Ezekiel 23:30, commentary and pictures

Ezekiel 23:30 belongs to the warnings given before the destruction of Jerusalem, in the part of Ezekiel appointed for correction, denunciation, reproof, and searching moral instruction about sin. Samaria and Jerusalem stand for the two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, whose attraction to Assyria and Babylon made Judah like the heathen. The corrupt woman is a symbol of a corrupt church, the counterpart of the pure woman who stands for the true church, and the same as the wicked woman sitting in the midst of the ephah who is carried to Shinar, which is Babylon.

Going whoring after the heathen and being polluted with their idols is portrayed as sexual unfaithfulness, adultery, spiritual fornication and pollution, describing the fearful sins of apostasy in turning from covenant relationship with God and from the worship of Jehovah and the law and testimony to idolatrous or false religious groups. Specifically, it meant forsaking God and rebelliously seeking help from Egypt instead of trusting Him. After belonging to God, His people commit spiritual adultery when they become friends and followers of the world and cast off His precepts, with spiritual wickedness brought in among God's people through a false religious body.

This pursuit of other nations and pollution with their idols is given as the reason for God's judgment on Jerusalem, Judah and Israel, a judgment connected with Babylon's attack, the removal of Israel's wicked prince, and the overturning of the kingdom. The judgment rebukes sin in its awful wickedness while God earnestly pleads with His children to turn to Him, since such whoring and pollution makes impure, and only the pure in heart shall see God. The same guilt belongs to professed Christian churches today that seek union with the civil power, since God has furnished full blessing in Jesus Christ and demands all from His church and will not divide His glory with another. This spiritual fornication is not the church's use of civil law for temporal concerns.