The Wages of Whoredom: Text: Ezekiel 23:22-35
Introduction: The Covenant Lawsuit
The prophet Ezekiel is not for the faint of heart. He does not deal in polite suggestions or gentle persuasions. He is a prophet in exile, speaking God's word to a people in exile, and the message is a covenant lawsuit. God, the aggrieved husband, is bringing formal charges against His adulterous wife, Israel. In this chapter, the allegory is of two sisters, Oholah (representing Samaria, the northern kingdom) and Oholibah (representing Jerusalem, the southern kingdom). Both were taken by Yahweh as His own, and both have played the harlot with foreign nations and their gods.
We live in a therapeutic age that has lost its stomach for such language. We want a God who is a celestial guidance counselor, not a jealous husband. We want a faith that is a personal preference, not a binding covenant with blood oaths. But the Bible will not have it. The relationship between God and His people is consistently portrayed as a marriage. This is not some quaint metaphor; it is the central reality. Therefore, faithfulness to Him is fidelity, and idolatry is adultery. It is spiritual whoredom. And because God is a holy and just God, this unfaithfulness has consequences. What we are about to read is the sentencing phase of the trial. It is graphic, it is brutal, and it is entirely just.
The modern mind recoils from this, calling it harsh or unloving. But this is a profound misunderstanding of love. True love is exclusive. True love is jealous. A husband who is indifferent to his wife's adulteries does not love her. God's white hot jealousy for His people is a measure of His white hot love for them. He will not share His bride with the idols of Egypt or the armies of Babylon. He will have her whole, or He will bring devastating judgment. This is not the fury of a petty tyrant; it is the righteous wrath of a spurned and holy love. The judgment described here is not arbitrary. It is, as we will see, a perfect and terrifying outworking of the principle of poetic justice. The punishment is made to fit the crime. The instruments of Jerusalem's lust will become the instruments of her destruction.
The Text
"Therefore, O Oholibah, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold, I will arouse your lovers against you, those with whom your soul was disgusted, and I will bring them against you from every side: the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them; desirable choice men, governors and officials, all of them, officers and men of renown, all of them riding on horses. They will come against you with weapons, chariots and wagons, and with an assembly of peoples. They will set themselves against you on every side with large shield and shield and helmet; and I will give the judgment to them, and they will judge you according to their judgments. And I will set My jealousy against you, that they may deal with you in wrath. They will remove your nose and your ears; and your survivors will fall by the sword. They will take your sons and your daughters; and your survivors will be consumed by the fire. They will also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewelry. Thus I will make your lewdness and your harlotry brought from the land of Egypt to cease from you, so that you will not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.’ For thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold, I will give you into the hand of those whom you hate, into the hand of those with whom your soul was disgusted. They will deal with you in hatred, take all the fruit of your labor, and leave you naked and bare. And the nakedness of your harlotries will be uncovered, both your lewdness and your harlotries. These things will be done to you because you have played the harlot with the nations, because you have defiled yourself with their idols. You have walked in the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand.’ Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘You will drink your sister’s cup, Which is deep and wide. You will be laughed at and held in derision; It contains much. You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, The cup of horror and desolation, The cup of your sister Samaria. You will drink it and drain it. Then you will gnaw its fragments And tear your breasts; for I have spoken,’ declares Lord Yahweh. Therefore, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Because you have forgotten Me and cast Me behind your back, bear now the punishment of your lewdness and your harlotries.’"
(Ezekiel 23:22-35 LSB)
The Lovers Become Executioners (vv. 22-24)
God begins the pronouncement of judgment by identifying the executioners. And here is the terrible irony.
"Therefore, O Oholibah, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold, I will arouse your lovers against you, those with whom your soul was disgusted, and I will bring them against you from every side...'" (Ezekiel 23:22)
The very nations that Jerusalem (Oholibah) lusted after, the ones she courted for political and military security, are the ones God will now "arouse" to come and destroy her. She chased after the Babylonians and Assyrians, admiring their military might, their "desirable choice men...riding on horses." She wanted to get in bed with them, politically speaking, trusting in their strength instead of Yahweh's. This is the essence of idolatry: seeking security, meaning, or satisfaction in the creature rather than the Creator.
God's judgment is to give her exactly what she wanted, but not in the way she wanted it. She wanted them as lovers; she will get them as ravenous beasts. Notice the phrase, "those with whom your soul was disgusted." This points to the nature of all sin. The affair that seems so thrilling in the moment inevitably turns to ashes. The lust, once sated, becomes loathing. Jerusalem had her fill of these lovers, and now the relationship has soured. But God will not let her simply walk away. He will sovereignly compel these former paramours to complete the transaction.
The list of nations in verse 23 is a roll call of the military superpowers she flirted with. God orchestrates this. He is the one who brings this "assembly of peoples" against her. This is not a random geopolitical event. It is the sovereign hand of God using wicked nations as the rod of His anger to chastise His unfaithful people. He then says, "I will give the judgment to them, and they will judge you according to their judgments" (v. 24). God hands over the sentencing to the pagans. This is a profound humiliation. The people who were supposed to be a light to the nations will now be judged by the crude, brutal standards of those very nations.
The Jealous Husband's Wrath (vv. 25-27)
The motivation behind this judgment is made explicit. It is not cold, detached justice. It is the fury of a jealous God.
"And I will set My jealousy against you, that they may deal with you in wrath. They will remove your nose and your ears... They will also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewelry." (Ezekiel 23:25-26 LSB)
God's jealousy is His covenant zeal. It is His righteous refusal to be treated as one god among many. He is the husband, and He will not tolerate rivals. The punishment here is tailored to the crime of harlotry. In the ancient Near East, adulteresses were often punished by public humiliation and mutilation. Stripping an adulterous wife naked was a common practice, exposing her shame to the community. The removal of the nose and ears was a horrific disfigurement, marking her permanently as an unfaithful woman.
This is precisely what God says will happen to Jerusalem. She adorned herself with "beautiful jewelry" to attract her lovers. God will have those very lovers strip her bare. She prided herself on her beauty and her finery, all gifts from her true Husband, which she then used to seduce others. So the judgment is to leave her "naked and bare" (v. 29), utterly shamed and exposed. The sword will devour her children, and fire will consume what is left. This is total devastation.
The purpose of this terrifying judgment is ultimately restorative, even if it does not seem so at first. "Thus I will make your lewdness...to cease from you, so that you will not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore" (v. 27). This is radical surgery. God is cutting out the cancer of idolatry with a bloody knife. The goal is to purge her of her adulterous ways so that she will never again turn to the false lovers of this world for her security.
The Cup of Horror (vv. 28-34)
The passage repeats the central theme: the lovers have become haters, and the result will be utter desolation.
"For thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold, I will give you into the hand of those whom you hate, into the hand of those with whom your soul was disgusted... You have walked in the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand.’" (Ezekiel 23:28, 31 LSB)
Jerusalem followed the exact same path of spiritual adultery as her sister Samaria, the northern kingdom that had already been destroyed by the Assyrians. Because she copied her sister's sin, she will drink her sister's cup. The "cup" in Scripture is a frequent metaphor for a divinely appointed destiny, and most often, it is a cup of wrath (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17; Revelation 14:10).
The description of this cup is terrifying. It is "deep and wide." It "contains much." It is a cup of "drunkenness and sorrow," a cup of "horror and desolation." To drink this cup is to experience the full measure of God's judgment. She will be forced to drink it all, to "drink it and drain it." The experience will be so maddening that she will "gnaw its fragments and tear your breasts." This is a picture of absolute, self-destructive agony, the horrifying DTs of divine judgment.
This is the cup that Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed might pass from Him. "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will" (Matthew 26:39). He, the true and faithful Israel, the perfect husband to His bride the Church, stood in the place of the adulterous wife. He drank the cup of horror and desolation that we deserved, so that we might be offered the cup of salvation.
The Root of the Sin (v. 35)
Finally, God states the foundational sin that led to this entire catastrophe. It is the sin of forgetting.
"Therefore, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Because you have forgotten Me and cast Me behind your back, bear now the punishment of your lewdness and your harlotries.’" (Ezekiel 23:35 LSB)
All the political prostitution, all the bowing down to idols, all the trust in foreign armies, it all stemmed from one central act of treason: they forgot God. They took His covenant, His blessings, His law, and His presence, and they "cast Me behind your back." It was a deliberate act of contempt. To forget God is not a passive lapse of memory; it is an active suppression of the truth. It is the willful exchange of the glory of the immortal God for created things.
When you forget God, you do not cease to worship. You simply worship something else. You will worship military might, or political saviors, or economic security, or sexual pleasure. You will become a spiritual harlot. And the end of that road is always the cup of horror and desolation.
Conclusion
This is a hard word. It is meant to be. It is meant to strip us of all our self-righteousness and our flirtations with the world. The Church in the modern West is shot through with the spirit of Oholibah. We have forgotten our first love. We have made alliances with the world, adopted its methods, craved its approval, and trusted in its political solutions. We have adorned ourselves with the world's trinkets to make ourselves attractive to the world, forgetting that we are to be a bride made beautiful for her husband, Christ.
We read a passage like this and we are rightly horrified. But we must see that our sin is just as grotesque in the sight of a holy God. Our casual worldliness, our entertainment-driven worship, our trust in princes and political parties, our lust for affirmation from the very Babylon that seeks to devour us, this is spiritual harlotry.
The warning is stark. If we walk in the way of the faithless sister, we will drink her cup. Judgment begins at the house of God. But the good news is that the judgment that fell on Jerusalem was a precursor to a greater judgment that fell on a green hill outside that same city. There, Jesus was stripped naked. There, He was shamed and humiliated. There, He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. He did this for His unfaithful bride.
Therefore, the call to us is to repent of our whoredoms. It is to turn away from the lovers of this world who will one day turn on us. It is to remember the Lord our God, who found us, washed us, clothed us, and betrothed us to Himself forever. It is to cast ourselves upon the mercy of the one who drank the cup for us, so that we might never have to.