms from the principles laid down in the law, appears as wantonness (Eze_16:15). Egypt was the means of exciting the first carnal impulses of the youthful people to a heathenish mode of feeling and action, whereby they were robbed of their virgin purity.”—(Lange.)
Eze_23:4. “Aholah the elder.” This name signifies, Her own tent. Thus it is implied that the worship of the Samaritans was of their own invention and was never appointed of Jehovah. The northern kingdom had erected an altar of her own will (1Ki_12:31-33). “Aholibah her sister.” The meaning of this name is, My tent is in her. Jehovah had ordained the temple-worship at Jerusalem. He had chosen Zion for an habitation to set His name there (Psa_132:13-14). “And they were Mine.” “Previous to the apostasy under Jeroboam, Samaria, equally with Jerusalem, worshipped the true God. Their inhabitants were sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. He never renounced His right to the Israelites as subjects of theocracy, but sent prophets to disclose His will to them and warn them against idolatry. The northern kingdom was the sphere of the special labours of Elijah and Elisha.”—(Henderson).
HOMILETICS
SPIRITUAL ADULTERY
I. It consists in forsaking the Creator to love and serve the creature. The children of Israel committed whoredoms in Egypt by worshipping its idols. They forsook their God, who had called them to love and serve Himself, and to forsake all other. Idolatry is the perversion of a true religious instinct, as lust is the perversion of a passion which should inspire the devotion of love and self sacrifice. The worship and service of the creature is unauthorised. And it also debases.
II. The sin of it is manifest from the nature of the relations in which we stand to God. “There were two women, the daughters of one mother.” God was a Father unto Israel. The people were His own peculiar heritage. By their idolatry they were bringing dishonour upon the name of God. Duties arise out of our relation to God which cannot be set aside without bringing upon ourselves the stain and the consequences of transgression.
III. In the youth of a people they are especially exposed to this sin “They committed whoredoms in their youth.” The allurements of Egyptian idolatry soon corrupted Israel in the days of her youth. Their feelings were fresh, their experience small, and the pleasures of Egypt were novel and strange. Young societies are greatly exposed to the dangerous fascinations of those by whom they are surrounded. So the early Christian Church was soon corrupted by false philosophy; and in a later age, by the seductions of wordly power and grandeur. Also, in the youth of human life, the lusts and pleasures of the world are most powerful to seduce.
IV. This sin may be prevalent amidst all the refinements of civilization. The Israelites found in Egypt an advanced civilization. Yet amidst all this were to be found the coarsest and most debasing forms of idolatry. How much grovelling and degrading superstition is still to be found in the midst of the highest civilization!
V. This sin should be denounced in plain terms. The fleshly sins, which are here used as a figure of spiritual sins, are described in plain language. They are set forth in all their naked deformity; spoken of exactly as they are. Those who counsel such sins would like (if they hear of them at all) to have their loathsomeness hidden under the veil of elegant speech. “Plain speaking is not attractive; flowery ambiguities are of the devil”—(Lange). Those who blame the prophet for his great plainness of speech should rather concern themselves with the thought of the baseness of those sins which demanded so faithful a narration and exposure. The whole of this passage teaches us that true religion leads to fellowship with God, His love and service. And all love and service inconsistent with this belongs to a class of sins which can best be described under the images of the worst and most degrading of fleshly lusts.
1. The Lord takes notice where and when those who are in relation to Him do sin. “In Egypt, and in their youth.” They sinned amidst the grand and bitter enemies of God, among Egyptians, and then when they were growing up to be a people. They should have considered what enemies the Egyptians were to their God and His worship, how odious their ways and worship were to Him. They should have walked circumspectly, so that they might have kept His name from being polluted; and likewise they, being in their youth under bondages, should have minded God’s kindnesses in preserving them, and making them to prosper. When God is beginning to show kindness to a people in misery, and raising them up to some height and greatness, and then for them to turn aside to lewdness, to superstitions, idolatrous, and heathenish practices, this God observes in a special manner, and it provokes Him greatly (Psa_106:7). When states, cities, families, degenerate in their youth, it sorely displeases God.
2. Wheresoever a devised worship is brought in, there man’s tabernacle is set up; where true worship is advanced, there is God’s tabernacle. The ten tribes had a worship of Jereboam’s devising, like unto the worship of Jerusalem in many things; but this was Aholah, their own tabernacle. God owned it not, He was not in their assemblies, He accepted not their sacrifices, their incense was a stink in His nostrils. But Jerusalem was Aholibah, My tabernacle, there God’s own worship was set up, and so long as His worship was there, He acknowledged His tabernacle to be in her. Where His worship is, there He dwells (Psa_68:16); and is to be seen and enquired of (Psa_27:4).—Greenhill.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Section 4 (Eze 23:1-49).
Section 4 (Eze 23:1-49).
Yielding themselves to the world.
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We have now once more one of those apparent repetitions which, as such, emphasize the importance of what they speak. Yet there is perhaps no mere repetition in all Scripture, and it is important for us to realize what constitutes the difference between things which at first sight seem absolutely similar. The present chapter gives us, as is evident, substantially the theme of the 16th; Israel’s departure from God being symbolized by the sin of adultery; Jehovah’s exclusive relationship to Israel among all the nations of the earth being compared in this way to marriage. God has taken up the most intimate relations of human life to show us the fulness of His love towards men, and the nearness in which His heart delights to bring us to Himself. All the greater therefore is the sin which breaks through a love so manifested, and we cannot wonder if the foulest of human sins becomes a shadow of that which is symbolized by it here. We shrink from these descriptions. How thoroughly God would teach us by it to loathe that which in His sight is so much worse: the human symbol is but a shadow of the greater sin!
It has been truly said that the present chapter, as compared with the former one, speaks of political, rather than of spiritual, departure from God; yet this only shows the more how intimately the two are related to one another. Religion is necessarily the most powerful bond that unites men together, and thus it is no wonder that when men no longer recognized the one true God, supreme over all, each nation came naturally to have. its own gods whose glory or decay became identified with that of the nation to which they belonged. We see in Nebuchadnezzar’s policy, in the setting up of his golden image in the plain of Dura, the recognition of the power of such a motive. The different gods of the subjected nations were acknowledged in what was owned as supreme over them still. As Nebuchadnezzar was a king of kings, so naturally in his thought was his god a god of gods. Such then being the condition of things, and idolatry set up everywhere among the nations dispersed at Babel, God bad necessarily to separate to Himself politically a people who were to be in true spiritual relationship to Himself. Where the nations ruled, their gods must rule; and thus to lose national independence threatened the loss of all else. This could not have been as to Israel, had they not been untrue to themselves as the people of Jehovah. The captives in Babylon show what the change meant for the true-hearted under its imperial power.
Christianity, indeed, openly disclaimed any separate political existence for its converts; this was necessary; for, in the first place, it was a gospel for the world, going out freely to men apart from all question of nationality. Judaism had not such a gospel; and as long as Judaism lasted, the time for it had not come. The people whom God took up to reveal Himself to them showed this by their ready acceptance of the legal system after their own demonstrated inability, and on this account it was necessary that they should have it, that they should be allowed to prove in the fullest way that inability. The "due season" for the gospel did not come until man was shown not only to be "ungodly," but "without strength." Then and thus it was Christ died for us. But if God would prove in the completest way what man was, He must give them, and did give them, all the assistance in His power to walk aright according to a law. Thus they were fenced off from the intrusion of the nations, and assured of God’s protection in preserving the fence. Among themselves they were bound together by family relationships, by the promises to their forefathers, which embraced them all, by the earthly blessings attached to obedience, by a central worship which drew them together from all parts of the land, while through all their tribes the cities of the priests and Levites were, as it were, a garrison to keep them for God -men separate from all other interests and devoted to God alone.
This all broke down, as we know; the hands of the people themselves broke it down. Christianity fully accepts the fact of this, being itself a complete salvation for men who can no longer trust in themselves at all; and it accepts the fact of a hostile world through which, kept by the power of God alone, His people have to make their way, finding in Christ at once their Leader and the Captain of their salvation. To the Jewish policy we cannot go back; and while on the one hand it is no wonder that men should have sought the advantage of this, it should be just as plain that for Christians themselves it is absolutely impossible. We stand by faith, and faith is not helped by circumstances, or by any natural conditions, but rather by the very difficulties which exercise and develop it. A higher blessing is thus secured for us as we have higher privileges and a perfect Example. We are strangers and pilgrims, and not citizens of earth at all. Yet there will be a time when God’s present purpose completed, and His heavenly people taken to Himself, the world will be delivered from the power of evil which now rules it; and what we find in Israel of old will be reproduced again, with all the imperfection of it removed, in restored Israel, no longer in the midst of hostile nations, but under the dominion of Him who will be owned over all the earth, one Lord, and His name one.
1. In what is before us, the kingdoms of Judah and Israel are seen as distinct, but in closest relation to one another; alas, clearly related also in the common course that they pursue. "And the word of Jehovah came unto me saying, Son of man, there were two women, daughters of one mother." There is no need to question as to that mother now, nor to speak of Amorite or Hittite. The heredity which they exemplify goes further back, and lust, in whatever way displayed, is the beggar’s badge which marks out everywhere fallen man. As the apostle has shown us, the full condition of man is reached and judged in that one commandment: "Thou shalt not lust." Of these lusts, the idols of the nations are the exhibition, and meant for their gratification. They represent an imaginary freedom of souls who have got away from God, seeking to satisfy themselves, apart from His way and will, with things incompetent to do so.
Such as these women here, all the children of Adam are in all their generations. And if we ask, as we look at their history, How could God take up such as these? the answer is found in another question: Where could He find any better? As we see their common origin, so we are taken back to Egypt to see them from the very beginning of their course nationally. And this licentious free-will marks them from the start. God had appointed them in Egypt a school which should have been profitable for them. No land could more fairly and fully exhibit the folly and degradation of heathen idolatry, while God made them also to realize the rod of the school-master in what they suffered at their hands. There was as plainly, on one side, God’s meaning in all this, as on the other was exhibited the natural perverseness of the human heart. Little cause had Israel to take up with Egypt, themselves having the revelation of the true God and such promises of blessing as might well have won their hearts to obedience. Yet, it is plain, they accepted Egypt as their school in another way entirely from that in which God meant it. Egypt was the land of independence, the type of the world in that way, nurtured by the constant overflow of its river, with no need of the rain of heaven, which was, however, the source of the abundance that was round about them. But these sources were afar off, unnoticed and unknown, and if they were not content to make the river itself their god, as we know they did, there was another course, yet more satisfactory to human pride: "My river is mine, and I have made it" -the complete folly of which was no hindrance to its adoption. Manifestly, Oholah ("her own tent") made this the text upon which her conduct was the comment. Oholah is Ephraim, characterized by her chief city, Samaria, a name which speaks of the desire to preserve that which they stood for. Samaria (Shomeron) means "keeper" or "guard." It was Omri’s city, set up against Jerusalem, and as Micah says (Mic 6:16), "the statutes of Omri were kept" but too faithfully in it. But before this, at the very commencement of their independence as a kingdom, the calves which Jeroboam set up remind us of Egyptian worship. In fact, he had been in Egypt and manifestly brought them from thence.* Jerusalem, on the other hand, the capital city and representative of Judah, characterized by its glorious temple, was Oholibah ("my tent is in her") in contrast with Oholah, "her own tent." How far this affected her after-course we have already had intimated.
{*Israel worshiped the golden calf at Sinai. Thus the Egyptian idolatry was manifest both in the earlier and the later apostasy. -S. Ridout.}
2. We have first the history of Oholah; and, under the strong figure of adultery, we find how the world outside at once attracted her. Assyria was her main attraction: "She doted upon her lovers, upon the Assyrians her neighbors, clothed in blue, governors and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses." In a worldly course, the world in fact surpasses the people of God, whose own things, the moment they seek the world, fail with them at the start. In the outside world there is full room for all the energy, ambition, luxury, self-enjoyment, which the terms speak of here: youth, vigor, the keen pursuit of that which man counts to be riches, and which makes him all that he can hope to be, these things attract, alas, how much, the people of God themselves!
And what does Asshur stand for? If we go back to the neglected book of national genealogy, Gen 10:1-32, we find that Asshur has his place as the second son of Shem. He is, therefore, in the line of revelation, of which Shem speaks. Shem means "name;" the name of God revealed in connection with him, which makes him all that he is; and, as is well known, revelation as a whole has come to us through the line of Shem; and as has been said elsewhere (see Jdg 3:1-31, Notes) the genealogy of Shem, as God has given it to us, shows in its necessary order the unfolding of this revelation.
We begin with Elam, which is only, in another form, Olam, "eternity;" and the first necessary revelation of God is that He is the Eternal. His name, therefore, which stands for what He is, must be eternal as Himself. Nevertheless, there is a gradual unfolding of this, of which Asshur in the next place speaks. Asshur means "step," and the steps of Gad, His activities, are also His manifestation. In every act of God, He more or less reveals Himself; and there has been, as we surely know, an adaptation of this revelation to the conditions and needs of men which has made it a revelation, gradual indeed, far more so than we should have thought could be; but our thoughts are not as God’s thoughts. It has been shown, in what has just been referred to, that the names following show the continued development of the revelation.
Arphaxad, in the third place, brings us to what God’s manifestation for the need of man is, the mystery in which He is truly manifest, the mystery of the cross being spoken of in it; while the next name, in the fourth place, Lud, "born," shows that He has revealed God in manhood; this humiliation of His being followed by what the last name speaks of, Aram, "exalted." The depths and the heights that we find in Christ are surely before us here. "Beautiful, however, as are these names thus joined together, we easily understand how in a world like this, and as connected with the human generations for which they stand, they soon scatter and fall away from one another, and thus lose their meaning and their beauty as united. The sentences become but broken words, capable of very different, even of opposite suggestion. The Shem families, as they scattered and multiplied into nations, lost almost entirely the promise of their origin. Their primitive worship became corrupted into a dark and debasing idolatry" in which, however, we find still as we look into them, the fragments of primitive revelation. Still, as a whole, the meaning is lost. Cut off from the Name of which they speak, there is no purpose of God really left. What should have been God’s "steps" become in fact but a reflection of man himself and of his lusts. Strikingly in this way does Asshur’s god speak for what he is. Asshur’s god was Asshur. Man serves but himself -himself, alas, the miserable object of his worship! Even as the apostle puts it, with regard to some professing Christians, "whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame" (Php 3:19). Yet he is successful, as men say; his energies are spent undividedly upon that which is within his reach, and "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." He is successful; and what is his success like? Look at the 73rd psalm for the answer, and see how perplexed even the godly can be at what he finds it. Only in the sanctuary can you learn the truth about it -the end of it.
After Asshur, therefore, Oholah goes with her whole heart. She still carries her Egyptian idolatries with her, for evil, as we know, is tolerant of evil, while the good is not. Yet at last, as we find in her history here, out of men’s vices are hatched the hordes that prey on them, and out of this has arisen the fable that Satan is the torturer of men in God’s final place of judgment; but this is only the reflection of present things. He is indeed here the torturer, not there; and God would wake man up by this constant connection of sin with its judgment. Man’s pleasant vices are the whips that scourge him.
The history here in the case of Ephraim is plainly read: "I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the sons of Asshur upon whom she doted. These uncovered her nakedness, they took her sons and daughters, and slew her with the sword, and she became a name among women, and they executed judgment upon her."
3. Oholibah’s history now follows. In it we see once more the power of example, as we see also how one evil develops out of another, and the consequent progress made in a downward path. Once more Oholibah chooses the human school instead of the school of God, and learns nothing by His rod upon her sister. She too goes after the attractive Assyrians, but she adds to these the Chaldeans, the images of whom promptly carried her off. And these Chaldeans, as we learn by more than the derivation of their name, which seems to be "demon-like," bring with them a power of evil more intense, less human, more supernatural. As James teaches us, it is how the wisdom that cometh not from above develops; it is "earthly, sensual, devilish." These Chaldeans had their own tongue and learning, practised occult arts, "wore a peculiar dress like that seen upon the gods, and deified men in Assyrian sculptures." Added to this, they were not Shemites, but Cushites, and belonged fully to the darkness of this their origin. Yet Oholibah, as we see, is immediately attracted; their mere images attract her: "As soon as she saw them, she doted on them and sent messengers to them, unto Chaldea." This passion, as we know by their history, did not last long, except in its consequences. It was, as is so often the case, as short-lived as it was sudden. Oholibah returned to her old passion for Egypt, and this brought on her doom.
When her day of lawless self-will is past, the day of the Lord finds all her former lovers gathered against her. The mustering is come now, the sons of Babylon heading the list with all the Chaldeans; and Asshur too, with Babylon, Assyria following under the power of Nebuchadnezzar.
Numbered among the Chaldeans, we have three names which present a special difficulty. Pekod is, in Jer 1: 21, an allegorical name for Babylon itself as the land of "visitation" -there, visited of God; here a visitation of God upon others; or it may mean her "charge," "office," for officer. Shoa means "wealth," "liberal;" Koa, probably "prince." Geographically no such names are found within the limits of Chaldea, and the words remain a problem yet unsolved, while from the connection they might seem to form part of the enumeration of all that was brilliant and attractive in the land, now gathered with the desirable sons of Asshur against Jerusalem. The qualities which before spoke of the energy and ability which carried away the hearts of the Israelites are now enumerated in the same terms, but realized now in an opposite interest. How men’s old allurements face them in the day of visitation which comes for each one! They work their will without mercy, though the mere instruments of God’s judgment, as He declares. The punishment of cutting off the nose and ears was the punishment of an adulteress and we may remember how these, on God’s part, were ornamented in a former chapter (Eze 16:1-63) which gives us, as the present does not, the blessing which God had poured out upon those brought into this peculiar relationship to Himself. Now, not only the ornaments are removed, but there is no place for them any longer, mere deformity instead, and with the jewels the garments are also taken away.
Yet all this severity is on God’s part not mere judgment. The effect is, as He puts it here, to make the lewdness of Oholibah cease from her, and the objects formerly attractive to be turned from with loathing. One must come to one’s self in order to come to God, and this is the process through which God was now bringing Israel. What a terrible thing to face, when one is left naked and destitute, all that gone which, while it was being squandered, made one for a time feel and look rich to others! But the cup now must be drained to its bitter dregs, wrung out in desperation by the soul that has lost its all, but cannot yet fully awake to it; the very sherds of the broken cup, as represented here, gnawed in madness to obtain that which is impossible, while the tearing off of the breasts is but the self-despair under which, if anywhere, the true blessing lies. But this is not gone on to in the chapter before us, which ends with judgment: "Because thou hast forgotten Me and cast Me behind thy back, therefore bear also thy lewdness and thy fornications."
4. God now appeals to man himself in the person of the prophet against both these debauched and uncensured women: "And Jehovah said unto me, Son of man, wilt thou judge Oholah and Oholibah? Yea, declare unto them their abominations." And the story is repeated briefly with all the circumstances of its aggravation and the persistency of wickedness, which seems as if it would go on to the end -the scum of a pot, as in the next chapter, which will never be cleansed. Adultery and blood are both in the count against them here. Their idolatries contained both features: unfaithfulness to God, and causing their sons to pass through the fire to their idols to be devoured; and all the while shamelessly entering Jehovah’s sanctuary, which could but be defiled by their presence; and His sabbaths, the sign of His covenant with them, profaned by all their actions. They had not been the victims of others, simply; they had not merely been solicited by others; they themselves had been the solicitresses, laboring to bring from afar those who could only pollute them with their abominations; they had decked themselves with the ornaments that God had given, for the reception of their corrupters!
The picture is painted for us in a few brief touches: the insensate profligate sitting upon a stately bed, with a table prepared before it whereon were placed the incense and the oil that belonged to her forsaken God. Around her the voices of a loose crowd in utter abandonment, even the Sabeans of the wilderness, the men who lived by pillage, as their name here may indicate, brought in to join with them, and all this when plainly old age was come upon her, hastened by her excesses.* The two sisters, every way such, are joined together in this count, and men of mere human righteousness are called to pronounce the judgment upon them which they so well deserve. Thus a divine judgment is executed, but with the approbation of the human conscience everywhere. God and man are united together against them, but with the end in God’s thoughts still of getting rid, by whatever severe measures, of the wickedness which else would never end, but which shall at last make them recognize their covenant-God in the holiness which compels Him thus to afflict them. The end for Israel and for the nations alike is ever that they shall know that He is the Lord Jehovah.
{*There is a resemblance to Jezebel, the apostate queen of Israel, 2Ki 9:30,who in her old age "painted her face and tired her head." She is also the symbolic adulteress in the professed church, the Thyatira of Rev 2:1-29, whose adulteries bring down the Lord’s judgments. -S. Ridout.}
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain The Unchaste Sisters, Oholah and Oholibah
The Unchaste Sisters, Oholah and Oholibah
The idolatries and foreign alliances of Jerusalem and Samaria are here described under the same strong figure which is used in Ezekiel 16. Oholah (Samaria) and Oholibah (Jerusalem) were two sisters, both seduced in Egypt in their youth (Eze_23:3), both espoused by God (Eze_23:4), and both unfaithful to Him. Samaria took as her lovers first the Assyrians (Eze_23:5-7), and then the Egyptians (Eze_23:8), and was at length slain by the former (Eze_23:9-10). Jerusalem, not warned by her sister's fate, made first the Assyrians and then the Babylonians her paramours (Eze_23:11-16). Being alienated from the latter she has turned to her early lovers of Egypt (Eze_23:17-21), but she will be destroyed, like her sister, by the lovers whom she has just forsaken (Eze_23:22-35). The sin and judgment of the two sisters are described afresh (Eze_23:36-49).
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3. Another instance of Ezekiel's belief that Israel practised idolatry in Egypt: see Eze_20:8. Of course the distinction between the two branches of the nation does not really go back so far.
4. Aholah.. Aholibah] RV 'Oholah.. Oholibah.' The words perhaps mean 'her tent and 'my tent in her,' respectively. It was an Eastern custom to give similar names to members of the same family. Samaria] stands for the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, of which it was the capital. Oholah is called the elder sister, probably because the northern kingdom was the larger and stronger of the two. Were mine] RV 'became mine,' in marriage.
5. The Assyrians] In 2Ki_15:17-20 we read that the northern kingdom became tributary to Assyria in the reign of Menahem. But the Assyrian monuments show that this subjection began as early as the reign of Jehu.
8. Egypt] The northern kingdom wavered for a time between an Assyrian and an Egyptian policy (Hos_7:11). Its last king, Hoshea, revolted against Assyria and allied himself with Egypt (2Ki_17:4). This was the cause of the destruction of his kingdom.
12. The Assyrians] The southern kingdom made alliance with Assyria in the days of Ahaz, who eagerly introduced foreign idolatries (2Ki_16:7). Except in the reign of Hezekiah the Assyrian overlordship continued till that of Babylon took its place. These political relations were accompanied by religious defections.
14. Images of the Chaldeans] Such pictures were common on the walls of Babylonian palaces. Ezekiel imagines them as being seen in Jerusalem, and as awakening the nation's desire for these unknown lovers.
17. Her mind (RV 'soul') was alienated] Judah under Jehoiakim (2Ki_24:1) and Zedekiah (2Ki_24:20) became weary of Babylonian supremacy.
19. Egypt] Like Samaria, Jerusalem went back to her first seducers. Intrigues with Egypt were frequent from the days of Hezekiah onwards (Isa_30:31), and it was trust in Egypt which led to Zedekiah's revolt and the nation's fall: see Eze_17:7.
23. Pekod.. Shoa.. Koa] Eastern peoples tributary to Babylon. They are all mentioned in the inscriptions. The Assyrians] These now formed part of the Babylonian Empire.
34. Pluck off] RV 'tear.'
39. Human sacrifice was combined with the forms of God's worship. This only aggravated its guilt.
42. Sabeans] RV 'drunkards.'
45. The righteous men] The allegory carries out the forms of justice observed in an Israelite city, but we need not look for a counterpart to the righteous men in the actual history.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain In Eze 23:1-49 Samaria and Jerusalem are called two…
In Eze 23:1-49 Samaria and Jerusalem are called two sisters, Aholah and Aholibah, in their ungodly relation with Assyria and Chaldea. Aholah means “her tent.” Aholibah, “my tent is in her.” The latter denotes the fact that the true sanctuary was in Judah. The sins and vileness of both are portrayed throughout this long chapter, as well as the deserved punishment.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Spiritual Adultery of the two Kingdoms
The Spiritual Adultery of the two Kingdoms
v. 1. The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, in an inspired allegory setting forth the fact that both kingdoms were ripe for God’s judgment,
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v. 2. Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother, namely, Israel and Judah, one nation by descent;
v. 3. and they committed whoredoms in Egypt, being guilty of idolatry even at that time; they committed whoredoms, spiritual adultery, in their youth; there were their breasts pressed, and there they, the people with whom they sinned, bruised the teats of their virginity, both being immoral acts and a species of adultery.
v. 4. And the names of them were Aholah, the elder, the meaning, "Her tent," referring to the fact that the first worship of God in Israel was in a tent, or tabernacle, and Aholibah, her sister, this name for Judah, meaning, "My tent in her," indicating that God appointed His worship in the midst of Judah. And they were Mine, they belonged to the Lord in the most peculiar sense before the apostasy under Jeroboam; and they bare sons and daughters, for they were at that time still considered the Lord’s brides. Thus were their names: Samaria is Aholah, called the elder, or rather, greater, on account of the larger size of her territory, and Jerusalem Aholibah.
v. 5. And Aholah played the harlot when she was Mine, forsaking the Lord in her idolatry; and she doted on her lovers, inflamed with her evil passion, on the Assyrians, her neighbors, with whom the people of the northern kingdom sought alliance and whose heathenish customs they aped,
v. 6. which were clothed with blue, the royal purple of ancient times, Israel being seduced by the splendor and pomp of Assyria, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses, making a bold show intended to impress passionate Samaria.
v. 7. Thus she committed her whoredoms with them, bestowing her wantonness upon them, with all them that were the chosen men of Assyria and with all on whom she doted, with the same passion for spiritual adultery; with all their idols she defiled herself, this being the essence of her transgression, shameless idolatry.
v. 8. Neither, in addition to this new transgression, left she her whoredoms brought from Egypt, since the calves set up by Jeroboam at Dan and Bethel were copies of Egyptian idols, of the Apis statues; for in her youth they lay with her, and they bruised the breasts of her virginity, and poured their whoredom upon her, the full measure of their idolatrous wickedness.
v. 9. Wherefore, in just punishment, I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, who professed an affection for her which they were far from feeling, into the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted, with such foolishly passionate desire.
v. 10. These, in making sport of her wantonness, discovered her nakedness; they took her sons and her daughters, leading them into exile, and slew her with the sword, destroying the kingdom of which Samaria was the capital; and she became famous among women, the object of jeering speech and mockery; for they had executed judgment upon her, her shameful overthrow was notorious throughout the known world.
v. 11. And when her sister Aholibah saw this, having the evil example of Samaria before her eyes always, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, Judah going even beyond Samaria in the extent of her idolatry, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms, outranking the northern kingdom in the spiritual adultery practiced in Jerusalem.
v. 12. She doted upon the Assyrians, her neighbors, having conceived a sinful affection for the heathenish neighbors and seeking an alliance with them, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men, whose pomp and political splendor dazzled the Jews.
v. 13. Then I saw, the Lord says in a statement of the true situation, that she was defiled, that they, Samaria and Jerusalem, took both one way, the way of transgression and wickedness,
v. 14. and that she increased her whoredoms, becoming, with the passing of time, ever more shameless in her idolatry; for when she saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, probably in bas-reliefs colored in ocher,
v. 15. girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, with the flowing turbans which are so familiar from Assyrian sculpture, all of them princes to look to, appearing majestic amid imposing, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity, between the Black and the Caspian Sea;
v. 16. and as soon as she saw them with her eyes, probably when her merchants went to the East on business trips, or when Assyrian sculpture was brought to Jerusalem to adorn the palaces of the wealthy, she doted upon them, desiring entangling alliances which God had expressly forbidden, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea, soliciting the friendship of the mightier empire.
v. 17. And the Babylonians, gladly availing themselves of this opportunity, came to her into the bed of love, in the unholy alliance forbidden by the Lord, and they defiled her with their whoredom, with the excess of their idolatry, and she was polluted with them, as committing spiritual adultery, and her mind was alienated from them, for now the fickle Jews turned once more to the Egyptians.
v. 18. So she discovered her whoredoms, openly parading them before the whole world, and discovered her nakedness, her most shameful condition. Then My mind was alienated from her, so that He turned from her in disgust and loathing, like as My mind was alienated from her sister.
v. 19. Yet, in spite of this experience, which should have sobered her, she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, the lusts she had then practiced, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt, practicing idolatry even before the Exodus.
v. 20. For she doted upon their paramours, upon her lovers, the eunichs, princes, and courtiers who were instrumental in bringing about the alliance, whose flesh, the member concerned, is as the flesh of asses, said in bitter irony, and whose issue is like the issue of horses, said of carnal desire.
v. 21. Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising the teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth, literally, "on account of thy youthful breasts. " In the early history there had at least been an explanation of Judah’s conduct, namely, the inexperienced sensuousness and carnality of the people. But here, in their later history, they were acting against better knowledge, willfully prostituting themselves and their sacred honor upon the altar of idolatry.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh speaks of how the cities of Jerusalem and Samaria have been unfaithful to him in a metaphor in which he refers to them as two prostitutes. This metaphor continues through Ezekiel 23:34. (See: Metaphor)
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The word of Yahweh came
This is an idiom that is used to introduce something that God told his prophets or his people. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 3:16. AT: "Yahweh spoke this message" or "Yahweh spoke these words" (See: Idiom)
Son of man
"Son of a human being" or "Son of humanity." God calls Ezekiel this to emphasize that Ezekiel is only a human being. God is eternal and powerful, but humans are not. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 2:1. AT: "Mortal person" or "Human"
Their breasts were squeezed
This can be stated in active form. AT: "Men squeezed their breasts" (See: Active or Passive)
their virgin nipples were fondled there
This phrase means basically the same thing as the previous phrase and emphasizes the immoral behavior of the two young women. This can be stated in active form. AT: "there men fondled their virgin nipples" (See: Parallelism and Active or Passive)
fondled
to be touched lovingly or softly
they became mine
This means that he married them and they became his wives. AT: "they became my wives" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
Their names mean this: Oholah means Samaria, and Oholibah means Jerusalem
"Oholah represents Samaria, and Oholibah represents Jerusalem." In this metaphor Samaria is spoken of as if it were Oholah and Jerusalem is spoken of as if it were Oholibah. This speaks of how these cities were unfaithful to Yahweh as if they were unfaithful wives. (See: Metaphor)
Oholah
This is the name of a woman that means "her tent." (See: How to Translate Names)
Oholibah
This is the name of a woman that means "my tent is in her." (See: How to Translate Names)
translationWords
word of God
Son of Man
prostitute
Egypt
virgin
Samaria
Jerusalem
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 23:1-49 This chapter, like ch 16, gives the history…
23:1-49 This chapter, like ch 16, gives the history of the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the form of an extended metaphor. It graphically depicts Samaria and Jerusalem, the capital cities, as two immoral women. The metaphor emphasizes that their judgment was inevitable and well-deserved.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.