Ezekiel 23 is another chapter on the sins of Judah using the image of prostitution. Didn’t we just see this in Ezekiel 16? Ezekiel 23 is the Oholah and Oholibah (Samaria and Judah) chapter. Ugly. Samaria was first in idolatry (the golden calves of Jeroboam). But Judah soon followed. Why does Ezekiel (God) keep covering the same ground? To make the point? Repetition is the key to learning? The Jews of Jesus’ day did not practice idolatry! Apparently, they finally got that part.

The LORD said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. 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. (Ezekiel 23.36, 37, ESV)

It ends with “And you shall know that I am the Lord GOD.”

For thus says the Lord GOD: “Bring up a vast host against them, and make them an object of terror and a plunder. 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. 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. 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.” (Ezekiel 23.46 – 49, ESV)

I sit here on my patio in peace and security, looking out over the nice area in which I live. It’s hard to imagine soldiers marching through destroying everything or bombs dropping out of the sky.

But that’s exactly what’s happening in the Ukraine, for example. In Biblical language it looks like God using corrupt Russia, led by Putin, to destroy Ukraine. I’m not suggesting that’s true, but it is an example of a highly civilized people enjoying life one minute and invaded and destroyed the next. It can and does happen.

And there’s no shortage of lewdness in our country. Al Mohler, in his essay “The Emperor has no uterus” is observing that the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, can’t say for sure that the only people who can be pregnant are women. We have lost our minds.

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. (Deuteronomy 30.15 – 18, ESV)