Scripture Daily

Context No. 325 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 23:1-8: in context

1The LORD’s word came again to me, saying, 2“Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. 3They played the prostitute in Egypt. They played the prostitute in their youth. Their breasts were fondled there, and their youthful nipples were caressed there. 4Their names were Oholah the elder, and Oholibah her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Samaria is Oholah, and Jerusalem Oholibah. 5“Oholah played the prostitute when she was mine. She doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbors, 6who were clothed with blue—governors and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. 7She gave herself as a prostitute to them, all of them the choicest men of Assyria. She defiled herself with the idols of whomever she lusted after. 8She hasn’t left her prostitution since leaving Egypt; for in her youth they lay with her. They caressed her youthful nipples and they poured out their prostitution on her.

This is one of the most uncomfortable chapters in the Bible, and it does not get easier by looking away from it. Ezekiel tells the story of two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, and he uses deliberately graphic, sexual language to describe their unfaithfulness. He is honest, and so should we be: the imagery here is coarse and shocking on purpose. The two sisters are not literal women. They are the two kingdoms of God's people, Oholah standing for Samaria in the north and Oholibah for Jerusalem in the south, and their prostitution stands for the way both kingdoms chased foreign powers, the armies of Egypt and Assyria and their gods, for protection and security instead of trusting the God they belonged to.

The question worth asking is why Ezekiel reaches for such raw imagery when he could have spoken of political alliances and idolatry in dignified terms. The answer is that he does not want it kept dignified. Chasing other powers for safety was, to God, not a policy disagreement or an abstract theological lapse. It was betrayal, the specific wound of a spouse who discovers infidelity, and Ezekiel uses language too visceral to let anyone hold it at arm's length. He forces the reader to feel it the way betrayal actually feels, because that is how God felt it. Both sisters had been his, had borne him children, and both went looking elsewhere for what he had promised to be for them.

Strip away the offense of the imagery and a very personal claim remains. God does not experience my turning to other things for security as a minor infraction of the rules. He experiences it the way a spouse experiences being cheated on. What do I run to for safety instead of God, and have I kept it safely abstract in my mind, when Scripture insists he feels it as betrayal?

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