Ezekiel 23:27, commentary and pictures

The corrupt, lewd, adulterous woman stands for a corrupt church, with Samaria and Jerusalem representing Israel and Judah in their awful sins. Her lewdness and whoredom brought from the land of Egypt mean spiritual unfaithfulness and apostasy from God through attachment to foreign nations and their ways, including unlawful religious ties with idolatrous or false sects and turning toward Egypt. God's promise to make lewdness cease is a strong rebuke and warning that He would end that apostasy so Israel would no longer lift up its eyes to Egypt nor remember Egypt any more.

The verse belongs to a prophecy of Jerusalem's fall and scattering, in which the king of Babylon comes against Jerusalem and the crown is removed from Israel's wicked prince. That scattering began in the Babylonian destruction and perhaps was not complete until the later Roman destruction, and Israel's disobedience to God's commandments is given as its cause. The portrayal gives searching moral instruction about unfaithfulness, and while some passages in the chapter may be read anywhere, the verse is suited to private reading.

Israel and Judah's desire for Assyrians and Babylonians pictures the church's betrayal of its covenant, in which Christians joined to Christ who become friends of the world turn from their divine husband, reject God's precepts, and become spiritually joined to Babylon, with Judah's likeness to the heathen and Israel's fall showing the result. Seeking help from Egypt was rebellion against God, and the lesson applies to churches seeking union with civil power, which repeats that unfaithfulness by relying on another power instead of God. This whoredom does not mean the church's use of civil law for temporal affairs.