Judah Judged (Ezekiel 4-24)

Ezekiel is still struggling to get the same message through to Judah—it is delusional to imagine Jerusalem and the Temple being saved. This has been Ezekiel’s theme from the beginning, and from the beginning, the Jews have resisted the message. The historical surroundings of this chapter remain unchanged. Zedekiah is yet a puppet king in Jerusalem getting bad advice from his advisors, who are keeping rebellion alive in Zedekiah’s heart. 

Ezekiel is going to work through a series of parables between chapters 16 and 19. The purpose of the parables is to drive home the point that Judah’s rebellion against Babylon is futile.

Parable One: Jerusalem, the Whoring Wife (1-43) 

The word of Yahweh comes to Ezekiel, and he informs Jerusalem that he is going to reveal to her the obscenities of her life as Yahweh sees them (1-2).

Ezekiel takes Jerusalem back to her birth. He calls the entire nation of Jerusalem and uses the city as a symbol for the entire nation. Once Jerusalem is gone, so is the nation.

1. Yahweh Sees Jerusalem’s Beginning (3-5)

   In this parable, Yahweh recalls Jerusalem’s birth in the land of the Canaanites: her father was an Amorite, and mother was a Hittite. 

   Jerusalem, before being conquered by David, stood in the middle of the land of Canaan and was occupied by the Jebusites. Ezekiel pictures Jerusalem as never cutting her umbilical cord with her pagan-mother past. She was never washed, salt-rubbed, or swaddled as a newborn. She wasn’t given an ounce of hygienic care, maternal pity, or paternal compassion. Jerusalem was pictured as cast out on her own and despised by everyone on the day of her birth, unwanted (3-5). 

2. Yahweh's Pity (6)

   Yahweh passed by and saw Jerusalem as an unwanted child wallowing in her blood, thrown out with the afterbirth as a child destined for infanticide. Yahweh spoke to Jerusalem, “LIVE!” (6)

3. Yahweh's Engagement (7-9) 

   Yahweh then describes Jerusalem as a nomad girl. He passed by and noticed and kept His eye upon her until she came into the age of love. As a poor, nomad girl, she grew up ill-clothed and often neglected. In the depth of her poverty, Yahweh made His covenant with her well before she had a chance to beautify herself. She was naked and pagan, but chosen and loved (7).

   Then Yahweh performed the tender act of the ancient marriage-covenant custom. He spread the corner of His garment over her, indicating His lifelong betrothal-covenant to protect and care for her. He would be exclusively hers for life (8). He then personally broke with tradition and performed the marriage purification rites of bathing, washing, and anointing her (9).

4. Yahweh’s Cherishing (10-14) 

   Yahweh clothed His bride in the best embroidered cloth and placed on her feet the best of footwear (10). He decked her out with jewelry and lavished upon her all things necessary to make her an exquisite beauty. He fed her the best food from the highest-priced suppliers. She came to have such dignity, excellence, and monarchical splendor that the nations treated her as royalty or as they did the king (11-13).

   Her beauty of heart and appearance was so captivating that her celebrity became known among many nations (14). All of this was done by Yahweh, her God who loved her. 

5. Yahweh’s Unfaithful Bride (15-34)

   Then the relationship went dark. She loved her beauty more than Yahweh and became more devoted to how she looked than to her marriage to Yahweh. In the end, she began to figure out how to make money off her beauty, her gift, and her talent. 

   Eventually, she was trading her beauty in exchange for profit.

   Her beauty and her skill were for sale; the gifts that made her attractive she cashed in for money and amusements (15).

   She sold out on five different counts:

• Idolatry

Jerusalem took her garments—you could say they represent righteousness—and put them on her shrines, declaring the shrines as objects of righteousness or goodness. Of course, these shrines were designed to gratify her lusts, so in essence she was declaring her lusts as righteous and good. 

Her depth of lustful idolatry was unparalleled (16).

She also made jewelry from the gold and silver given by God and made “images of men,” on which she threw some of her other garments, in essence making herself more seductive so she could sell herself to any buyer. This would be equal to posting seductive photos of herself to allure others into sin. Jerusalem was seeking the worship of others (17-18).

Lastly, Jerusalem took the best of their sacrifices and offered them to their shrines and the “images they made of themselves” (19). This was nothing less than self-worship.

• Prolicide

Yahweh’s bride had become so hardened that she sacrificed her children to the “images they made of themselves.” They slaughtered God’s own offspring (prolicide) and gave them to phony gods, offering them into the fire of their own lustful passion. This practice is akin to our own practice of feticide, done to worship our own bodies and freedoms (20-21).

• Ingratitude

In all their lust-driven, idol-chasing habits, Yahweh’s bride became full of ingratitude, forgetting the pity Yahweh had on her when she was but an unwanted infant (22).

• Platforming

Yahweh’s bride then did the unthinkable: she built high places, bringing shameless attention to herself, elevating her own person and building for herself a great platform for attention-getting. Ezekiel said she “built [her]self” a vaulted chamber. She branded herself as especially beautiful and an attraction of the world, not realizing what she was doing. She became addicted to her own attention, forgetting all about her husband (23-24).

• Seduction

Her “platforming” led Yahweh’s bride to offer herself sexually to any and everyone, having multiple partners without conscience. She played the whore with Egypt and the Assyrians and then sought to seduce Babylon. Jerusalem’s behavior was so bad in seeking an intimate relationship with anyone who would let her stay in the land and continue her addictive, lustful practices that even the Philistines became ashamed of her total lack of reasonable stability. 

Yahweh had decided at long last to give Jerusalem over to the hand of the greedy. 

Her lovers became so disgusted with her that they would rather destroy her than sleep with her. 

Whoredom was a metaphor employed by prophets to picture a nation willing to sell itself in exchange for living for ease, pleasure, and gratification. They didn't care what they had to do if only a nation would allow them to maintain their lust-addicted life (25-27).

In Jerusalem’s case, the whore metaphor is used because Jerusalem was becoming a sleepover destination and palace promoting the industry of idolatry, along with its deviant associated practices.  

• Prostitution

Yahweh’s wife was worse than a prostitute, for at least a prostitute would make her customer pay for services. Israel would pay the other nations to sleep with her. She would bribe them to make a covenant with her so she could continue living to satisfy her ungovernable cravings (28-34). Judah was paying anyone who would have her to save her from Babylon.