Ezekiel 16

1-58 God’s Faithless Bride

God tells Ezekiel to make Israel’s abominations known to her:

• You were born in Canaan of an Amorite father and Hittite mother.
• Even as a newborn you were neglected: your cord was not cut, you were not washed, rubbed with salt nor swaddled, but without compassion thrown into an open field, and you abhorred the day you were born.
• I saw you flailing in your blood, and I told you, “Live!”, and you grew into womanhood, yet you were still without clothes.
• So I covered your nakedness and pledged myself to you, cleansed you and anointed you.
• I clothed you in rich fabrics and adorned you with ornaments, gave you fine food, and you became famous for your beauty because of the splendor I bestowed on you.
• But you began to trust in your beauty and gave yourself to whoredom, making shrines of your clothing and male images of the jewelry I had given you, burning the fine food as an offering to the images and even sacrificing our sons and daughters to your gods.
• And in all your abominations you did not remember when you were naked and flailing in your blood.
• You built a platform to prostitute your beauty, playing the whore with Egypt, so I gave you up to your enemies the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewdness.
• Then you played the whore with the Assyrians.
• When that did not satisfy you, you turned to Chaldea.
• You were worse than a whore, because you did not receive payment, as a whore does – you bribed them to come to you.
• Therefore, because of all your abominations, I will gather all your lovers, expose your nakedness and deliver you into their hands to be mobbed, stoned, cut into pieces, burned out.
• I will stop your whoredom, causing my anger to cease so that I will be calm once more, for you have enraged me with all these things.
• You’ve heard the proverb, “Like mother like daughter”?
• You’re not only like your mother, a Hittite, and your father, an Amorite, but you are like your elder sister Samaria to the north and Sodom, your younger sister to the south.
• You not only followed them, you became worse than them – your abominations made them appear righteous in comparison.
• When I restore the fortunes of Sodom and Samaria, I’ll restore yours too, so that you will be ashamed of what you have done and give them consolation Other translations render the word for fortunes as “captivity,” which in context seems more appropriate. Then the commentators make this comment, as summarized by Gill:

which some understand as what never will be, as it never yet has been: Sodom remains to this day a dead sea, and the ten tribes are not returned:

• Sodom used to be a byword for you, and now you are a mockery to Edom and to the Philistines, all those around who despise you.
• You must bear the penalty for your lewdness and abominations.

Note: God is trying to make his people understand why their behavior is so abhorrent to him, why he cannot tolerate their faithlessness any longer. We all can identify here with his sense of betrayal and may even wonder how he could have been patient so long with his unfaithful bride – and not only her unfaithfulness, but her destruction of her own children.

59-63 An Everlasting Covenant

• Yes, I will deal with you as you deserve, seeing you have despised our covenant.
• But I will remember it and will establish an everlasting covenant with you, and you will be ashamed when I take your sisters and make them your daughters in a separate covenant. See Galatians 4:26.
• You will know that I am the LORD, and will be in shameful silence when I forgive you.

This has to be talking about the new covenant, when Gentiles will enjoy the heritage of Judaism, yet with a covenant different than theirs, where both Jews and Gentiles will be forgiven. Judaism will no longer be the way into a relationship with the Creator.