Bird's-eye view
In this section of Ezekiel's prophecy, the Lord delivers His final verdict on the two adulterous sisters, Oholah (Samaria) and Oholibah (Jerusalem). The raw and graphic language used throughout this chapter is not for shock value; it is a divinely inspired accommodation to the depth of our sin. God is using the most visceral metaphor available, that of a marriage covenant betrayed through relentless, shameless prostitution, to illustrate the heinous nature of Israel's and Judah's idolatry and covenant-breaking. This is not just a moral lapse; it is high treason against their divine Husband. The passage before us moves from a rhetorical question about the incorrigibility of the adulteress to the grim certainty of her judgment at the hands of the very lovers she pursued.
The central theme is the outworking of covenant curses. God established a covenant with His people, a solemn bond with attendant blessings for faithfulness and curses for unfaithfulness. What we are witnessing here is the execution of those curses. The harlotry is spiritual, a chasing after foreign gods and foreign alliances. The judgment, therefore, is historical and physical, delivered by those same foreign powers. The passage culminates in a declaration of a just sentence, carried out by "righteous men," a phrase we will have to unpack carefully. This is God's holy justice in motion, purging the land of its defilement and vindicating His own name, which had been profaned by the actions of His covenant people.
Outline
- 1. The Incorrigible Harlot (v. 43)
- a. A rhetorical question about her exhaustion in sin.
- b. The certainty of her continued unfaithfulness.
- 2. The Inevitable Consequence (v. 44)
- a. The lovers become the customers of a common prostitute.
- b. The specific identification of Oholah and Oholibah as the lewd women.
- 3. The Ironic Executioners (v. 45)
- a. The appointment of "righteous men" as judges.
- b. The sentence pronounced: the judgment for adultery and murder.
- c. The reason for the sentence: their hands are covered in adultery and blood.
Verse by Verse Commentary
Ezekiel 23:43
"Then I said concerning her who was worn out by adulteries, ‘Will they now commit harlotry with her when she is thus?’"
The Lord begins His summation with a sorrowful, almost exasperated, rhetorical question. He looks upon Oholibah, Judah, who is "worn out by adulteries." This is not the exhaustion that leads to repentance. This is the exhaustion of a debauched sinner who has run the course of her lusts and is left spent, haggard, and old in her sin. She has given the best of her strength, her youth, and her beauty to false gods and faithless allies. The Hebrew speaks of her being "old in adulteries." She is a career prostitute, not a naive girl who has merely stumbled.
The question that follows is dripping with divine irony. "Will they now commit harlotry with her when she is thus?" The sense is, "Surely now, after all this, after she is so obviously used up and ruined by her lovers, they will cease their whoring with her." It is a question that expects the answer no from any sane observer. But the implied answer from the context of Judah's history is a resounding yes. Her lovers, the Babylonians, will indeed come to her, but not for pleasure. And she, in her spiritual stupor, will continue to seek them out, blind to the fact that her desirability is gone and only judgment remains. This is the picture of utter spiritual degradation. Sin has a diminishing return, yet the addict, "worn out," keeps going back for another hit, even when it offers nothing but ruin.
Ezekiel 23:44
"But they went in to her as they would go in to a harlot. Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, the lewd women."
The narrative answers the previous question. Far from ceasing, the sordid relationship continues, but the pretense is gone. "They went in to her as they would go in to a harlot." There is no longer any talk of treaties, alliances, or mutual benefit. The relationship is exposed for what it has always been: a cheap transaction. The Babylonians and Assyrians, the lovers she courted, now treat her like a common whore. The relationship is entirely transactional, devoid of any covenantal loyalty or affection. This is what idolatry does. It strips away all dignity and leaves its votaries exposed and used.
And notice, the prophet lumps both sisters together again: "Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, the lewd women." Samaria (Oholah) had already been ravaged by the Assyrians. Her fate should have been a stark warning to her sister Judah (Oholibah). But Judah did not learn. She followed the same path, pursued the same lovers, and so she will receive the same wages. They are both identified as "lewd women." The word carries a sense of deliberate, planned wickedness. This was not an accidental fall; it was a chosen career path. They plotted their spiritual unfaithfulness, and now they will receive the plotted consequences.
Ezekiel 23:45
"But they, righteous men, will judge them with the judgment of adulteresses and with the judgment of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses and blood is on their hands."
Here is the climax of the verdict. Judgment is coming, and it will be executed by "righteous men." Now, who are these righteous men? Are they a council of godly Israelites who have remained faithful? No, the context makes it clear that the executioners are the pagan Babylonians, the very lovers she pursued. So in what sense are they "righteous"? They are righteous in the same way that a storm or a plague is righteous when it fulfills God's decree. They are righteous instrumentally. God, the ultimate Judge, has handed down a righteous sentence, and He is using these pagan armies as His unwitting bailiffs to carry it out. They are not righteous in their character, but they are righteous in their function as agents of God's wrath. This is a profound statement about divine sovereignty. God can and does use the wicked to accomplish His holy purposes, without in any way excusing their own wickedness.
The judgment fits the crime precisely. They will be judged "with the judgment of adulteresses." Under the Mosaic Law, the penalty for adultery was death by stoning (Lev. 20:10, Deut. 22:22). This was a public, brutal, and shameful end, designed to purge the evil from the midst of the people. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, with its stoning by siege engines and the tearing down of her walls, is a macro-cosmic fulfillment of this judicial sentence. But the charge is not just adultery. It is also the judgment of "women who shed blood." Their idolatry was not a clean sin. It involved the abomination of child sacrifice, passing their sons and daughters through the fire to Molech. Their adultery and their bloodshed are intertwined. "Blood is on their hands." This is not a metaphor. They are literally guilty of murder. The covenant God made with them was a marriage covenant, and they have desecrated it with both spiritual prostitution and the shedding of innocent blood. The verdict is just, the sentence is death, and the executioners have been summoned.
Application
The first thing we must do is refuse to blunt the edge of this passage. The language is offensive because the sin is offensive to a holy God. We live in a therapeutic age that wants to rebrand sin as a sickness or a mistake. God calls it harlotry, adultery, and murder. We must learn to see our own sin, particularly our flirtations with the world and its idols, with the same revulsion. When we place our trust in money, in political power, in human approval, we are playing the harlot. We are cheating on God. This is the essence of covenant unfaithfulness.
Second, we see the inexorable logic of sin. It promises freedom and pleasure but delivers only bondage and exhaustion. Oholibah was "worn out by adulteries." Sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay. It leaves you spent and ruined, and in the end, the very things you chased after will turn on you and become the instruments of your destruction. The world you try to appease will one day be the "righteous man" executing God's judgment upon you.
Finally, this passage ought to drive us to the cross in gratitude. We are all Oholibah. We are all born with adulterous hearts, and our hands are stained. The judgment described here is the judgment we deserve. But for those who are in Christ, this judgment has already been executed. Christ stood in our place. He took upon Himself the shame of the adulteress and the guilt of the murderer. He was publicly stripped and executed, bearing the full force of God's righteous wrath against covenant-breaking. Because He took the curse, we are offered the blessing. He was condemned so that we could hear the verdict, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1). This grace does not make us complacent in our sin, but rather it makes us hate it all the more, and cling to our faithful Husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, with all our hearts.