The Covenant Harlot and the Righteous Judgment Text: Ezekiel 23:43-45
Introduction: The Ugliest Sin
We live in a therapeutic age, an age that has mastered the art of making excuses for sin. We have replaced words like "wickedness" and "abomination" with softer terms like "brokenness" or "making poor choices." We want our sins to be manageable, understandable, and ultimately, excusable. We want to be seen as victims of our circumstances, not as rebels against a holy God. But the prophet Ezekiel will not allow us this comfort. God sent him to a people who were experts in self-justification, and his task was to rip the cosmetic mask off their sin and show them the leprous face beneath.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Ezekiel 23. This is not a chapter for the faint of heart. The language is graphic, explicit, and designed to shock. God uses the metaphor of two sisters, Oholah (representing Samaria, the northern kingdom) and Oholibah (representing Jerusalem, the southern kingdom), who become notorious prostitutes. They are not just unfaithful; they are insatiable. They chase after foreign lovers, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, not just for political alliance but out of sheer, adulterous lust. This is not the language of diplomacy; it is the language of the brothel. And God is the cuckolded husband.
We must understand what is happening here. The central sin in all the world is idolatry, which is spiritual adultery. It is giving the love, loyalty, and worship that belong to God alone to something or someone else. It is a breach of the marriage covenant that God made with His people at Sinai. When we read this chapter, our modern sensibilities might be offended by the language. But our offense is misplaced. We should be offended by the sin that makes such language necessary. God is not being crude; He is being precise. He is showing Israel the unvarnished reality of their covenant unfaithfulness. They saw their political maneuvering as savvy statecraft. God saw it as whorishness. They thought they were building alliances; God says they were opening their legs to every passerby.
The passage before us is the climax of this covenant lawsuit. It is the verdict and the sentencing. God has laid out the evidence, a long and sordid history of spiritual promiscuity, and now He pronounces a judgment that is as severe as the sin was grotesque. It is a judgment that reveals the holiness of God, the nature of righteousness, and the inevitable consequences of playing the harlot with the world.
The Text
Then I said concerning her who was worn out by adulteries, ‘Will they now commit harlotry with her when she is thus?’ 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. 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.
(Ezekiel 23:43-45 LSB)
The Point of No Return (v. 43)
We begin with God's lament over the utter degradation of His people.
"Then I said concerning her who was worn out by adulteries, ‘Will they now commit harlotry with her when she is thus?’" (Ezekiel 23:43)
This is a statement of astonished, rhetorical disgust. The "her" here is Oholibah, Jerusalem, who should have learned from the judgment that fell on her sister Samaria. But she did not. She is "worn out by adulteries." This is a picture of a prostitute who is old, haggard, and used up. Her beauty is gone, her strength is spent, her lovers have abused her and left her for dead. She has nothing left to offer. And God looks at this pathetic, wretched creature and asks, "Will they still go after her?"
The implied answer is a shocking "yes." Even in her decrepit state, the pagan nations will continue to use and abuse her. And even more shockingly, she will continue to offer herself. This speaks to the enslaving nature of sin. Sin is never satisfied. Idolatry is a spiritual addiction that demands more and more, even when it has destroyed everything. Jerusalem is no longer a blushing bride flirting with other men; she is a hardened, shameless street-walker who has lost all sense of her own worth and dignity. She is defined by her sin.
This is a terrifying picture of what happens when a person, or a church, or a nation gives itself over to the world. At first, the world seems glamorous and exciting, like the Assyrian warriors in their fine clothes (v. 12). But the world is a harsh lover. It uses you, drains you, and discards you. And the great lie of sin is that even when you are "worn out," the only solution you can imagine is to go back for more of the same abuse. There is no repentance here, only a desperate, compulsive continuation of the harlotry.
The Inevitable Transaction (v. 44)
Verse 44 confirms the tragic answer to God's rhetorical question.
"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." (Ezekiel 23:44 LSB)
The transaction is completed. The pagan nations, her "lovers," come to her not with respect or love, but with the cold, detached intentionality of a man visiting a prostitute. The phrase "they went in to her" is a clinical, almost brutal, description of the sexual act, stripped of all covenantal context. There is no intimacy, no faithfulness, no love. It is pure use. This is what Israel's pursuit of the nations had come to. They wanted the security and power of Egypt and Babylon, but what they got was degradation.
Notice how both Oholah and Oholibah are mentioned together again. Though Samaria (Oholah) had already been destroyed and exiled by the Assyrians, her sin and her judgment are still part of the story. The family sin runs deep. Jerusalem (Oholibah) saw what happened to her sister and, instead of repenting, she dove into the same sin with even greater abandon. This is the height of folly. It is like watching your brother get mauled by a bear and deciding the best course of action is to go poke the bear with a stick.
The label given to them is "the lewd women." The Hebrew word for lewdness here implies a calculated, planned wickedness. This was not a momentary slip or a passionate mistake. This was a deliberate, strategic choice to abandon their covenant husband, Yahweh, and sell themselves to other gods and other nations. This is the state of apostasy. It is a settled rejection of God's authority and love in favor of the perceived benefits of the world.
The Agents of Judgment (v. 45)
Now we come to the shocking twist. The sentence is to be carried out, but look who God appoints as the executioners.
"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." (Ezekiel 23:45 LSB)
Who are these "righteous men"? In the immediate context, these are the Babylonians, the very lovers with whom Oholibah had committed adultery (v. 17). This is a staggering irony. God is going to use the wicked, pagan Babylonians as His instrument of righteous judgment. This does not mean the Babylonians were morally upright in themselves. Far from it. They were a brutal, idolatrous empire. But in this specific task, they are acting as agents of God's justice. God can and does use wicked men to accomplish His righteous purposes, just as He used the Assyrians to punish the northern kingdom.
This is a hard truth for us to swallow. We want God's team to be clearly marked with white hats. But God's sovereignty is not so simple. He is the Lord of history, and He will press even His enemies into service to discipline His people. The Babylonians are called "righteous men" not because of their own character, but because they are executing a righteous verdict from the divine Judge. They are unwittingly fulfilling God's law.
And what is that judgment? It is "the judgment of adulteresses and... women who shed blood." Under the Mosaic Law, the penalty for adultery was death by stoning (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22). The reference to shedding blood is also crucial. Idolatry was never a clean sin. It was tied to the abomination of child sacrifice, passing their children through the fire to Molech (v. 37). Their spiritual adultery led to literal murder. This is why their hands are stained with blood.
The judgment fits the crime perfectly. They lusted after the nations, and now those very nations will be the ones to stone them, to strip them naked, and to destroy them (v. 46-47). Their sin has become their punishment. This is the immutable law of God's universe: you reap what you sow.
Conclusion: The Church as Harlot and Judge
It is easy for us to read a passage like this and thank God that we are not like those lewd sisters. But we must be very careful. The New Testament applies this same language to the Church. The Church is the bride of Christ. And when the Church begins to flirt with the world, to adopt its values, to seek its approval, to trust in its methods and its power, she is playing the harlot.
When a church is more concerned with being relevant than being righteous, she is committing adultery. When she softens the hard edges of the gospel to make it more palatable to a secular culture, she is committing adultery. When she trusts in political power, or marketing strategies, or therapeutic techniques instead of the simple power of the Word and Spirit, she is committing adultery. And she will find, just like Oholibah, that the world she courts will eventually turn on her and destroy her. The world makes a terrible lover and an even worse god.
But there is another side to this. The "righteous men" who execute judgment point us to a greater reality. In the new covenant, who has been given the authority to judge? Christ tells His disciples that they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28). Paul rebukes the Corinthians for taking their disputes before pagan courts, asking them, "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?" (1 Cor. 6:2).
The ultimate fulfillment of these "righteous men" is the glorified Church, united to her triumphant King, Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate righteous judge, and we are righteous in Him. A time is coming when the harlot church, the great apostate system that has committed fornication with the kings of the earth, will be judged. And who will be the instrument of that judgment? Christ and His faithful bride. The true Church will participate in the judgment of the false church.
Therefore, the charge to us is clear. We must remain a chaste bride. We must keep our garments clean from the filth of the world. We must resist the siren song of cultural acceptance and political power. Our loyalty is to one husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. For if we are unfaithful, we will face the judgment of a harlot. But if we are faithful, we will be vindicated, and we will share in the righteous judgment of our King when He finally cleanses His house.