Ezekiel 16:15 - Meaning and Application

These verses show the great wickedness of Israel, especially their idolatry, even after all the kindness God had shown them. Ezekiel describes their sin with the image of a beautiful young woman who was rescued from ruin, cared for, and richly provided for by a loving benefactor who had been like both a father and a husband to her. Their idol worship was their chief offending sin. It began in the later part of Solomon’s reign, and from then on it remained the nation’s crying sin until the captivity, though reforming kings sometimes held it back for a time.

They did not only worship the true God with images, as the ten tribes did with the calves at Dan and Bethel. They also worshiped false gods, like Baal and Moloch, along with the whole crowd of pagan gods. Scripture often compares this sin to adultery and prostitution for several reasons. It breaks a marriage covenant with God, it corrupts the mind and puts the soul under the rule of the senses, it deadens the conscience, and it is a shameful thing for those who belong to the Lord to join themselves to an idol. The sin is also deeply deceiving, and people often do not recover once they are caught in it.

Now notice what led them into this sin. First, they became proud. God says, “You trusted in your beauty” and used their fame to seek favor with the nations around them (Ezekiel 16:15). They thought that, since others admired them, they should win their goodwill by joining in their worship and copying their customs. Solomon did this too, giving way to idolatry to please his wives and their families. Many young people are ruined by pride, especially pride in outward beauty.

Second, they forgot where they came from. God says, “You have not remembered the days of your youth” (Ezekiel 16:22). They forgot how poor, weak, and despised they had once been, and how much God had done for them. That is a strong check on pride and sensuality. We should remember what we are and how much we owe to God’s free grace.

Third, they were weak in understanding and weak in self-control. God says, “How weak is your heart” when you do all these things (Ezekiel 16:30). Strong lusts show a weak heart. Such people do not truly know themselves, and they cannot govern themselves. Yet this woman is described as weak and also as bold and demanding. Those who are most foolish are often the most overbearing, and they try to guide others when they cannot guide themselves.

They worshiped every idol that came their way, every false god they were asked to honor. God says, “You poured out your sexual immorality on everyone who passed by” (Ezekiel 16:15). They were quick to accept every new temptation, no matter how foolish it was. No foreign idol was brought in, and no new god was invented, that they were not ready to embrace. They were like a common prostitute who offers herself to everyone and multiplies her unfaithfulness (Ezekiel 16:25).

They also decorated their idol shrines, groves, and high places with the rich clothes God had given them (Ezekiel 16:16, 18). He says they covered the high places with colorful garments, making use of gifts that came from his kindness. God takes this very seriously: “Such things should never happen” is the sense of his words. He will not quietly endure such behavior without showing his displeasure.

They even turned the jewels God had given them into images for worship (Ezekiel 16:17). God calls them “my gold and my silver,” because he gave them those things, and because he still owned them. God gives us wealth through trade, skill, labor, and the fruit of the earth, but what he gives still belongs to him. We should use it to honor him, and we are accountable to him for it. If they had remembered that their silver and gold were God’s, they would not have turned them into idols.

They also used God’s own good gifts in the service of idols (Ezekiel 16:18). His oil, incense, flour, honey, and meat were placed before false gods as offerings. The Lord says plainly that these things were done, and he knows them fully. This shows how deeply they loved their idols, since they were willing to give away what God had provided for their own needs and for his service. Their example should put us to shame if we are stingy in serving the true and living God.

They even sacrificed their children to their idols.

This is pressed here, and often elsewhere, as one of the worst examples of their idolatry. In this sin, the devil won a terrible victory over human reason and natural affection, as we see in (Jeremiah 7:31; Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:35). They took their sons and daughters, not only making them pass through the fire as a sign that they belonged to Moloch, but actually sacrificing them to be burned, as in (Ezekiel 16:20).

Never was fatherly authority twisted into such cruel tyranny. Yet that was not the worst part. It was a direct wrong against God himself, who claims a special right over children, even more than over gold, silver, or food: “They are my children” (Ezekiel 16:21), “the sons and daughters you bore to me” (Ezekiel 16:20). He is the Father of spirits, and human souls belong to him in a special way. So to take human life unjustly is a serious insult to the God of life.

Israel’s children belonged to him by an even stronger claim. They were children of the covenant, born into God’s house. God had told Abraham, “I will be God to you and to your offspring,” and their flesh carried the sign of that covenant from eight days old. They were meant to bear God’s name and keep his church alive. To murder them was deeply inhuman, but to murder them in honor of an idol was even more wicked.

It is hard to think about this without deep anger. Parents, with no pity, shed the innocent blood of their own children. By offering these pieces of themselves to the devil as sacrifices, they openly gave themselves to him as living sacrifices. How foolish it was that children born for God were sacrificed to demons.

Note this: children of parents who belong to the visible church are to be viewed as born to God, as his children. We should love them, pray for them, raise them for him, and, if he asks for them, gladly give them back to him. After all, may he not do what he wants with what is his own?

On this example of idolatry, which should have been marked with special shame, the prophet asks, “Was this a small matter of your whoredoms?” (Ezekiel 16:20). That question shows that some people treated it lightly and even turned it into a joke. There is no sin so evil that hardened people will not mock it. But is whoredom, spiritual unfaithfulness, a small matter? Is it a small matter for people to turn their children into beasts and make the devil their god? It will be shown to be a great matter soon enough.

They also built temples for their idols so that others would be drawn in and join their worship. After all this secret wickedness, for which the cry goes out, “Woe, woe to you” meaning those still moving on in sin are in a miserable state, and this is a warning to them if they would only listen, they reached such bold shamelessness that they made their sin public (Ezekiel 16:23-35). They had long had a whore’s heart, but now they had a whore’s forehead and were past blushing. They built a prominent place, a brothel house, as the margin says, and that is what their idol temples were like. They set up high places for one idol or another in every street and at every street corner, as in (Ezekiel 16:31).

They did everything they could to seduce others and spread the corruption by making idolatry as tempting as possible. But their leaders in idolatry only made themselves vile, and even those who had been drawn in by them began to feel sickened by their extreme wickedness. “You have made your beauty to be hated,” even by those who once admired it. The Jewish nation, by leaving their own God and chasing after the gods of the surrounding nations, made themselves low and despised even in the eyes of their heathen neighbors. Far more, their beauty was hated by all who were wise and good, and by all who cared for God’s honor and true religion.

Note this: people shame themselves when they bring disgrace on the faith they profess. And rightly, that beauty and excellence which people have turned into a matter of pride will at last become something others loathe.

Third, consider the aggravations of this sin. They were eager after the idols of the very nations that had oppressed and persecuted them. The Egyptians were one example. They were well known for idolatry and for the foolishest, most senseless idol worship. Long ago they had abused Israel with cruel treatment, and more recently with treacherous behavior. They were always either cruel or false to Israel. Yet Israel was so foolish that they committed fornication with the Egyptians, their neighbors, not only by joining in their idol worship, but also by making alliances with them and depending on them for help in trouble. That was an unfaithful turning away from God.

The Assyrians were another example. They had also been a trouble to Israel. “And yet you have played the whore with them” (Ezekiel 16:28). Though they lived farther away, Israel welcomed their idols and their superstitious customs. In this way they multiplied their unfaithfulness all the way to Chaldea. They borrowed images of gods, designs for altars, ways of sacrifice, and other such foolish practices from that far-off enemy land and brought them into the land of Canaan, where they were accepted and established.

As George Herbert long ago warned, or at least feared, one nation’s river may swallow another’s, and the Thames may be polluted by letting both into its streams. In the same way, one corrupt nation can spread its evil ways into another.

They had also been under God’s warnings because of their sins, yet they still went on in them (Ezekiel 16:27). God had stretched out his hand over them to threaten and frighten them. That is often his way before he brings ruin, trying first to lead people to repentance through lighter judgments. He did that here. Before he sent such a famine that the staff of bread was broken, he reduced their ordinary food. Before he handed them over to the Chaldeans to be destroyed, he let the daughters of the Philistines mock them for their idolatries.

The Philistines hated them, but even idolaters were ashamed of the shameless behavior of Israel. Israel had become more profane in idolatry than any of their neighbors. Other nations did not keep changing their gods, but Israel did, as in (Jeremiah 2:10-11). For this they were rightly punished by the Philistines.

Or this may point to the raids the Philistines made into southern Judah during Ahaz’s reign, when they weakened and impoverished the land. That was the beginning of their troubles (2 Chronicles 28:18), but they did not learn from those judgments. So, in the end, they were justly left to ruin.

When stubborn sinners are called to account, they will not only be told about the mercies they failed to thank God for. They will also be told about the afflictions that failed to humble them (Amos 4:11).

They were also never satisfied in their spiritual unfaithfulness. “You could not be satisfied” (Ezekiel 16:28, Ezekiel 16:29). Even after they had multiplied their idols and superstitious practices beyond measure, they still looked for new gods and new ways of worship. Those who truly join themselves to the true God find enough in him to satisfy them. They may keep wanting more of God, but they never want more than God.

But those who leave this living fountain for broken cisterns soon grow tired of what they have, yet they are never truly filled. They quickly have enough of the gods they have made, and then they keep searching for more. They cannot be satisfied.

They also spent heavily on their idolatry. They paid large sums to get images and altars made, and they hired priests from foreign nations to serve them. Harlots usually receive payment, but this shameless adulteress did the opposite. She did not get paid to serve idols, she paid idols to protect her and receive her worship. This point is strongly pressed in Ezekiel 16:31-34.

“In this, you are unlike other women in your unfaithfulness.” Others are pursued, but you pursue those who do not want you. You are eager to make alliances with heathen nations that look down on you. Others receive gifts, but you give your gifts, the gifts God had kindly given you, to your idols. In this, you are like a wife who commits adultery, not for money as a prostitute might, but only for the sake of sin itself.

Spiritual lusts, the cravings of the mind, such as their desire for idols, are often as strong and urgent as bodily lusts. Sin is made worse when people become their own tempters and spend their own wealth on it, without even hoping for worldly gain. Such people are “transgressors without cause” (Psalm 25:3), truly wicked in their rebellion.

And has Jerusalem not been shown her abominations in all this? What greater evil could she have committed? Here we should see, with amazement and horror, what human nature becomes when God gives people over to themselves, even when they have had every advantage to do better. The path of sin always slopes downward. We are drawn toward what is forbidden.