Ezekiel 23:22, commentary and pictures

Aholibah is Jerusalem, and with Samaria she stands for Judah and Israel set forth under the figure of a lewd, adulterous and corrupt woman, which is the figure of a corrupt church. The portrayal belongs to searching moral instruction running from Ezekiel 10 to Ezekiel 27, much of which predicts the last days. Because of its plain language it is best read in private.

Spiritual unfaithfulness and fornication are forsaking God and abandoning covenant with Him. They are apostasy from His law and testimony, seeking help from Egypt and from the Assyrians and Babylonians, adopting worldly and pagan ways so that the house of Judah became like the heathen, and forming an unlawful connection with idolatrous and false religious groups. In the verse the word for mind translates the Hebrew neh-phesh, with soul used in the sense of mind or feelings, so that Aholibah's mind is alienated from her former lovers.

God would raise those lovers against her from every side, with Babylon coming against Jerusalem to scatter Israel for disobedience, so that the people and powers that once favored her turn against her. That scattering is connected with removing the crown from Israel's wicked prince and overturning the kingdom until the one with the rightful claim comes. The failure to rely on God applies to churches seeking union with civil power. Yet the unfaithfulness condemned does not mean a church's use of civil laws for temporal matters. The turning of those who once favored Aholibah against her is compared with the mustard-seed parable and prophecies of a small beginning growing into a great government, and is connected to the planting and growth of the American government.