For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of thy pride,
In her pride Jerusalem did not even mention her sister Sodom. The chapter presents the Jewish church as a people espoused and married to the Lord alone who became unfaithful to God like a harlot. A woman is the symbol of the church, while a harlot or lewd woman is the symbol of a corrupt or apostate church, in contrast to a virtuous woman who represents a pure church.
That harlotry is seeking the friendship of the world and unlawful union with the kings of the earth, including departures from God, conformity to the world, and idolatry. God calls such union of His church with the world fornication and adultery, the mixing of heaven with earth and righteousness with sin. As a wife married to God as husband, Jerusalem and the house of Judah committed adultery by taking strangers instead of her husband, building her eminent place at the head of every way and her high place in every street. She listened to Babylon and followed Satan to become his bride with sister Babylon, and by casting off the precepts of God, which is casting off God, the lives of Israel and Babylon become one.
That union produces Babylon's wine cup of a drunken lascivious life under statutes that are not good and judgments by which they should not live, leaving Zion drunken but not with wine and Israel fallen. Babylon, called a harlot in prophecy, is not abstract earthly power or the civil power, which is distinct from the kings of the earth yet rules over them and is hated and destroyed by them, but a corrupt professedly religious body unlawfully united with the kings of the earth. The fall of the Jewish church portrayed as a harlot was her rejection by God because of alienation from God and union with the world, when she was rejected and left to the influence of evil spirits, while her destruction was delayed for a considerable time. This illustrates Babylon's rejection by God.
The verse belongs to a comparison of Judah and Israel with Sodom: despite the greater light they had received, they had acted worse than Sodom. Their guilt in relation to that light will be made clear in the judgment. The former estate means they will be raised from the dead in their sinful condition and then punished, and it does not teach that they will have another probation.
In her pride Jerusalem did not even mention her sister Sodom. The chapter presents the Jewish church as a people espoused and married to the Lord alone who became unfaithful to God like a harlot. A woman is the symbol of the church, while a harlot or lewd woman is the symbol of a corrupt or apostate church, in contrast to a virtuous woman who represents a pure church.
That harlotry is seeking the friendship of the world and unlawful union with the kings of the earth, including departures from God, conformity to the world, and idolatry. God calls such union of His church with the world fornication and adultery, the mixing of heaven with earth and righteousness with sin. As a wife married to God as husband, Jerusalem and the house of Judah committed adultery by taking strangers instead of her husband, building her eminent place at the head of every way and her high place in every street. She listened to Babylon and followed Satan to become his bride with sister Babylon, and by casting off the precepts of God, which is casting off God, the lives of Israel and Babylon become one.
That union produces Babylon's wine cup of a drunken lascivious life under statutes that are not good and judgments by which they should not live, leaving Zion drunken but not with wine and Israel fallen. Babylon, called a harlot in prophecy, is not abstract earthly power or the civil power, which is distinct from the kings of the earth yet rules over them and is hated and destroyed by them, but a corrupt professedly religious body unlawfully united with the kings of the earth. The fall of the Jewish church portrayed as a harlot was her rejection by God because of alienation from God and union with the world, when she was rejected and left to the influence of evil spirits, while her destruction was delayed for a considerable time. This illustrates Babylon's rejection by God.
The verse belongs to a comparison of Judah and Israel with Sodom: despite the greater light they had received, they had acted worse than Sodom. Their guilt in relation to that light will be made clear in the judgment. The former estate means they will be raised from the dead in their sinful condition and then punished, and it does not teach that they will have another probation.