Ezekiel 23:19
Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.
Ezekiel 23 portrays the fearful and awful sins of Judah and Israel under the figure of a lewd, adulterous, unfaithful woman, with Samaria and Jerusalem shown as adulterous women and backsliding Israel as the unfaithful woman. A corrupt, harlot woman stands for a corrupt church, just as a pure woman stands for a true church. She multiplied her whoredoms by calling to remembrance the days of her youth, recalling and returning to and repeating the idolatrous practices of her early history in Egypt.
That whoredom and fornication is spiritual apostasy, turning from the covenant with God and from His law and testimony and worship to idolatrous or false religious groups. The apostasy included forsaking God and seeking Egypt's help, which is condemned as rebellion, and desiring foreign powers including the Babylonians. Such worldly alliances made Judah like the surrounding nations.
The verse belongs to the account of Jerusalem's judgment, historically applied to Babylon's attack on Jerusalem and the overthrow of its kingdom, which began the scattering of Israel. It gives searching moral instruction and belongs to predictions of the last days. It is best read in private, though some passages around it are properly read anywhere. It does not describe a church's lawful use of civil regulations for temporal matters.