THE WORD OF THE LORD came to me: 2“Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother. 3They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. In that land their breasts were fondled and their virgin bosoms caressed. 4The older was named Oholah, and her sister was Oholibah. They were mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
5“Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was still mine; and she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors 6clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them handsome young men, and mounted horsemen. 7She gave herself as a prostitute to all the elite of the Assyrians and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after. 8She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust upon her.
9“Therefore I handed her over to her lovers, the Assyrians, for whom she lusted. 10They stripped her naked, took away her sons and daughters and killed her with the sword. She became a byword among women, and punishment was inflicted on her.
11“Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet in her lust and prostitution she was more depraved than her sister. 12She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors in full dress, mounted horsemen, all handsome young men. 13I saw that she too defiled herself; both of them went the same way.
14“But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red, 15with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like Babylonian chariot officers, natives of Chaldea. 16As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust. 18When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her nakedness, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. 19Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.
22“Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will stir up your lovers against you, those you turned away from in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side—23the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, handsome young men, all of them governors and commanders, chariot officers and men of high rank, all mounted on horses. 24They will come against you with weapons, chariots and wagons and with a throng of people; they will take up positions against you on every side with large and small shields and with helmets. I will turn you over to them for punishment, and they will punish you according to their standards. 25I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire. 26They will also strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry. 27So I will put a stop to the lewdness and prostitution you began in Egypt. You will not look on these things with longing or remember Egypt anymore.
28“For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to hand you over to those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. 29They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you naked and bare, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity 30have brought this upon you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand.
32“This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“You will drink your sister’s cup,
a cup large and deep;
it will bring scorn and derision,
for it holds so much.
33You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow,
the cup of ruin and desolation,
the cup of your sister Samaria.
34You will drink it and drain it dry;
you will dash it to pieces
and tear your breasts.
I have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD.
35“Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you have forgotten me and thrust me behind your back, you must bear the consequences of your lewdness and prostitution.”
36The LORD said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then confront them with their detestable practices, 37for they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. They committed adultery with their idols; they even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to me, as food for them. 38They have also done this to me: At that same time they defiled my sanctuary and desecrated my Sabbaths. 39On the very day they sacrificed their children to their idols, they entered my sanctuary and desecrated it. That is what they did in my house.
40“They even sent messengers for men who came from far away, and when they arrived you bathed yourself for them, painted your eyes and put on your jewelry. 41You sat on an elegant couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed the incense and oil that belonged to me.
42“The noise of a carefree crowd was around her; Sabeans were brought from the desert along with men from the rabble, and they put bracelets on the arms of the woman and her sister and beautiful crowns on their heads. 43Then I said about the one worn out by adultery, ‘Now let them use her as a prostitute, for that is all she is.’ 44And they slept with her. As men sleep with a prostitute, so they slept with those lewd women, Oholah and Oholibah. 45But righteous men will sentence them to the punishment of women who commit adultery and shed blood, because they are adulterous and blood is on their hands.
46“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Bring a mob against them and give them over to terror and plunder. 47The mob will stone them and cut them down with their swords; they will kill their sons and daughters and burn down their houses.
48“So I will put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not imitate you. 49You will suffer the penalty for your lewdness and bear the consequences of your sins of idolatry. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.”
Original Meaning
AS IN CHAPTER 16, the prophet depicts the history and future of Judah by means of an extended metaphor, picturing Jerusalem and Samaria as two exceedingly wanton women. The shockingly explicit language and not particularly disguised identities of the cities combine to give the resulting picture an “in-your-face” effect, whose emotional impact is far greater than a similar indictment in dry legal terminology would have been. If, as Paul Ricoeur has argued, metaphor involves the “felt participation” of the reader,1 then in Ezekiel 23 the prophet harnesses all of the emotional impact of a graphic portrayal of sexual perversion to drive home the point that Jerusalem’s coming destruction is both the deserved and the inevitable consequence of her past actions.
Two women are introduced in the opening verses as sisters, sharing a common mother (23:2). This is intended to denote not merely the historical fact of a shared heredity between the northern and southern kingdoms but a deeper commonality: Though they are two in number, they are one in nature, living parallel lives.2 This essential identity is underlined by the names they are given: Samaria is designated “Oholah” while Jerusalem is named “Oholibah.” The meaning of these names (“her tent” and “my tent is in her”) does not seem to be in this case of any particular significance; rather, it is the similarity of their names that draws our attention. Oholah and Oholibah go together like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.3
These sisters have behaved alike from their youth. Already in Egypt they gave themselves over to prostitution (Ezek. 23:3). But in spite of that, the Lord “made honest women of them” (to use a Victorian phrase): He married them and they became the mothers of his children (23:4). Thus far, there is nothing controversial about Ezekiel’s retelling of history. God had entered an exclusive relationship of overlordship, a covenant, with Israel, in spite of Israel’s checkered history. Israel’s undistinguished past in terms of their faithfulness to the Lord was not particularly news to those familiar with the events recounted in Exodus and Numbers: the grumbling at Marah (Ex. 15:23–24), the golden calf (Ex. 32), the bad report of the spies (Num. 13:26–33), Korah’s rebellion (Num. 16), the immorality with the Moabites (Num. 25).4 Besides, that was all ancient history.
In the next verses, however, Ezekiel brings his hearers down to the present in a hurry with a brief sketch of the history of the older sister, Oholah (i.e., Samaria, the northern kingdom; Ezek. 23:5–10). Not content with the Lord, she traded her attentions elsewhere. She lusted after the Assyrians, seeking to enter a covenant with them, a politico-religious alliance that implied a repudiation of trust in the Lord as her sole provider. What attracted her to the Assyrians was their power and prestige. They all appeared to her as warriors—horsemen and charioteers, governors and commanders, dressed in splendid garments of blue (23:6).
The historical background of this assertion is not hard to trace. From around 841–840 B.C., Israel was involved in an alliance with Assyria when Shalmaneser III received a substantial tribute from Jehu.5 Climbing into bed with Assyria may have seemed the logical—perhaps the only possible—political option to Israel’s leadership, but it was also tantamount to a rejection of trust in the Lord in favor of Assyria’s idols, with which Israel now defiled herself (23:7). It was a return to her former way of life in Egypt, from which the Lord had redeemed her (23:8).6 The consequences of her lifestyle choice were severe, yet fitting. The Lord gave her over into the hand of her lovers, the Assyrians (23:9). The very things that attracted her to them rebounded against her. Their warrior power was exerted against her, and far from clothing her in similar manner to themselves they stripped her naked and killed her (23:10).
But Oholah is not Ezekiel’s real interest. The brief sketch of her history merely sets up a paradigm of sin and punishment to which the subsequent history of her southern sister can be compared. Oholah became a “byword” (lit., a “name”) among women, and judgments were done to her (23:10). This is her function in the chapter: Her history is known and (from a southern perspective) regarded as a just fate for her sin. But the question is, “Has her younger sister applied to herself the lessons to be drawn from the older sister’s fate?”
Once more, the historical details lie not far below the surface of the metaphor. Judah’s relationship with Assyria went back to at least 734 B.C., when Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-Pileser for assistance against Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus (2 Kings 16:5–7; Isa. 7:1–2). In 714 B.C., Hezekiah entertained ambassadors from the Babylonian ruler Merodach-Baladan, who was seeking to rally support against the Assyrians (2 Kings 20:12–19). When the Babylonian-led resistance crumbled, Hezekiah once again apparently sent tribute to the Assyrians.7 But by 605 B.C. Babylon had established itself as the dominant power in the region, and Judah was in a vassal relationship toward them.
What his compatriots may have read as political necessity, however, Ezekiel presents in a different light: Submission to these relationships is nothing less than spiritual adultery against their true covenant head, the Lord himself. Once again, the prophet seeks to challenge Judah’s complacent sense of moral and spiritual superiority to her former northern neighbor.
Her adulterous liaisons did not satisfy Oholibah. Having been defiled by her lovers, she became disgusted with them and turned away from them (Ezek. 23:17). But in turning away from her adulterous lovers, she still did not turn away from her love of adultery. She continued her prostitution openly, so that the Lord turned away from her, just as he had earlier turned away from her sister (23:18).
Yet even this did not deter her from her course; it was a case of “train a child in the way [s]he should go, and when [s]he is old [s]he will not turn from it” (Prov. 22:6). She remembered the days of her youth in Egypt, not as the time when the Lord delivered her from bondage (as the book of Deuteronomy repeatedly urges Israel to remember Egypt8) but as the time when they enjoyed pleasures no longer theirs (cf. Num. 11:5). As DeVries puts it: “She had forgotten what she should have remembered and remembered what she should have forgotten.”9 In her lust, she was not even limited by natural relationships; instead, she sought those whose sexual capacities were not merely superhuman but positively bestial (“whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission [lit., floods] was like that of horses,” Ezek. 23:20).
The result of such thoroughgoing depravity is predictable: A fitting judgment will fall on the head of the wanton woman. The Lord “will stir up”10 her lovers against her from all around (23:22), not merely the Babylonians and Assyrians but men from Pekod, Shoa, and Koa as well.11 As with Oholah, the things that attracted Oholibah to her lovers are now used against her. Their strength and military prowess now become the means of assaulting her on every side; weaponry, chariotry, armor, and numbers are now turned against Jerusalem (23:24). God will “turn [his wayward people] over to them for punishment,” and as a result their enemies will be allowed to “punish [them] according to their standards.”
This combination of divine and human judgment is further developed in the following verses. The Lord says, “I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury” (23:25). As Jerusalem’s sins were worse than her sister’s, so also will her punishment be. She will not only be stripped but also disfigured, and her children will not only be taken from her but will also fall by the sword and be consumed by fire (23:25).12 The goal of this judgment is a proper amnesia: forgetting the prostitution begun in Egypt (23:27). Her lovers have now become her enemies, who will strip her and plunder her (23:28–29). As she followed in the pattern of her elder sister, so now she will share her elder sister’s fate and drink from the same bitter cup of sorrow, all the way down to its dregs (23:32–34). In her shame, she will tear out the bodily members that led her into sin in the first place, her breasts.13
In the remaining verses (23:36–49), Ezekiel is once more cast into the role of prosecuting attorney (“Son of man, will you judge. . . ?”) as the point of the metaphor is driven home. Jerusalem14 is to be confronted with her adultery and bloodshed. This section links together the political charges of the earlier part of chapter 23 with the social and cultic charges of chapter 22. Adultery has taken place at home and on the road, with domestic and foreign idols. At home, sanctuary and Sabbath have been defiled, and even their children have been sacrificed (23:38–39). Not content with such “homegrown” heresies, they have sent messengers far and wide to all comers (23:40). But in spite of their beauty preparations and makeup, their true nature is becoming clear to all: an aging, worn-out prostitute, desired not for her charms but for her availability and price (23:43).
Once more, the conclusion of the sisters’ activities is clearly stated: An army will come, plundering them, stoning them, and putting them to the sword. Their children will be slaughtered, their homes burned (23:47). Thus the Lord will bring to an end all such adultery. This time the object lesson will be heeded (unlike in v. 10), and “all women”15 will be chastened and not do likewise (23:48). The chapter closes with the recognition formula: “Then you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD” (23:49).
Bridging Contexts
THE NATURE OF METAPHOR. Metaphors and related forms of pictorial speech are among the most culture-specific means of expression. Is it truly possible to explain to anyone not brought up in a cricketing nation what it means to be “playing on a sticky wicket”?16 The entire effectiveness of the metaphor depends on shared “commonplaces,” a range of ideas associated with the image used in the metaphor.17 These ideas are culturally determined. The metaphor “the LORD is my shepherd” naturally means something slightly different in an ancient Near Eastern context from what it does in a Scottish context because Scottish shepherds are associated with a different set of ideas from ancient Near Eastern shepherds—for instance, the use of sheep dogs.
This difficulty may, of course, be overcome in many cases if readers immerse themselves sufficiently in the source culture to understand the ideas associated with the image in question. It becomes problematic, however, when the reader finds the image adopted is not merely alien but antagonistic. The perspective of the metaphor is not simply different from their perspective but is positively repulsive to it. This situation tends to trigger an instinctive response in the reader of rejection toward the metaphor.
This process may happen on a personal level, as when a person who has a bad relationship with his or her own human father finds it hard to accept the biblical image of God as “Father.” But this same process can also happen on a cultural level. For example, the Sawi people of Irian Jaya celebrated men who formed friendships with the express purpose of later betraying the befriended one in order to be killed and eaten.18 This cultural association naturally made it hard for them to understand the gospel, for on their cultural reading Judas was evidently the hero of the story.
By the same token, the metaphor of Ezekiel 23 is not merely alien to our twentieth-century Western culture, it is, to many people, antagonistic. That antagonism may be expressed in mild language (“We cannot but feel ill at ease with the harsh way in which guilt and blame for sexual misconduct is presented . . . as primarily a female responsibility”)19 or in harsh language (“a pornographic fantasy”),20 but it is there in most contemporary expositions. What is alien is not so much the message itself—for the message of Ezekiel 23 is not fundamentally different from that of the preceding chapters—but the form in which the message is delivered, the metaphor itself. It is the envelope in which the letter comes that causes offense, not the letter itself.
Understanding the ancient marital metaphor. What shall we say about this envelope? Perhaps in the face of contemporary revulsion, we do well to recognize how accurately it communicated truth within its own cultural context. It relied on certain cultural commonplaces. It assumed (1) the idea of the capital city as the “wife” of the deity,21 (2) the idea that political alliances with foreign nations were a breach of that covenant relationship, analogous to adultery,22 (3) the idea that multiple adultery on the part of a woman was shocking and perverse, and (4) the idea that the appropriate punishment for adultery was death (Lev. 20:10). If those presuppositions are affirmed, then Ezekiel makes his case with considerable logic and great emotional power that the city of Jerusalem has become polluted by her adultery and God is entirely justified in bringing in the agents of his choice. To be sure, attention is uniquely focused in this chapter on the punishment of the adulteress rather than that of her lovers, but the remaining chapters of Ezekiel make it clear that the other nations will not escape God’s judgment either (Ezek. 25–32; cf. 21:30–32).
However, we should also recognize that the cultural “commonplaces” affirmed above are different from those generally accepted today. Multiple adultery is now often regarded as self-fulfillment. It is depicted positively in novels and movies as something to be envied and emulated. Violence against women, on the other hand, is one of the few remaining taboos, an act that rightly generates strong feelings of revulsion. What is more, many people in our society question the use of the death penalty for any crime, let alone for adultery. Indeed, most within the church would rightly be uncomfortable with the idea of executing adulterers.23 So we have to recognize that the envelope in which it is packaged makes it hard for contemporary readers to “hear” the message of Ezekiel 23.
This fact was illustrated personally for me at a recent scholarly conference where a paper was presented on Ezekiel 23. The presenter argued that on close examination the chapter deconstructed its own message, a message the presenter herself found to be theologically problematic. In personal conversation after the lecture, it transpired that part of the presenter’s interest in and concern over this particular passage stemmed from her own experience in hearing it used to justify the abuse of women. Because of her experiences and feminist perspective, the metaphor adopted by the prophet was deeply troubling to her, leading her to reject the message contained by the metaphor.
Two ways of using metaphors. However, there are actually two ways of using metaphors to address an audience. One way is to use to the full extent the accepted cultural commonplaces to drive home an unpalatable truth in an inescapable way. That is how the story of the poor man with one ewe lamb, which the prophet Nathan recounted to King David, works (2 Sam. 12:1–4). An inescapable straightforward logic drives the story to its conclusion, at which point the application is made. Alternatively, a metaphor may be used to turn upside down expectations, thus challenging the “cultural commonplaces.” So in the parable of the good Samaritan, the “cultural commonplace” that all Samaritans were filthy scoundrels is challenged by placing the expected villain in what turns out to be the hero’s role.
To its original audience, Ezekiel 23 was an example of the first category of usage. Though the women were outrageously unlike any that Ezekiel’s audience knew, the metaphor itself was unproblematic: There would have been no question in their minds that the fate of the women was thoroughly deserved. No matter how unpalatable the message that Jerusalem would inevitably be destroyed because of the people’s unfaithfulness to God, demonstrated in foreign political alliances, the metaphor clearly worked in that setting.
To a contemporary audience, however, it will be difficult to use it in that way unless considerable work is done first, explaining the ancient Near Eastern perspective.24 It may be more profitable to use it in the second mode, to undermine the contemporary cultural commonplaces that what used to be called sin is simply harmless fun, so long as it takes place between consenting adults. Sin is always a serious business, whether it takes the form of actual adultery or spiritual adultery, the worship of literal false gods of wood and gold or the spiritual false gods of materialism, capitalism, socialism, and every other “ism” that seems to offer a way of “salvation.” Sin has serious consequences. It has wages that must always be paid, whether by ourselves in eternity or by Christ on the cross. That belief is far from being a contemporary commonplace. It is, nonetheless, true.
Contemporary Significance
ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT of sin. Sin is an unfashionable concept. Christian counselor John Bettler has pointed out how our very language of sexual sins softens the idea of sin: “We don’t commit adultery anymore. We have affairs. . . . Adultery sounds harsh and ugly and destructive. An affair sounds kind of gentle and nice and almost acceptable. In the same way, we don’t have homosexuals anymore. We have people with alternative sexual preferences. We’ve softened the concept of sin.”25 But if we don’t have sin, we are no longer sinners. And if we are not sinners, we don’t need salvation; we need recovery instead.
Jerusalem was beyond help or recovery. She was a sinner of truly shocking proportions: a multiple-timing, “cheating wife” sort of sinner. There was no “twelve-step” program that could bring about her recovery from her sexual addiction. The “Higher Power” was not there to assist her but to pour out his justified wrath on her for her sin. The Babylonians would come—the very ones in whom she had trusted—and they would bring to an end her existence. It was time to write her sorry obituary: She was a sinner from her youth and a sinner to the end. She belonged together with the sexually immoral, the idolaters, the adulterers, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the thieves, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, and the swindlers; like them, she would certainly not “inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–10). It may be countercultural today to assert that “the wages of sin is death” and that those who offend in the smallest way against a pure and holy God deserve to spend an eternity experiencing his wrath, but it is not because that is an unscriptural notion.
All too often in our proclamation of the gospel we shy away from shocking our neighbors with the radical truth of the horrible, hell-deserving nature of sin. In that, we may be motivated by our desire not to put a stumbling block in our neighbor’s path. Perhaps we are also motivated by our desire to forget the fact that the personal sins we have ourselves committed are equally hell-deserving. Yet in eliminating the awfulness of sin, we simultaneously eliminate the meaning of the cross, the very heart of the gospel. For if sin is not really all that bad, why did the Son of God have to die to pay the debt that sinners owed?
God’s actions to save us. What is the truly remarkable, world-shaking notion in Scripture is not that God’s wrath is revealed against all ungodliness (Rom. 1:18). That is simply the logical consequence of his infinite holiness and purity. Rather, what is astonishing is that when that wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, not all will share Jerusalem’s fate. Certainly it is not because some especially righteous human beings do not deserve to share her fate. We all deserve the same judgment. We too are among those on Paul’s 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 list—certainly in our thoughts and, in some cases, also in our acts. Paul is speaking of us when he says, “That is what some of you were” (6:11). But God intervened. He acted to save us: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” We were sinners, but now in Christ we are saints. What an amazing change!
But once again Ezekiel 23 reminds us that that change cannot be wrought without the payment of a price. A penalty for sin must be borne (23:49); someone must cover my debt. For me to be reclothed in Christ’s righteousness, he had to be stripped naked. For me to be crowned with glory, he had to wear the crown of thorns. For me to live, he had to die. The violence I deserved fell on him; it is by his stripes that I am healed. The wrath to come is real, and if it did not fall on Jesus in my place, then I must bear it myself.
Ezekiel 23 is incorporated into Scripture not to give its readers some kind of salacious fantasy of sex and violence, as some contemporary commentators imagine. Certainly it is intended to shock, as was the case with the other “R-rated” section of Ezekiel’s prophecy (ch. 16). But the shock is designed to jolt the comfortable into a recognition of the reality and inevitability of the judgment to come so that we might see the utter folly of trusting in anything—or anyone—less than the living God. It is intended to strip away the pretensions of the pseudo-righteous and expose the naked truth that they too deserve the full weight of God’s wrath.
There is no message of hope in Ezekiel 23. The stone is rolled away to reveal the gaping mouth of the tomb, which is ready to swallow up defiled Jerusalem, just as it had earlier swallowed up defiled Samaria. But for those reading Ezekiel 23 from a New Testament perspective, the opened mouth of another tomb speaks a word of comfort even to those as defiled as Jerusalem. Because Christ has died in our place, and more than that has risen from the dead, there is now no condemnation for us who are in Christ Jesus! My death is swallowed up in his victory; my defilement is replaced by his purity, credited to my account. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I too have been washed, I have been justified, and I am being sanctified. What is more, this is true in spite of the sins that I continue to commit daily. Although I am unfaithful to my commitment to God and continue to sin against him regularly in thought, word, and deed, the gospel continues to be good news for me, a sinner. In the words of William Cowper’s hymn:
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.