Ezekiel 23:1-8: a reflection

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 a hard, deliberately shocking passage, and it should be read for what it means rather than dwelt on for its graphic images. Ezekiel tells of two sisters who became God's own, and then betrayed him through persistent unfaithfulness, chasing after other lovers, a searing picture of Israel and Judah abandoning God for idols. The imagery is jarring on purpose, because God wants his people to feel the true nature of what they have done.

Notice what the shocking image is meant to convey. God does not describe idolatry, the giving of our devotion to other things, as a minor lapse or a technical infraction. He describes it as betrayal, the wound of marital unfaithfulness, because that is how he experiences it. The sisters had become his; he had claimed them in love, made them his own, and their turning to other gods was not a small thing but a deep, personal wound, the betrayal of a covenant of love.

That is worth sitting with soberly. We can think of our own divided loyalties, the affections and trusts we give to things other than God, as harmless, hardly worth calling sin. This passage insists they are not harmless to God. He has claimed us in love, made us his own, and our turning to other gods wounds him as betrayal wounds a faithful spouse. And notice the passage says the unfaithfulness ran deep, back to their youth. Ask honestly where your own long-rooted divided loyalties lie, and see them not as trivial but as the betrayal of a God who loves you. Then turn back, and be faithful to the One who made you his own.

Lord, you use the wounding image of betrayal to show me how you experience my idolatry, not as a minor lapse but as the deep hurt of unfaithfulness by one you claimed in love. Forgive me for treating my divided loyalties as harmless. Show me where my affections have wandered from you, and turn my heart back, faithful to the God who made me his own.