Ezekiel 23:24
And they shall come against thee with chariots, wagons, and wheels, and with an assembly of people, which shall set against thee buckler and shield and helmet round about: and I will set judgment before them, and they shall judge thee according to their judgments.
The lewd and corrupt woman is the symbol of a corrupt church, the opposite of the pure woman who symbolizes the true church. In its setting the figures are Samaria and Jerusalem, that is Judah and Israel, in their awful sins. Their harlotry is spiritual apostasy in forsaking God and turning from His law and worship to unlawful alliance with idolatrous and false religious groups. It sought help and favor from Egypt, and from Assyria and Babylon, and by that conduct became like the surrounding nations.
The lovers so pursued become the invaders who come against her with chariots and wagons and wheels, and with an assembly of people setting buckler and shield and helmet round about. This is the king of Babylon coming against Jerusalem in the Babylonian invasion, prophesied in 593 B.C. The declaration that judgment is set before them and they shall judge according to their judgments means Israel is judged by the standards of those it pursued. Its scattering begun by this invasion is God's judgment for disobedience to His commandments, perhaps not completed until Jerusalem's later destruction by the Romans.
The chapter's prediction reaches to the last days. The passage from verse 22 to verse 24 sets forth in a striking way the establishment and growth of the American government. The chapter is searching moral instruction, and its plain depiction of sin makes it best read in private.
Like Israel's unfaithfulness in forsaking God and seeking help from Egypt, churches seeking support through union with civil power forsake God and commit spiritual unfaithfulness. The verse belongs to the figurative depiction of Babylon's apostasy, not to teaching about a church's use of civil law for its temporal affairs.