Ezekiel 23:36-49
36 The LORD also said to me: "Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then declare to them their abominations. 37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols, and even sacrificed their sons whom they bore to Me, passing them through the fire, to devour them. 38 Moreover they have done this to Me: They have defiled My sanctuary on the same day and profaned My Sabbaths. 39 For after they had slain their children for their idols, on the same day they came into My sanctuary to profane it; and indeed thus they have done in the midst of My house.
40 "Furthermore you sent for men to come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and there they came. And you washed yourself for them, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with ornaments. 41 You sat on a stately couch, with a table prepared before it, on which you had set My incense and My oil. 42 The sound of a carefree multitude was with her, and Sabeans were brought from the wilderness with men of the common sort, who put bracelets on their wrists and beautiful crowns on their heads. 43 Then I said concerning her who had grown old in adulteries, 'Will they commit harlotry with her now, and she with them?' 44 Yet they went in to her, as men go in to a woman who plays the harlot; thus they went in to Oholah and Oholibah, the lewd women. 45 But righteous men will judge them after the manner of adulteresses, and after the manner of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.
46 "For thus says the Lord GOD: 'Bring up an assembly against them, give them up to trouble and plunder. 47 The assembly shall stone them with stones and execute them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn their houses with fire. 48 Thus I will cause lewdness to cease from the land, that all women may be taught not to practice your lewdness. 49 They shall repay you for your lewdness, and you shall pay for your idolatrous sins. Then you shall know that I am the Lord GOD.'"
Both sisters Oholah and Oholibah, Samaria and Jerusalem, were judged for their unrepentant sins of idolatry and immortality. They committed both physical and spiritually immoral acts even in God’s house! While they were burning incense and making offerings to their dead gods of wood and stone, they also slept with other godless men from the nations coming into them and their temple of the LORD. These abominable acts were told through Ezekiel to them that they could not hide from Him or imagine that God could not see or hear, which is ironic since their deaf and dumb idols were themselves completely unable to hear or speak. These in Jerusalem who were called to follow and worship the LORD their God had even sacrificed their own children to dead gods on the altar meant to atone their sins until the Messiah came in to the temple as the eternally atoning sacrifice. Their adultery with these lifeless statues of wood and stone, the materials which aged had created and they had perverted for such use, this infidelity to Almighty God was the ultimate immortality of their adulterous lives and the cause for divine justice to be meted out on them. God hates the idolatry of and in his temple, which we now are (1 Corinthians 6:18-19) because it is putting idols of passing pleasures and divided loyalty to Him and His covenants with us. Samaria and Jerusalem played the harlot with the godless nations as they were bought with precious riches instead refusing because of the great price which would be paid for them by God Himself as foretold countless time until Christ arrived. Though the nations came into them, they in their lewd behavior allowed it and so prosecuted themselves morally and spiritually with added blood on their hands for sacrificing their own children who were God’s more than their own. Therefore, they were handed over to be plundered and suffer even to death. They reaped the pay of their lewd immortality and idolatrous sins against their LORD. Then the ones surviving could finally know and agree that the LORD alone is God of all and go to sin no more, a lesson for us to keep ourselves from sexual immorality and pursuit of other objects of worship which consume our pursuits and desires more than Him. If we are found in Christ, our sins will not destroy us as Oholah and Oholibah, but we will suffer shame and loss with His disciplining mercy of grace (1 Corinthians 3:15-17, 2 Corinthians 7:10). We are to be chaste both physically and spiritually before our Lord (2 Corinthians 11:2, 1 John 3:2-3). Holiness is never optional.
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