Ezekiel 23:3
And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity. And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.
The verse presents the awful sins of Israel and Judah, pictured as Samaria and Jerusalem, under the figure of lewd and adulterous women. The whoredoms committed in youth in Egypt mean early spiritual unfaithfulness to God, turning from the law and testimony and the worship of Jehovah to unlawful connection with idolatrous or false religious groups. That unfaithfulness consisted in forsaking God and seeking Egypt's help, and in desiring and allying with foreign powers including the Assyrians and Babylonians, thereby becoming like the heathen, choosing friendship with the world, and casting off God's precepts.
A lewd or corrupt woman is a symbol of a corrupt or apostate church, the opposite of a pure woman who symbolizes a true church, and in Ezekiel 23:2-4 the figure refers to the Jewish church in a state of backsliding. The judgment pronounced against Samaria and Jerusalem is compared with the judgment of adulteresses. Churches that seek union with civil power repeat that unfaithfulness by turning elsewhere for help instead of relying wholly on God, though a church's use of civil laws for its temporal affairs is not itself fornication. The chapter is suited to private reading, although some passages in it are proper to read anywhere.