The Wages of Harlotry Text: Ezekiel 23:46-49
Introduction: The Covenant Lawsuit
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has tried to domesticate God. We want a God who is a celestial therapist, a divine affirmation machine, a God who is all mercy and no majesty. We have taken the Lion of Judah and tried to turn Him into a housecat. But the God of the Bible, the God who is, will not be tamed. He is a consuming fire. He is a jealous God. And because He is a God of infinite love and holiness, He is also a God of infinite wrath against sin.
Nowhere is this reality more stark, more graphic, and more necessary for our soft generation to hear than in the prophecy of Ezekiel. In chapter 23, God brings what can only be described as a formal covenant lawsuit against His people. He uses the shocking and intentionally offensive metaphor of two adulterous sisters, Oholah representing Samaria and Oholibah representing Jerusalem, to illustrate the depth of their spiritual treachery. They are God's covenant bride, and they have played the harlot with foreign nations and their foul, demonic gods.
This is not just about bad foreign policy. This is about spiritual adultery. Idolatry is not a quaint, primitive mistake. It is cosmic treason. It is a wife, lavished with her husband's gifts, using his house and his money to entertain and pay her lovers. God had delivered Israel, blessed her, protected her, and entered into a marriage covenant with her at Sinai. And she took those blessings and chased after the brutish gods of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. The language is graphic because the sin is grotesque. God is not being crude; He is being precise.
The passage before us today is the sentencing phase of this divine lawsuit. The verdict has been rendered. Guilty. And now, the Judge of all the earth pronounces the sentence. It is severe, it is corporate, and it is meticulously just. We must not flinch from this. If we do not understand the righteousness of God's wrath against covenant-breaking, we will never understand the glory of His grace in the cross of Christ, where that very wrath was satisfied.
The Text
“For thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Bring up an assembly against them and give them over to terror and plunder. The assembly will stone them with stones and cut them down with their swords; they will kill their sons and their daughters and burn their houses with fire. Thus I will make lewdness cease from the land, that all women may be chastised and not commit lewdness as you have done. Your lewdness will be requited upon you, and you will bear the sin of worshiping your idols; thus you will know that I am Lord Yahweh.’”
(Ezekiel 23:46-49)
The Instruments of Judgment (v. 46)
The sentence begins with God summoning the executioners.
"For thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Bring up an assembly against them and give them over to terror and plunder.’" (Ezekiel 23:46)
Notice who is in charge. "Thus says Lord Yahweh." The Babylonians are coming. Nebuchadnezzar is the instrument. But God is the author. This is not a geopolitical accident. This is a divine decree. God is sovereign over the nations, and He will use the wicked for His own holy purposes. He will use the pagan Babylonians, the very lovers Jerusalem lusted after, to be her executioners. This is the terrible irony of sin. The thing you whore after will be the thing that destroys you. The idols you serve will turn on you and devour you.
He says to "bring up an assembly." This is legal language. This is not a random mob; it is a lawfully convened body to carry out a judicial sentence. God is not acting in a fit of pique. This is the measured, righteous outworking of covenant justice. He is giving them over to "terror and plunder." The Hebrew word for terror speaks of trembling, of being made a horror. The God who was their shield and protector now hands them over, defenseless, to their enemies. When you forsake God's covenant, you forfeit God's protection.
The Nature of the Judgment (v. 47)
Verse 47 details the horrific nature of the punishment, and it is precisely tailored to the crime.
"The assembly will stone them with stones and cut them down with their swords; they will kill their sons and their daughters and burn their houses with fire." (Ezekiel 23:47)
The punishment fits the crime. What was the prescribed penalty for adultery and for enticing others to idolatry under the Mosaic Law? It was stoning (Deut. 13:10; 22:24). God is treating His covenant people exactly as His own law demanded. He is not making up new rules. He is enforcing the terms of the contract they signed in blood at Sinai. They are being judged as a corporate adulteress.
But the judgment expands. "They will kill their sons and their daughters." This is the principle of federal headship in its terrible aspect. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. This is not unjust, because the children were not innocent bystanders; they were participants in the same idolatrous system. They were the very children offered up to Molech. The idolatry was generational, and so the judgment is generational. This is a hard truth, but it is a biblical one. Sin is never a private affair. It corrupts households, communities, and nations. And judgment, when it comes, is likewise corporate.
"And burn their houses with fire." The fire represents total purification and utter destruction. The places where they committed their idolatries, the homes they built with the wealth of God's blessing while their hearts were far from Him, will be consumed. This is a picture of the final judgment, when all the wicked works of men will be burned up.
The Purpose of the Judgment (v. 48)
God's judgments are never purposeless. They are not simply retributive; they are also instructive and purgative. Verse 48 gives us the divine rationale.
"Thus I will make lewdness cease from the land, that all women may be chastised and not commit lewdness as you have done." (Ezekiel 23:48)
The first purpose is purification. "I will make lewdness cease from the land." God is performing radical surgery. The cancer of idolatry had metastasized throughout the entire nation, and the only cure was to cut it out. The exile was a terrible cauterizing fire, but it worked. When the Jews returned from Babylon, they had been forever cured of their overt idolatry. God's judgment, though severe, achieved its purifying purpose.
The second purpose is pedagogical. It is a warning. "That all women may be chastised." The "women" here refers to the other nations, the watching world. God's judgments in history are object lessons. They are public demonstrations of His character, His holiness, and the non-negotiable terms of His covenant. When God judges His own people, it is a warning to the entire world. If God does this to the green tree, what will He do to the dry? (Luke 23:31). This is a lesson our own nation would do well to heed. We who have been so richly blessed, who have had the light of the gospel shining so brightly, should tremble when we see God's hand moving in judgment elsewhere. It is a shot across our bow.
The Summation of the Judgment (v. 49)
The final verse brings the lawsuit to its solemn conclusion. It is a summation of the case, the verdict, and the ultimate purpose of it all.
"Your lewdness will be requited upon you, and you will bear the sin of worshiping your idols; thus you will know that I am Lord Yahweh." (Ezekiel 23:49)
Here we see the principle of righteous retribution. "Your lewdness will be requited upon you." You will reap what you have sown. The scales of divine justice will be balanced. You will "bear the sin," which means you will bear the penalty for the sin. There is no escape. Sin accrues a debt, and that debt must be paid. Every idle word, every lustful glance, every act of rebellion is recorded, and the bill will come due.
And what is the final, ultimate goal of this terrible judgment? It is the revelation of God Himself. "Thus you will know that I am Lord Yahweh." This is the refrain that echoes throughout the book of Ezekiel. God's ultimate commitment is to His own glory. Whether in salvation or in judgment, His goal is that His creatures would know who He is. They will know Him as Savior, or they will know Him as Judge. But they will know Him. Through this fiery ordeal, Israel would be stripped of her false lovers and her worthless idols, and she would be brought to the stark realization that Yahweh alone is God. He is the sovereign Lord of history, the righteous Judge, and the faithful covenant-keeper, faithful even when His people are faithless.
The Cross as the Ultimate Judgment
This passage is terrifying, as it should be. The wrath of God against sin is a terrifying reality. But for us, who live on this side of the cross, this passage should drive us not to despair, but to Christ. Because in this horrifying picture of judgment, we see a foreshadowing of what happened at Calvary.
All the elements of this judgment converged on one man. An "assembly" was brought up against Jesus. He was given over to terror and plunder. He was stripped, mocked, and cut down, not with a sword, but with the nails and the spear. He was stoned, not with rocks, but with the accusations and curses of the people He came to save. He bore the full, undiluted, corporate sin of His people. Our lewdness was requited upon Him. He bore the penalty for our idolatry.
Why? So that lewdness might cease in us. So that we might be chastised and warned, not by our own destruction, but by His. The fire of God's wrath that should have consumed us fell on Him instead. He drank the cup of God's fury down to the dregs so that we might be offered the cup of salvation.
Therefore, the great application of this text is not to look at Jerusalem and feel smug. It is to look at our own hearts. Where are our idols? Where is our spiritual harlotry? Do we chase after the approval of the world? Do we trust in our money, our politics, our reputation? Do we offer our children to the modern Molechs of secularism and self-worship? These are the things that kindle the wrath of God.
The call is to repent of our whoredoms and flee to the cross. Flee to the one who became a curse for us. For in Christ, and only in Christ, the sinner can stand before the righteous Judge, not as a condemned adulteress, but as a beloved bride, clothed in a righteousness that is not her own. And in that glorious salvation, we come to truly know that He is Lord Yahweh, not just as Judge, but as our Father and our Redeemer.