A parable of the adulterous woman – Jerusalem’s unfaithfulness
16
Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 📚“Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, 3 📚and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. 4 📚And as for your birth, in the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, and you were not washed in water to cleanse you; you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. 5 📚No eye pitied you to do any of these for you, to have compassion on you, but you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day that you were born.
6 📚“And when I passed by you, and saw you defiled in your own blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, ‘Live!’ 7 📚I caused you to grow like a plant of the field, and you increased and became great, and you reached the age of wearing beautiful ornaments. Your breasts were formed, and your hair grew, but you were naked and bare.
8 📚“When I passed by you, and looked at you, I saw your time was the time of love, and I spread my cloak over you and covered your nakedness; yes, I gave my oath to you, and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine.
16:6-8 God looked at Jerusalem and choose it as His city on earth. But He did not immediately take possession of her. He waited until the proper time. Then He entered into a marriage relationship with her (here, as in Mal 2:14, called a covenant). Verse 8 probably points to the time when God’s servant David took the city from the Jebusites (2 Sam 5:6-9). From here on in this chapter Jerusalem is the capital city of the people of Israel and represents them.⚜
9 📚“Then I washed you with water; yes, I thoroughly washed away your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil. 10 📚I also clothed you with embroidered work, and gave you sandals of badger skin, and I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. 11 📚I also adorned you with ornaments, and put bracelets on your arms, and a necklace around your neck. 12 📚And I put a jewel on your forehead, and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 📚Thus you were adorned with gold and silver 📖, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered work. You ate food made with fine flour and honey and oil. And you were exceedingly beautiful, and you rose to a position of royalty 📖. 14 📚And your fame 📖 went out among the nations for your beauty 📖, for it was perfect through my splendour, which I had put upon you, says the Lord God.
16:9-14 God inspired His people (especially David and Solomon) to build and beautify the city. But surely more than buildings is meant here. Jerusalem was beautiful also because it was the center of true religion and spirituality. The “crown” of v 12 probably means God’s temple situated on one of the hills of Jerusalem.⚜
15 📚“But you trusted in your own beauty, and acted like a prostitute because of your fame, and poured out your acts of adultery on everyone 📖 who passed by who would have it. 16 📚And you took some of your garments and adorned your high places with various colours, and acted like a prostitute on them; such things should not happen or ever be. 17 📚You also took your beautiful jewels made from my gold and my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men 📖, and committed prostitution with them, 18 and took your embroidered garments, and covered them, and set my oil and my incense before them. 19 📚Also my food which I gave you, fine flour and oil and honey, with which I fed you, you set before them as a fragrant aroma. This is the way it was, says the Lord God.
16:18-19 All that the people possessed had been the gift of God. They offered their gifts to idols which God hated.⚜
20 📚“Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to me, and you sacrificed them to the idols to be devoured. Were your acts of prostitution a small matter, 21 📚that you slaughtered my children, and offered them up to pass through the fire for the idols? 22 📚And in all your abominations and your acts of prostitution you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and defiled in your blood.
23 📚“And it came about after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! says the Lord God), 24 📚that you also built for yourself a shrine, and made a high place in each street for yourself. 25 📚You built your high places at the head of every road, and made your beauty abhorrent, and offered yourself to every one who passed by, and multiplied your acts of prostitution.
16:23-25 Places of idolatry which had been on the hills and in the towns around Jerusalem were built afterwards in Jerusalem itself.⚜
26 📚You also committed adultery with your neighbors the Egyptians, great of flesh, and increased your acts of prostitution, provoking me to anger. 27 📚See, therefore, that I stretched out my hand over you, and reduced your rations, and delivered you up to the will of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd way.
16:27 After the death of Solomon the kingdom was divided, and Judah and Jerusalem lost much territory and were greatly weakened. They lost more territory in 701 BC when the king of Assyria gave some of it to the Philistines.⚜
28 📚You also acted like a prostitute with the Assyrians, because you were unsatiable; yes, you acted like a prostitute with them, and yet could not be satisfied. 29 📚And you multiplied your acts of adultery with the land of merchants, Chaldea; and yet you were not satisfied with that”.
16:28-29 Whatever nation became the great power in western Asia Israel ran after it and its gods.⚜
30 📚How weak is your heart, says the Lord God, since you do all these things, the work of a bold-faced prostitute! 31 📚When you build your shrine at the head of every road, and make your high place in each street, you have not been like a prostitute, because you scorned payment, 32 📚but like a wife who commits adultery, who takes strangers instead of her husband! 33 📚They give payments to all prostitutes, but you give your payments to all your lovers, and hire them, so that they will come to you from every side for your prostitution. 34 And in your prostitution you are different from other women, because no one comes after you to commit adultery, and because you give payment, and no payment is given to you; therefore you are different.
16:15-34 The city is not mere buildings, but its people. In these verses Jerusalem, representing Israel, is pictured as going away from the one true God to worship other gods. This began to happen toward the end of Solomon’s reign and continued with some breaks until Ezekiel’s own day (1 Kings 11:4-8; Ezek 8:5-16). In the Bible unfaithfulness to God in spiritual matters is compared to adultery and prostitution. See chapter 23; Jer 3; Hos 2.⚜
16:31-34 Jerusalem, unlike prostitutes, got nothing for giving herself to other gods. Her behavior was worse than that of a common prostitute. So God calls her in v 32 an adulterous wife who refuses her own husband and fully abandons herself to strangers.⚜
The penalty for unfaithfulness
35 📚“Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the LORD. 36 📚Thus says the Lord God: Because your filthiness was poured out, and your nakedness uncovered through your prostitution with your lovers and with all of your abominable idols, and through the blood of your children, which you gave to them, 37 📚see, therefore, I will gather all your lovers, those with whom you have taken pleasure, and all those whom you have loved, with all whom you have hated, I will gather them around against you, and will uncover your nakedness to them, so that they may see all your nakedness.
16:37 Jerusalem’s enemies would destroy her and strip her and leave her as she was in the beginning (vs 4,5).⚜
38 📚And I will judge you, as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and I will bring blood on you in fury 📖 and jealousy.
39 📚And I will also give you into their hands, and they will tear down your shrines, and break down your high places. Also they will strip you of your clothes, and take away your beautiful jewels, and leave you naked and bare. 40 📚They will also bring up a mob against you, and they will hurl stones on you 📖, and pierce you with their swords. 41 📚And they will burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; and I will cause you to stop acting like a prostitute, and also you will no longer hire lovers.
16:41 After the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah’s captivity in Babylon the people renounced idolatry.⚜
42 📚So I will cause my fury toward you to subside, and my jealousy will depart from you, and I will be quiet, and no longer be angry.
43 📚“Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have provoked me in all these things, see, I will also bring repayment of your way on your head, says the Lord God; and you will not commit this lewdness on top of all your other abominations.
16:35-43 Now God sets forth what Jerusalem will have to suffer because of her unfaithfulness.⚜
16:43 Jerusalem had sunk so low morally and spiritually that she could not escape. Her punishment was certain to come.⚜
Jerusalem and Samaria their sin and restoration
44 📚“See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb against you, saying, ‘As the mother, so her daughter.’ 45 📚You are the daughter of your mother who loathed her husband and her children, and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother 📖 was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite. 46 📚And your elder sister was Samaria, who lived to the north of you, she and her daughters; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, was Sodom 📖 and her daughters 📖. 47 📚Yet you have not followed their ways or acted according to their abominations, but, as if that were too little, you became more corrupt in your ways than all of them. 48 📚As I live, says the Lord God, neither Sodom your sister nor her daughters did as you have done, you and your daughters.
49 📚“See, this was the wickedness of your sister Sodom: Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, and she did not strengthen the hands of the poor and needy. 50 📚And they were haughty, and committed abomination in front of me; therefore I took them away as I saw good.
16:49-50 Sodom’s sins were both sins of commission and of omission – they did what they should not have done, and did not do what they should have done. Both kinds of sins are equally bad. On sins of omission see Num 32:23; 1 Sam 12:23; Matt 25:31-46.⚜
51 📚Neither did Samaria commit half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous in comparison with all the abominations which you have done. 52 📚And you, who have judged your sisters, must bear your own shame, for the sins that you have committed are more abominable than theirs. They are more righteous than you. Yes, and be disgraced, and bear your shame, for you have made your sisters seem righteous.
16:44-52 Jerusalem is now compared to Samaria the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, and Sodom the ancient wicked city destroyed by God (Gen 19:24-29).⚜
16:51-52 No words could better show how vile Jerusalem had become. Samaria’s people were so evil God sent them into exile. Sodom was the most notoriously wicked city of ancient times and was completely destroyed for its many sins. If Samaria and Sodom appeared righteous compared to Jerusalem what must Jerusalem have been? And did she vainly imagine she could escape God’s judgment?⚜
53 📚“When I reverse their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then along with them I will bring back the captives of your captivity 📖, 54 📚that you may bear your own shame and be disgraced by all that you have done by being a source of comfort to them. 55 📚When your sisters, Sodom and her daughters, return to their former state, and Samaria and her daughters return to their former state, then you and your daughters will return to your former state. 56 📚For in the day of your pride your lips did not even mention your sister Sodom, 57 📚before your wickedness was uncovered. So at this time you are reproached by the daughters of Syria, and all who are around her, and the daughters of the Philistines. Everyone around you despises you. 58 📚You have brought it on yourselves by your lewdness and your abominations, says the LORD.
59 📚“For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant.
16:4-5 When first built Jerusalem was not a holy city, not beautiful, not loved by anyone. In fact it was treated as an unwanted female infant and abandoned to die.⚜
60 📚Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you made in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant 📖 with you. 61 📚Then you will remember your ways, and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, your elder and your younger; and I will give them to you as daughters, but not because of your covenant.
16:61 At that time Samaria and Sodom will not be separate kingdoms but will be associated and subsidiary to Jerusalem.⚜
62 📚And I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the LORD, 63 📚so that you may remember, and be ashamed, and never again open your mouth because of your shame, when I am propitiated 📖 toward you for all that you have done, says the Lord God”.
16:1-63 This whole chapter is an elaborate parable or allegory about Jerusalem. It may be divided into 5 parts – God’s chosen city (vs 1-14), the city and apostasy (vs 15-34), the city and judgment (vs 35-43), the city compared with her sisters (vs 44-52), and the restoration of the city and her sisters (vs 53-63).⚜
16:63 Jerusalem’s forgiveness and restoration and God’s covenant with them will be based on the atonement He will make for them. Can this refer to anything other than the cross of Christ?⚜
16:53-63 Here begins a message of hope – the first such message about Jerusalem in Ezekiel. Jerusalem would be restored to her former glory (v 55). But only after she had been punished for her sins (vs 58,59). Along with Jerusalem Samaria and Sodom and the towns associated with them would also be restored. This is the only place in the Bible that speaks of the restoration of Sodom. It surely speaks of a time when the whole land of Canaan including the area where Sodom was located would blossom like a rose (Isa 35:1-2).⚜