Ezekiel 16:22
And in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood. And in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood.
Ezekiel 16 is a strong parable rebuking the apostasy of Judah and Israel, picturing Jerusalem as the Lord's unfaithful wife joined to Him by covenant. Being naked and bare and polluted in blood pictures her former lowly, helpless, exposed and sin-stained condition from which God had raised her, which she failed to remember while committing abominations and whoredoms in departure from God. A harlot is the symbol of a corrupt, fallen, apostate church distinct from the true church, and the Jewish church espoused to the Lord alone became such a harlot by seeking unlawful friendship and union with the world and the kings of the earth. Her whoredom signifies apostasy from God's law and worship and unlawful religious alliance with idolatrous powers, for departure from God, conformity to the world, and idolatry are spiritual adultery. Her fall was her rejection by God for unfaithfulness rather than her immediate destruction, and so illustrates the fall of Babylon as a moral fall by rejection for false doctrine and union with the world.
Setting and Rebuke
Ezekiel was of the priestly family and prophesied among the captives of Israel between 595 and 574, beginning and closing his work just a little later than Jeremiah. Before his prophetic work began God showed him His glory in wonderful visions to impress His majesty upon him, so that having once seen God he would not fear the face of man in meeting sinners among his own people. The verse belongs to one of his awful messages of warning and reproof to those sinners among his own people. It stands in a strong parable rebuking the apostasy of Judah and Israel, in which God earnestly pleads with His people to turn back to Him.
The chapter pictures Jerusalem as the Lord's unfaithful wife under covenant. The Lord is the husband, Jerusalem or the land is the wife, and the people are her children. Its marriage language represents the people's covenant union with the Lord, which He made with them and which they broke by turning to another. That union is not the marriage of the Lamb at the end.
Being naked and bare and polluted in blood pictures the former lowly, helpless, exposed, degraded, shameful and sin-stained condition from which God had raised and delivered her. She had been a helpless, exposed child, naked and polluted in her blood, and then raised from the degraded condition and shame of those helpless beginnings. The verse condemns her for not remembering the days of her youth while committing abominations and whoredoms. Forgetting that beginning accompanied her departure from God in abominations and unfaithfulness, and preceded her rejection. Her violation of the covenant brought withdrawal of gifts, disgrace, and desolation, yet the chapter later shows the Lord restoring Jerusalem under an everlasting covenant.
Harlot as Apostate Church
A woman is the symbol of the church, while a harlot or lewd and licentious woman is the symbol of a corrupt, fallen and apostate church. The harlot is thus distinguished from the woman used as the symbol of the true church. The Jewish church, though espoused to the Lord alone, became such a harlot through apostasy and unlawful friendship with the world. She became a harlot in the same manner as Babylon, by seeking the friendship of the world through unlawful union with the kings of the earth, for Babylon in Revelation is that corrupt church, distinct from the kings of the earth though unlawfully united with them.
The language of whoredom signifies apostasy from God's law and worship and unlawful religious alliance with idolatrous or false religious groups. It does not signify the church's use of civil laws for temporal matters. God calls a union of His church with the world fornication and adultery, and departure from God, conformity to the world, and idolatry are described as adultery, so that the attempt to mix heaven with earth and righteousness with sin is spiritual unfaithfulness to God.
Prototype of Babylon's Fall
Israel's unfaithfulness stands as the prototype for the apostate church, for as Israel forgot her former condition and turned from God, so the church does the same by committing spiritual adultery through corrupt teaching and union with the powers of the world. The record of Ezekiel 16:22 belongs to that history of unfaithfulness, showing a people who did not remember the days of their youth when they departed from the Lord.
The chapter's charge of adultery applies to God's people when they abandon His covenant and join themselves to Babylon and the world. That union is spiritual adultery, a turning from God to other allegiances after forgetting a former helpless condition. It forgets the humble beginnings from which God delivered them, when they were helpless and stained by sin.
Her fall was her rejection by God, not her immediate destruction, for her destruction was deferred for a considerable period. In this she illustrates the fall of Babylon, which is a moral fall by rejection for unfaithfulness and false doctrine rather than destruction by the plagues. The Jewish church, espoused to the Lord, became a harlot through such unfaithfulness, and her rejection foreshadows the same moral fall of the corrupt church.