Ezekiel 16 · The Lantern

Jerusalem’s Unfaithfulness

Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying,

Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations,

And say, Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem; Your birth and your nativity is of the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite.

And as for your nativity, in the day you were born your navel was not cut, neither were you washed in water to supple you; you were not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.

None eye pitied you, to do any of these to you, to have compassion upon you; but you were cast out in the open field, to the lothing of your person, in the day that you were born.

And when I passed by you, and saw you polluted in your own blood, I said to you when you were in your blood, Live; yes, I said to you when you were in your blood, Live.

I have caused you to multiply as the bud of the field, and you have increased and grown great, and you have come to excellent ornaments: your breasts are fashioned, and your hair is grown, whereas you were naked and bore.

Now when I passed by you, and looked upon you, look, your time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness: yes, I swore to you, and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord GOD, and you became mine.

Then washed I you with water; yes, I throughly washed away your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil.

I clothed you also with embroidered work, and shod you with badgers’ skin, and I girded you about with fine linen, and I covered you with silk.

I decked you also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon your hands, and a chain on your neck.

And I put a jewel on your forehead, and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head.

Thus were you decked with gold and silver; and your apparel was of fine linen, and silk, and embroidered work; you did eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and you were exceeding beautiful, and you did prosper into a kingdom.

And your renown went forth among the pagans for your beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon you, says the Lord GOD.

But you did trust in your own beauty, and played the prostitute because of your renown, and poured out your sexual immorality on every one that passed by; his it was.

And of your garments you did take, and decked your high places with various colors, and played the prostitute thereupon: the like things shall not come, neither shall it be so.

You have also taken your fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made to yourself images of men, and did commit prostitution with them,

And took your embroidered garments, and covered them: and you have set my oil and my incense before them.

My food also which I gave you, fine flour, and oil, and honey, with which I fed you, you have even set it before them for a sweet savor: and thus it was, says the Lord GOD.

Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne to me, and these have you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Is this of your prostitution a small matter,

That you have slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?

And in all your abominations and your prostitution you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bore, and were polluted in your blood.

And it happened after all your wickedness, (woe, woe to you! says the Lord GOD;)

That you have also built to you an eminent place, and have made you a high place in every street.

You have built your high place at every head of the way, and have made your beauty to be abhorred, and have opened your feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied your prostitution.

Possessing these things, she is of great beauty, but she is corrupted by the divisions of heretics and foreign religious systems.

What then has persuaded you to contradict each other and to procure to yourselves so great a disgrace? You cannot give any good account of it; this supposition only remains, that all you do is but outward profession and pretense.… And you make nothing of accusing the Fathers, and you complain outright of the expressions as being unscriptural; and, as it is written, "opened your…

She will sit by the waters of loneliness, her pitcher laid aside, and open her legs to every one who passes by and be polluted to the crown of her head. It would have been better for her to have submitted to the yoke of marriage, to have walked in level places, than to aspire to loftier heights and fall into the depths of hell.

You have also committed sexual immorality with the Egyptians your neighbors, great of flesh; and have increased your prostitution, to provoke me to anger.

Look, therefore I have stretched out my hand over you, and have diminished your ordinary food, and delivered you to the will of them that hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of your lewd way.

You have played the prostitute also with the Assyrians, because you were insatiable; yes, you have played the prostitute with them, and yet could not be satisfied.

You have moreover multiplied your sexual immorality in the land of Canaan to Chaldea; and yet you were not satisfied herewith.

How weak is your heart, says the Lord GOD, seeing you do all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman;

In that you build your eminent place in the head of every way, and make your high place in every street; and have not been as a prostitute, in that you scorn hire;

Ecclesiastics who are leaders in the church build the house of God, the church, in their own way of life as well as those of their faithful, and their work is the building of God.

Or according to the Septuagint: You were not like a prostitute gathering wages, but you gave what you should have received, so that you would not be protected by the help of those with whom you fornicated and followed demons, but rather, oppressed by various captivities, you would feel your calamities.

These Gentile peoples through their desire of worldly eloquence, through the brothels of the schools, through senseless disputation at the meeting places of the philosophical sects, dissipated the property of God the Father. By their conjectures they exhausted everything there was in the line of speech, knowledge, reason and judgment.

But as a wife that commits adultery, which takes strangers instead of her husband!

They give gifts to all prostitutes: but you give your gifts to all your lovers, and hire them, that they may come to you on every side for your prostitution.

And the contrary is in you from other women in your prostitution, whereas none follows you to commit prostitution: and in that you give a reward, and no reward is given to you, therefore you are contrary.

Judgment on Jerusalem

Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the LORD:

Thus says the Lord GOD; Because your filthiness was poured out, and your nakedness discovered through your prostitution with your lovers, and with all the idols of your abominations, and by the blood of your children, which you did give to them;

Look, therefore I will gather all your lovers, with whom you have taken pleasure, and all them that you have loved, with all them that you have hated; I will even gather them round about against you, and will discover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.

And I will judge you, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give you blood in fury and jealousy.

And I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your eminent place, and shall break down your high places: they shall strip you also of your clothes, and shall take your fair jewels, and leave you naked and bore.

They shall also bring up a company against you, and they shall stone you with stones, and thrust you through with their swords.

And they shall burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments upon you in the sight of many women: and I will cause you to cease from playing the prostitute, and you also shall give no hire any more.

So will I make my fury toward you to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from you, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry.

If you do not recover your senses when you have been chastised, if you are not corrected when you have been reproved, if you despise when you are beaten, you must realize that if you go on continually sinning his jealousy will depart from you and that which is said to Jerusalem by the prophet Ezekiel will be said to you: "Therefore my jealousy will depart from you, and I will n…

Mighty is the wrath of the Lord when he is not angry with us here, for, then, he reserves us like a calf for slaughter. In fact, he says to Jerusalem, "Many are your sins and many your iniquities, but I will not be vexed with you." In other words, when you were only an adulteress, I loved you with a jealous love; but when you had many lovers, I despised you, and I will not be v…

Like a skillful physician, who has tried all saving cures and sees there is no remedy left which can be applied to their disease, the Lord is, as it were, overcome by their iniquities and is obliged to desist from his kindly chastisement. And so he denounces them saying: "I will no longer be angry with you, and my jealousy has departed from you."

Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have fretted me in all these things; look, therefore I also will recompense your way upon your head, says the Lord GOD: and you shall not commit this lewdness above all your abominations.

Look, every one that uses proverbs shall use this proverb against you, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter, that lothes her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, which loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

And your elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at your left hand: and your younger sister, that dwells at your right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.

Yet have you not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, you were corrupted more than they in all your ways.

As I live, says the Lord GOD, Sodom your sister has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done, you and your daughters.

Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

Often having a fullness and an abundance of bread is the cause of arrogance. But often the sin of pride also arises over spiritual gifts, and discernment is needed to distinguish the one from the other.

And again, through meat and luxuries the Sodomites also were polluted with an unclean matter, and pleasures and the love of the belly brought them unto that limitless wickedness, even as the prophet of God maketh known concerning them, "This was the iniquity of thy luxurious sister Sodom, who was satisfied with bread, and dwelt at ease;" for by reason of being filled with bread…

The soul … that devotes herself to the recollection of profitable things finds rest in her freedom; her cares are small, and she repents of nothing. She takes forethought for virtue, she bridles the passions, she keeps guard upon excellence, and thus she enjoys growth [that is unhindered], joy free of solicitude, a good life and a perilless haven.

And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

Neither has Samaria committed half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters in all your abominations which you have done.

You also, which have judged your sisters, bear your own shame for your sins that you have committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than you: yes, be confounded also, and bear your shame, in that you have justified your sisters.

When I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then will I bring again the captivity of your captives in the midst of them:

That you may bear your own shame, and may be confounded in all that you have done, in that you are a comfort to them.

It is plain that the just and good God of the law and the gospels is one and the same and that he does good with justice and punishes in kindness, since neither goodness without justice nor justice without goodness can describe the dignity of the divine nature.

Consider and observe, my hearer, that if God had given a hope to Sodom and to its fellows, he would not have overthrown them with fire and brimstone, the sign of the last day of the world, but would have delivered them over to one of the kingdoms to be chastised.

For of whom is it doubted that among three sinners, rather sinners, a gentile, a heretic, and a churchman, he is more deserving of greater punishments, who is deserving of greater dignity? For the powerful, as we have said, endure torments powerfully (Wisdom 6:7). But he who is least deserving is deserving of mercy.

When your sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate, then you and your daughters shall return to your former estate.

For your sister Sodom was not mentioned by your mouth in the day of your pride,

Before your wickedness was discovered, as at the time of your reproach of the daughters of Syria, and all that are round about her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise you round about.

You have borne your lewdness and your abominations, says the LORD.

The Covenant Remembered

For thus says the Lord GOD; I will even deal with you as you have done, which have despised the oath in breaking the covenant.

Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish to you an everlasting covenant.

Then you shall remember your ways, and be ashamed, when you shall receive your sisters, your elder and your younger: and I will give them to you for daughters, but not by your covenant.

And I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall know that I am the LORD:

That you may remember, and be confounded, and never open your mouth any more because of your shame, when I am pacified toward you for all that you have done, says the Lord GOD.

Ezekiel16

Jerusalem’s Unfaithfulness

Judgment on Jerusalem

The Covenant Remembered