Commentary - Ezekiel 16:15-34

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Ezekiel's prophecy, the Lord continues his covenant lawsuit against Jerusalem, whom He has personified as His wife. Having just recounted in exquisite detail how He found her as an abandoned infant, rescued her, raised her, and adorned her with queenly splendor (Ezekiel 16:1-14), God now lays out the formal charges of her treachery. This is a graphic and brutal depiction of spiritual adultery. The central charge is that Jerusalem took every single good gift her husband gave her, beauty, clothing, jewelry, food, and even children, and used them to prostitute herself to idols and pagan nations. Her sin is portrayed as insatiable, public, and ultimately, nonsensical. She is not even a common harlot who sins for profit; she is a reverse harlot who pays her lovers to come and defile her. This passage is a devastating portrait of how covenantal privilege, when combined with pride and ingratitude, leads to the most profound forms of depravity.

The prophet is not being gratuitous with this shocking imagery. He is using the strongest possible metaphor to communicate the horror of idolatry. To God, idolatry is not a minor theological error; it is marital betrayal of the highest order. It is the creature taking the Creator's lavish gifts and offering them as worship to dead things. The passage systematically details this betrayal, from the initial turn of the heart to the public flaunting of sin, culminating in the ultimate abomination of child sacrifice. This is the legal indictment that provides the righteous basis for the judgment God is about to pronounce.

Outline

Context In Ezekiel

Ezekiel 16 is one of the longest chapters in the book and contains its most extended allegory. The prophet is ministering to the exiles in Babylon, whose hearts were still hard and who did not yet grasp the righteousness of God's judgment against Jerusalem. This chapter serves as a comprehensive explanation. It is a legal brief, a covenantal lawsuit, that justifies the coming destruction of the city and temple. The chapter divides neatly into three parts: God's astonishing grace to Jerusalem (vv. 1-14), Jerusalem's grotesque apostasy (vv. 15-34), and God's righteous judgment and ultimate, unbelievable promise of restoration (vv. 35-63). This section, the indictment, is therefore the hinge of the chapter. It demonstrates that Jerusalem's fall was not an accident of geopolitics but the direct consequence of her profound and multifaceted unfaithfulness to the God who had saved and blessed her beyond all measure.

Key Issues

The Reverse Harlot

The Bible consistently uses the metaphor of marriage to describe the covenant relationship between God and His people. It is a relationship of exclusive love, faithfulness, and mutual belonging. God is the faithful husband, and His people are His bride. This makes idolatry the spiritual equivalent of adultery. It is a violation of the central vow of the covenant: "You shall have no other gods before me."

But Ezekiel takes this metaphor to a place of shocking intensity. Israel is not just an unfaithful wife who had a momentary lapse. She is a brazen, insatiable, public harlot. And then, in the climax of this section, God says she is something even worse, something that defies all categories. She is a reverse harlot. A normal prostitute is in it for the money; her lovers pay her. But Jerusalem, in her desperate lust for anyone but her husband, pays her lovers to come to her. She bribes them with the very treasures her husband gave her. This is not sin for gain; this is sin for sin's sake. It is a portrait of a heart so sick, so languishing, that it will pay any price for its own degradation. It is the complete inversion of the gospel, where the divine Husband pays the ultimate price to redeem His wayward bride.

Verse by Verse Commentary

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your name, and you poured out your harlotries on every passer-by who might be willing.

The turn happens here. After fourteen verses describing God's lavish grace, the word But lands like a hammer blow. The first step into apostasy is pride. She "trusted in your beauty." But where did the beauty come from? God had just said, "your beauty was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you" (v. 14). She took a gift and began to treat it as an achievement. She took God's glory on her and began to think it was her own. This pride immediately gave birth to promiscuity. She "played the harlot," offering the fame and glory God had given her ("your name") to any and every false god or foreign power that happened to walk by.

16-17 You took some of your clothes, made for yourself high places of various colors, and played the harlot on them, which should never come about nor happen. You also took your splendid jewelry made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images that you might play the harlot with them.

The perversion begins in earnest. The gifts of the husband are now being used to furnish the adulterous bed. The beautiful clothes God gave her are torn up to decorate pagan "high places." This is a picture of taking the glories of true worship and using them to adorn false worship. Then it gets worse. She takes the jewelry, explicitly identified as "My gold and of My silver, which I had given you," and melts it down to create idols, "male images." She is literally creating new lovers out of the wealth her husband provided. This is a direct assault on the first and second commandments.

18-19 Then you took your embroidered cloth and covered them and gave My oil and My incense before them. Also My bread which I gave you, fine flour, oil, and honey with which I had you eat, you gave before them for a soothing aroma; so it happened,” declares Lord Yahweh.

The desecration is total. Every element of the covenant relationship is now being offered to these idols. The special embroidered cloth, a gift of love, is used to dress the idols. The holy oil and incense, intended for the worship of Yahweh, are now burned before them. Even the daily provision of food, the very bread God gave her to sustain her life, is set out as a sacrifice to these dead things. God's verdict is stark and personal: "My bread which I gave you... you gave before them." The Lord confirms it with a solemn oath: "so it happened." This is not an exaggeration; it is the historical truth.

20-21 “Moreover, you took your sons and daughters, whom you had borne to Me, and sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. Were your harlotries so small a matter? You slaughtered My children and gave them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire.

Here we reach the absolute bottom. The sin moves from idolatry to murder. And not just any murder, but the murder of her own children. God's language here is crucial: "your sons and daughters, whom you had borne to Me." These are covenant children. They belong to God. And she slaughtered "My children" and offered them to demons like Molech. God asks a searing rhetorical question: "Were your harlotries so small a matter?" Was the spiritual adultery not enough? Did you have to add the slaughter of My children to your list of crimes? This is the point where sin ceases to be merely foolish or rebellious and becomes monstrous.

22 Besides all your abominations and harlotries you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, you were squirming in your blood!

At the heart of all this depravity is the sin of ingratitude. She forgot where she came from. She forgot the grace that had been shown to her when she was a helpless, bloody infant abandoned in a field. Pride and spiritual amnesia go hand in hand. When we forget the gutter from which God rescued us, we begin to think that His ongoing blessings are our own possession, to do with as we please. Remembering grace is the foundation of faithfulness.

23-25 “Now it happened after all your evil, ‘Woe, woe to you!’ declares Lord Yahweh, that you built yourself a shrine and made yourself a high place in every square. You built yourself a high place at the head of every street and made your beauty abominable, and you spread your legs to every passer-by to multiply your harlotry.

The sin is not private; it is public and defiant. After all this evil, she doubles down. God pronounces a formal curse: "Woe, woe to you!" She builds public venues for her idolatry, a shrine and a high place in every public square and at every major intersection. She is not ashamed; she is advertising her unfaithfulness. She took the beauty God gave her and made it "abominable," an object of disgust. The language is raw: she "spread your legs to every passer-by." This is a picture of indiscriminate spiritual lust, a complete abandonment of covenant loyalty.

26-29 You also played the harlot with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and you multiplied your harlotry to provoke Me to anger. Behold now, I have stretched out My hand against you and cut off your rations. And I gave you up to the desire of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, who are ashamed of your lewd way. Moreover, you played the harlot with the Assyrians because you were not satisfied; you played the harlot with them and still were not satisfied. You also multiplied your harlotry with the land of merchants, Chaldea, yet even with this you were not satisfied.” ’ ”

Here the metaphor shifts to encompass Israel's disastrous foreign policy. Her spiritual adultery with false gods was mirrored by her political adultery with foreign powers. Instead of trusting her husband, Yahweh, for protection, she sought security in alliances. First with Egypt, her old enslaver. Then, when that proved unsatisfying, with Assyria. Then with Chaldea, or Babylon. This is a picture of the frantic, insatiable nature of sin. It never delivers on its promises, so it always drives you to the next thing, and the next, and the next. Notice also God's initial, disciplinary judgment in verse 27. He "cut off your rations" and gave her over to the Philistines, who, in a staggering irony, were themselves "ashamed" of Judah's blatant spiritual promiscuity. Even the pagans were shocked by her behavior.

30-32 “How languishing is your heart,” declares Lord Yahweh, “while you do all these things, the actions of a bold-faced harlot. When you built your shrine at the head of every way and made your high place in every square, in disdaining your earnings, you were not like a harlot. You adulteress wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband!

God now gives His diagnosis. The problem is a sick, weak, "languishing" heart. The outward actions of a "bold-faced harlot" are just symptoms of this deep internal disease. And then He makes the stunning accusation: "you were not like a harlot." Why? Because a harlot does it for pay; she has earnings. But Jerusalem disdained earnings. She was not in it for profit. She is simply an "adulteress wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband." Her motivation was not greed, but pure rebellion and lust for anyone other than the one to whom she was bound by covenant.

33-34 Thus you are the opposite of those women in your harlotries, in that no one plays the harlot as you do, because you give away your earnings and no earnings are given to you; thus you are the opposite.”

This is the climax of the indictment. God spells out the inversion. Men give gifts to prostitutes. But "you give your gifts to all your lovers." You bribe them to come to you. You are paying for your own defilement. The political application is clear: Israel and Judah repeatedly tried to buy the favor of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon with tribute payments, using the treasures of the temple to do so. They were paying the pagan nations to be their political lovers. This is the ultimate picture of spiritual insanity. It is a heart so set against God that it will bankrupt itself in the service of its own ruin.

Application

This passage ought to land on the modern church with terrifying force. We are the bride of Christ, rescued not from a field, but from the pit of hell. We have been washed not with water, but with the blood of the Son of God. We have been adorned not with gold and silver, but with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. The grace shown to us is infinitely greater than the grace shown to Old Covenant Jerusalem. Therefore, our potential for treachery is also infinitely greater.

How do we play the harlot? We do it every time we take the gifts God has given us, our time, our money, our talents, our families, our minds, our affections, and we lay them on the altar of a false god. That idol might be career, or comfort, or political power, or sexual gratification, or the approval of men. We play the harlot when we trust in political alliances or government programs to provide the security that only our divine Husband can give. We are a reverse harlot every time we spend our God-given resources to pursue sin, paying for our own degradation.

The root of it all is the same: we forget the gospel. We forget the state we were in when Christ found us. We begin to trust in our own beauty, our own doctrinal precision, our own moral performance. We take the splendor He bestowed on us and call it our own. The only defense against this kind of spiritual adultery is a constant, grateful remembrance of the cross. We must daily preach the gospel to ourselves, reminding our languishing hearts that we have a Husband who did not just find us in our blood, but who shed His own blood to make us His own. He is the opposite of our sin. We paid for our ruin; He paid for our redemption.