Ezekiel 23:1 - Meaning and Application

God had often spoken to Ezekiel, and through him to the people, about this same thing. Now his word comes again, because God says the same truth once, twice, and many times, and it is still too little for people to notice. To show sinners the evil of sin, and the danger and misery it brings, God must repeat himself again and again, because we are so unwilling to face the truth about ourselves.

The sinners exposed here are two women, two kingdoms, sister kingdoms, Israel and Judah. They were daughters of one mother, because they had long been one people. Solomon’s kingdom was so large and so full of people that, right after his death, it split into two. Before the split, they had already committed whoredom in Egypt, meaning they were guilty of idolatry, as shown earlier (Ezekiel 20:8). Scripture uses sexual uncleanness as a picture of sins that most anger God and ruin a people, which shows how serious that sin is. It is one of the worst sins, because other great sins are often compared to it. That should make us hate every kind of fleshly lust, every sign of it, and every step toward it. Such sin fights against the soul, fools sinners, charms them, pulls their minds away from God and from all that is good, ruins conscience, makes them hateful in the sight of the pure and holy God, and finally drowns them in destruction and ruin.

When the two kingdoms became separate, their names were changed. Israel is called the older sister, because she first broke away from the family of kings and priests that God had appointed, and because the ten tribes belonged to her, while only two belonged to Judah. God says of both kingdoms, They were mine, because they were the offspring of Abraham, God’s friend, and Jacob, God’s chosen one. They were in covenant with God, and they carried the sign of circumcision, the seal of that covenant. They were mine, so their turning away was a grave wrong. It was taking what belonged to God, a shameful act of ingratitude toward their greatest benefactor, and a treacherous breaking of the most sacred promises.

People who have claimed to be God’s people, but then turn from him, have much more to answer for than those who never made such a profession. God says, They were mine, they were married to me, and to me they bore sons and daughters. Many among them were devoted to God’s honor and served him, and they were the strength and beauty of those kingdoms, as children are to the families they come from. In this picture, Samaria and the kingdom of Israel are named Aholah, meaning “her own tabernacle,” because the places of worship they made were of their own choosing and invention. God never accepted them. “Her tabernacle for herself,” some translate it, meaning, let her keep it and take what comes with it. Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah are named Aholibah, meaning “my tabernacle is in her,” because their temple was the place God himself chose for his name. He owned it and honored them with signs of his presence there. Some who belong to God and confess his name have greater privileges than others, and those greater privileges make their guilt greater if they turn away. Yet those with fewer privileges are not innocent because of that.

Israel’s treacherous departure from God is then described. Aholah played the harlot while she was mine. Even though the ten tribes had left the house of David, God still owned them as his. Even though Jeroboam sinned by setting up the golden calves and led Israel into sin, God did not fully reject them as long as they worshiped only the God of Israel, though in the wrong way through images. But the path of sin goes downhill. Aholah turned to Baal worship (1 Kings 16:31), setting up that false god in rivalry with the Lord (1 Kings 18:21). Like a shameless adulteress who desires her lovers because they are well dressed and impressive, or because they are young and handsome, she desired the Assyrians. They wore blue, held positions as captains and rulers, and seemed desirable and honorable. So she admired her neighbors, especially the Assyrians, whose power had reached near her borders. She admired their idols and worshiped them. She admired the splendor of their courts and their military strength, and she tried to make alliances with them on any terms, as if her own God were not enough to trust. One king of Israel even gave the king of Assyria a thousand talents to gain his support (2 Kings 15:19). She desired the chosen men of Assyria, as people fit to be trusted and used in public service, and she gave herself to all their idols, which made her unclean.

Whatever creature we fix our love on, honor above God, and trust in, we make an idol of it. And whatever we make into an idol defiles us. The warning reaches back to the beginning of Israel’s history: She did not leave behind the whoredoms she brought from Egypt (Ezekiel 23:8). Their idolatry in Egypt was never to be forgotten, especially since they were then under Egypt’s cruel masters and taskmasters. As some have noted, when Satan boasted that he had walked through the earth as if it all belonged to him, God did not say, “Have you considered my people Israel in Egypt?” because they had become idolaters and could not be held up as a boast. Instead, he pointed to Job in the land of Uz. This corrupt bent in Israel, present when they first became a people, is a picture of the original corruption born with us. It shows the strong pull we all have toward the world and the flesh, much like Israel’s pull toward idolatry. It was in them from the start, and they were later blamed for not leaving behind the sins brought from Egypt. Those corrupt desires would not leave the flesh, even though Egypt had been a house of bondage. In the same way, the sinful desires and inclinations we bring into the world with us do not simply disappear. We still carry them, though the sin we were born in is the source of all the troubles human life faces.

The kingdom of Israel was then destroyed because of that turning away from God. God says, I have given her into the hand of her lovers (Ezekiel 23:9, Ezekiel 23:10). First, he justly gave her over to her own lust, as when Ephraim is joined to idols, “let him alone,” and then he gave her over to those lovers as well.

The neighboring nations, whose idols Israel copied and whose friendship she trusted, became the tools of her destruction. The Assyrians, whom she had long admired, quickly found the weak spot in the land, stripped her of her beauty and her defenses, and left her exposed and helpless. They carried her sons and daughters away into exile, killed her with the sword, and brought that kingdom to a complete end.

We have the full story in (2 Kings 17:6 and following), where the cause of this once-flourishing kingdom’s ruin is shown clearly. Israel forsook the God of Israel, worshiped other gods, and lived by the customs of the nations around her. For that reason God was very angry with them and removed them from his sight (Ezekiel 23:18). It is striking that the Assyrians, whom they had loved so much, became the very people God used to judge them. This shows how God often uses, in righteous judgment, the very thing sinners have set their hearts on. In the same way, the devil will always torment unrepentant sinners who now listen to him and follow his lead as a tempter.

So Samaria became famous among women, or more exactly, infamous. She became a name, meaning something people talked about widely. Her ruin for her idolatry became a warning to everyone not to do the same. Like the public execution of well-known criminals, it made her an example that should frighten others away from the sins that led to such a miserable and shameful end. As Scripture says, “All Israel will hear and fear” (Deuteronomy 21:21).