Ezekiel 23:11, commentary and pictures

Ezekiel 23 is a chapter that exposes the fearful sins of Judah and Israel, setting forth their awful sins under the figure of a lewd woman. Samaria and Jerusalem are presented there as two adulterous women doting in lust and going into the bed of love with others. In symbolic prophecy a woman represents a church, an assembly of people called out and united for a spiritual purpose, whether good or evil. A corrupt woman is therefore a symbol of a corrupt church.

The verse portrays Aholibah, that is Judah and Jerusalem, as more corrupt in her inordinate love and in her whoredoms than her sister, that is Israel and Samaria. Her greater corruption and unfaithfulness is spiritual infidelity, turning from God's law and testimony and worship to idolatrous or false religious groups. Her whoredoms mean spiritual fornication and rebellion, in which a church married to God her husband and to Christ by covenant sealed by His blood and solemn vow breaks that marriage. That breach comes by forsaking God, casting off His precepts, law, testimony and worship, for casting off His precepts is casting off God Himself.

Historically this unfaithfulness was Israel's forsaking God and seeking help from Egypt, described as rebellion, and Israel and Judah doting in lust on Egypt, Assyria and Babylon and going into the bed of love with them. It was Judah, like Israel, breaking her marriage to God her husband by listening to Babylon and following Satan to become his bride alongside her sister Babylon, taking strangers instead of her husband. It was building her eminent place at the head of every way and her high place in every street, setting up prominent places of worship at every road and street, so that the lives of Israel and Babylon became one and Judah became like all the heathen.

The same unfaithfulness is repeated when churches seek union with civil power instead of giving God whole loyalty. God has provided abundant blessings in Jesus Christ and demands the church's whole loyalty, sharing His glory with no other. The image does not condemn a church's lawful use of civil government for temporal matters, as held by those who apply Aholibah to an apostate church turning to false worship.

Backsliding Israel and Judah are thus likened to harlots who have ensnared souls and corrupted the nations of earth. Their union with Babylon produces the wine of Babylon, a drunken and lascivious life lived under statutes that are not good and judgments by which they should not live. That condition leaves Zion drunken but not with wine and in a stupor, and Israel fallen. Because of its plain presentation of these sins under the figure of a lewd woman, the verse is to be read in private, although some passages in its chapter are properly read anywhere.