The Wages of Harlotry Text: Ezekiel 16:35-43
Introduction: The Logic of Judgment
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has trained its gag reflex to go off at the first mention of divine judgment. We have fashioned for ourselves a god who is all therapeutic affirmation and no holy fire, a god who would never be so rude as to call sin what it is, let alone punish it. But the God of Scripture, the God who actually exists, is not a cosmic therapist. He is a holy Father and a jealous Husband. And because He is a God of covenant love, He is also a God of covenant wrath. His wrath is not the arbitrary rage of a pagan deity; it is the righteous, passionate, and holy jealousy of a spurned husband for his adulterous wife.
In the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, God lays out His case against Jerusalem with the most graphic and shocking imagery in all of Scripture. He recounts how He found her as an abandoned infant, bloody and dying in a field. He rescued her, cleaned her, raised her, and entered into a marriage covenant with her. He lavished her with gifts, clothed her in splendor, and made her famous among the nations. And what did she do? She took His gifts, the very beauty He bestowed upon her, and used them to prostitute herself to every passerby. She became a harlot more brazen than any street-walker, paying her lovers instead of being paid, and sacrificing the very children of the marriage to her demonic idols.
The passage before us today is the sentencing phase of the trial. God has laid out the evidence, and now He pronounces the verdict and the punishment. And we must understand that the punishment is not random. It is meticulously, poetically, and justly tailored to the crime. God's judgments are never arbitrary; they are always freighted with a terrible and beautiful logic. He is about to make Judah reap what she has sown. She lusted after the nations, so the nations will be her ruin. She exposed herself in lust, so she will be exposed in shame. She shed the blood of her children, so her own blood will be shed. This is not divine cruelty. This is divine justice, and if we have ears to hear, we will see that it is a severe mercy.
The Text
35 Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of Yahweh. 36Thus says Lord Yahweh, "Because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your sons which you gave to idols, 37therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, even all those whom you loved and all those whom you hated. So I will gather them against you from all around and uncover your nakedness to them that they may see all your nakedness. 38Thus I will judge you like women who commit adultery or shed blood are judged; and I will bring on you the blood of wrath and jealousy. 39I will also give you into the hands of your lovers, and they will pull down your shrines, tear down your high places, strip you of your clothing, take away your splendid jewelry, and will leave you naked and bare. 40They will bring up an assembly against you, and they will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords. 41They will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women. Then I will make you cease from playing the harlot, and you will also no longer give your earnings to your lovers. 42So I will cause My wrath against you to be at rest, and My jealousy will depart from you, and I will be quiet, and I will not be provoked anymore. 43Because you have not remembered the days of your youth but have enraged Me by all these things, behold, I in turn will bring your way down on your own head," declares Lord Yahweh, "so that you will not commit this lewdness on top of all your other abominations."
(Ezekiel 16:35-43 LSB)
The Charge and the Summons (v. 35-37)
God begins his sentence by summoning the defendant and restating the charges.
"Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of Yahweh. Thus says Lord Yahweh, 'Because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your sons which you gave to idols, therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers...'" (Ezekiel 16:35-37a)
Notice the direct address: "O harlot." God does not soften His language to protect Judah's feelings. This is not a time for euphemisms. When sin has become this brazen, it must be called by its right name. Spiritual adultery is harlotry. Idolatry is whoredom. To worship anything other than the God who made you and redeemed you is to prostitute your heart. This is the constant testimony of Scripture. God established a marriage covenant with Israel at Sinai, and He demands exclusive loyalty. To give that loyalty to another is not just a mistake; it is betrayal of the highest order.
The charges are twofold. First is the sin of unrestrained lust: "your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered." She was not coy or subtle in her sin. She flaunted it. She pursued her idolatrous affairs with the Egyptians and Assyrians with reckless abandon. This is a picture of a culture that has lost all sense of shame, that openly celebrates what it ought to mourn. Second, and even more horrific, is the charge of child sacrifice: "because of the blood of your sons which you gave to idols." This is where covenant infidelity always leads. When you abandon the true God, you don't stop sacrificing; you just start sacrificing your children on the altars of your new gods, whether those gods are Molech or Moloch's modern equivalents: career, convenience, sexual freedom, or the autonomous self.
Because of this, God says "therefore." This word connects the crime to the punishment. The judgment is not arbitrary. God is about to enact a punishment that fits the crime with terrifying precision. He will gather her "lovers," the foreign nations she lusted after. And notice the telling phrase: "all those whom you loved and all those whom you hated." Her political and spiritual promiscuity was so indiscriminate that she ran after everyone. She loved the Egyptians for a time, then hated them. She loved the Babylonians, then feared them. She played all sides, and now God will bring them all against her. The very ones she sought for security and pleasure will become the instruments of her destruction.
The Punishment of Public Shame (v. 37-39)
The first stage of the punishment is total, public humiliation.
"So I will gather them against you from all around and uncover your nakedness to them that they may see all your nakedness... I will also give you into the hands of your lovers, and they will pull down your shrines, tear down your high places, strip you of your clothing, take away your splendid jewelry, and will leave you naked and bare." (Ezekiel 16:37b, 39)
This is the principle of righteous retribution. The punishment mirrors the sin. She uncovered herself for them in lust; God will have them uncover her in contempt. She displayed herself to attract them; they will now stare at her in her shame. Sin always promises glamour and pleasure, but its true nature is ugliness and degradation. God's judgment simply rips the mask off and exposes the sin for what it truly is. The shame that Adam and Eve felt in the garden after their sin was a true perception of their new reality. Judgment is often just God letting us see ourselves as we really are.
Her lovers, the foreign nations, will be the agents of this judgment. They will destroy the very infrastructure of her idolatry: her shrines and high places. Then they will strip her of all her finery. The clothing and jewelry, which God Himself had given her (v. 10-13) and which she had used to adorn herself for her lovers, will be violently torn away. All her false glory, all the trinkets of her rebellion, will be removed, leaving her "naked and bare." This is a picture of utter desolation and vulnerability. She trusted in these nations and these idols for her identity and security, and God will use them to strip her of everything, leaving her with nothing.
The Execution of Justice (v. 38, 40-41)
The sentence moves from public shame to capital punishment, carried out according to the covenant law.
"Thus I will judge you like women who commit adultery or shed blood are judged; and I will bring on you the blood of wrath and jealousy... They will bring up an assembly against you, and they will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords. They will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women." (Ezekiel 16:38, 40-41a)
God is not acting outside of His own law. The penalty for both adultery and murder under the Mosaic covenant was death (Lev. 20:10; Gen. 9:6). Jerusalem was guilty on both counts. Therefore, God says He will bring on her "the blood of wrath and jealousy." This is not petty human jealousy. This is the righteous, covenantal jealousy of God, who will not share the devotion of His bride with another. His name is Jealous, and His jealousy burns like a consuming fire against covenant-breakers (Ex. 34:14).
The method of execution is also significant. The "assembly" that gathers against her is a formal legal body, and they will "stone" her, which was the prescribed method for executing adulterers and idolaters (Deut. 17:5). The Babylonians, her former lovers, will be the executioners, cutting her to pieces with their swords and burning her houses with fire. The destruction will be total.
And it will be a public spectacle. The judgment will be executed "in the sight of many women." These "women" are the surrounding nations. They will watch Jerusalem's destruction and are meant to learn a lesson from it. God's judgments on His own people are a warning to the world. When the church compromises and commits spiritual adultery, and God brings His discipline, the world is watching. And they are meant to see that our God is a holy God who will not be mocked.
The Purpose of the Wrath (v. 41-43)
Finally, God reveals the ultimate purpose behind this terrifying judgment. It is not simply punitive; it is purifying.
"Then I will make you cease from playing the harlot... So I will cause My wrath against you to be at rest, and My jealousy will depart from you, and I will be quiet, and I will not be provoked anymore. Because you have not remembered the days of your youth but have enraged Me by all these things, behold, I in turn will bring your way down on your own head..." (Ezekiel 16:41b-43)
The first goal of this judgment is to put a stop to the sin. "Then I will make you cease from playing the harlot." God's judgment is a form of radical surgery. He is cutting out the cancer of idolatry so that the patient might live. This is a severe mercy. The exile to Babylon was a terrible ordeal, but it worked. It cured Israel of her gross, physical idolatry for good. When they returned, they never again bowed down to idols of wood and stone. God's judgment, though painful, is effective. It purifies His people.
The second goal is the satisfaction of God's own righteousness. His wrath will be "at rest" and His jealousy will "depart." God's holiness demands that sin be dealt with. His wrath is not an irrational temper tantrum; it is the settled, holy opposition of His nature to all that is evil. Once justice is executed and the sin is purged, His wrath is satisfied. He will be "quiet" and no longer "provoked." This points forward to the cross, where the full measure of God's covenant wrath against our spiritual harlotry was poured out on His Son. On the cross, God's wrath was finally and fully put to rest for all who are in Christ.
Verse 43 gives the root cause of the whole affair: "Because you have not remembered the days of your youth." She forgot the covenant love God showed her when He first found her. She forgot His grace. Forgetting God's grace is the first step toward apostasy. When we forget what we have been saved from, and the price that was paid, we begin to think we are our own. We forget that we were bought with a price. And so God says, "I in turn will bring your way down on your own head." This is the essence of retributive justice. He will simply give her what she has chosen. She chose the path of harlotry, and He will let her walk it to its bitter and logical end.
Conclusion: The Harlot and the Bride
This is a hard passage. It is meant to be. It is meant to shock us out of our casual flirtations with the world. We, the Church, are the bride of Christ. He found us, like Jerusalem, dead in our trespasses and sins, bloody and abandoned. He washed us, clothed us in His own righteousness, and betrothed us to Himself forever.
And yet, how often do we play the harlot? How often do we take the gifts He has given us, our time, our money, our talents, our affections, and spend them on the worthless idols of this age? We chase after security in the stock market, pleasure in entertainment, and meaning in our politics. We commit spiritual adultery every time we love the world or the things in the world. James says it plainly: "You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?" (James 4:4).
The judgment described here is a shadow of the judgment to come. But it is also a picture of the judgment that has already fallen upon Jesus Christ. He was stripped naked and publicly shamed on the cross. He bore the full fury of God's wrath and jealousy against our sin. He was cut to pieces for our transgressions. He did this so that He might purify for Himself a bride without spot or wrinkle.
Therefore, let us hear the word of the Lord. Let us remember the days of our youth, the day He found us and called us His own. Let us turn from our casual flirtations with the world and cling to Him alone. For He is a jealous God, but His jealousy is the fierce, protective, purifying fire of a husband's love. And He is working all things, even His severe judgments, to make His harlot bride into a glorious queen.