9th December 2023 – Ezekiel 23:36-49

36 The Lord said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. 37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. 38 Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. 39 For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house. 40 They even sent for men to come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and behold, they came. For them you bathed yourself, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with ornaments. 41 You sat on a stately couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed my incense and my oil. 42 The sound of a carefree multitude was with her; and with men of the common sort, drunkards were brought from the wilderness; and they put bracelets on the hands of the women, and beautiful crowns on their heads.

43 “Then I said of her who was worn out by adultery, ‘Now they will continue to use her for a whore, even her!’ 44 For they have gone in to her, as men go in to a prostitute. Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, lewd women!45 But righteous men shall pass judgment on them with the sentence of adulteresses, and with the sentence of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.”

46 For thus says the Lord God: “Bring up a vast host against them, and make them an object of terror and a plunder. 47 And the host shall stone them and cut them down with their swords. They shall kill their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses. 48 Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. 49 And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord God.”


The significance of the closing verses of the chapter (42-49) lies in the nature of the judgment that was pronounced upon Jerusalem: 'The company shall stone them with stones, and despatch them with their swords' (47). In this connection we should recall the incident in John 8, when the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in adultery. Death by stoning was the penalty imposed by the law; and therefore, since Jerusalem had been an adulteress, she was going to have the penalty of the law fulfilled upon her. And in the fullness of the time, Nebuchadnezzar's catapults rained boulders and stones upon the beleaguered city so that it was 'stoned' to death. One can readily understand the impact this word would have upon these elders of Judah, who knew the law, although they had not kept it, and how devastatingly Ezekiel's message must have shattered their complacent confidence that Jerusalem was inviolable in the eyes of the Lord, and that He would never destroy it. 'Ah, but the penalty for adultery is stoning to death, and stoned to death Jerusalem will be, for she is guilty of adultery in the sight of God'. Let us not be over-preoccupied with the language or imagery, but see beyond it to what Ezekiel is saying. Our relationship to God is a marital one, He is the lover of our souls, and sins against love are very, very serious indeed. That is the great incentive to God's people to be faithful. We are being faithful, not to an idea or to a code, but to a Lover, and to a Husband.