16:1–5 The prophet is told to “make known” (Hb. hodaʿ; v. 2) to Jerusalem her abominations, which he will do in extended and graphic detail. This is legal terminology,110 so the prophet is cast in the role of prosecuting attorney, outlining the case and declaring the verdict and sentence against Jerusalem. The case begins with her dubious heritage, born in the land of the Canaanites, of Amorite and Hittite parentage (v. 3). This immediately distinguishes the origins of the city of Jerusalem from its later position as Israelite capital. The city existed long before David captured it nearly four hundred years after Joshua’s original conquest of the land (2 Sam. 5:6–9). The original population of the city is described as “Amorite” in Joshua 10:6, while “Hittite” can describe two different people groups in the OT. On the one hand are the descendants of a man named Heth (cf. Ex. 3:8, 17), who formed a local tribal grouping within the boundaries of Israel,111 while on the other hand are the neo-Hittite empires of northern Syria (1 Kings 10:29; 2 Chron. 1:17). Here “Hittite” probably refers to the first group.

The roots of Jerusalem’s history are thus traced not to the exodus and conquest but to an entirely alien—and pagan—origin among the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan, whose comprehensive sin led to the Lord’s removing them from the land before the Israelites (cf. Gen. 15:16). This sets the trajectory for the story that follows. The Lord’s election and kind nurture of Jerusalem is always in tension with its heredity and essential nature.

Jerusalem’s first parents showed none of the usual care for a baby at her birth. The practices of cutting a baby’s cord, washing the baby to remove the blood, rubbing her with a mixture of salt and oil and then swaddling her tightly to give the baby a sense of security were commonplace in the ancient world—but none of these things were done for Jerusalem (Ezek. 16:4). Instead, as sadly happened to many baby girls in antiquity, she was abandoned and left exposed in a field to die.

16:6–7 But the Lord saw Jerusalem’s helpless state, writhing around in a field still covered with the blood of her birth, and intervened in this situation of impending death to bring her life. In Mesopotamian culture a child who had been adopted while in its amniotic fluid and birth blood could never be reclaimed by its natural parents.112 The Lord spoke the word and Jerusalem’s identity was redrawn: she was defined no longer by her Canaanite ancestry but now by her new place in the Lord’s family. Nor was the Lord’s action simply judicial. He provided for all Jerusalem’s needs so that she flourished and prospered, growing to physical maturity,113 but she was as yet still unclothed. In terms of the metaphor, this period of Jerusalem’s history predates the Israelite conquest of the city. She grew and flourished by the Lord’s command, but she was not yet directly included in his people.

16:8–14 In the fullness of time, when Jerusalem was fully grown up, the Lord chose her a second time. “Spreading the corner of my garment over you” and symbolically covering her nakedness (v. 8) is a beautiful symbol of betrothal and protection (Ruth 3:9). The Lord made a commitment to Jerusalem and entered into covenant with her. In terms of the metaphor he married her; in terms of historical reality this refers to the Davidic covenant, in which the Lord associated his name not only with the line of David but with Jerusalem and especially with the temple to be built there (2 Samuel 7). Jerusalem went from being a pagan city to being the chosen city of God. The Lord also washed off her blood and anointed her with oil, clothing her with beautiful adornments. The things that in the metaphor no one had ever done for Jerusalem—washing her, anointing her, and clothing her—the Lord now did (cf. Ezek. 16:4). Blood was considered defiling in antiquity, so this washing can be considered a symbolic cleansing from her pagan past.

The Jerusalem temple is also in view in the city’s clothing and adornment. The elements making up her wardrobe not merely are fit for a queen but reflect items that were part of the tabernacle, such as embroidered cloth (Hb. riqmah; Ex. 26:36), fine leather (takhash, only elsewhere used for the outer cover of the tabernacle; Ex. 26:14; Numbers 4), and fine linen (shesh; Ex. 26:1).114 What is more, the Lord lavished upon her costly gifts of gold and silver, providing not only earrings and a nose ring but a chain on her neck and a crown on her head (Ezek. 16:12). She was provided with the very best of food: fine flour, honey, and oil.115 With all this rich care Jerusalem flourished and grew, becoming beautiful, recognized among the nations as a glorious queen—and, as the home of the temple, a holy city (cf. Psalm 48). Yet all this splendor was a gift lovingly provided for her by the Lord, her husband, not something she earned or merited for herself.

16:15–22 In contrast to the Lord’s steadfast, devoted, and faithful love for his bride, Jerusalem was wildly unfaithful. It was not that she had merely a momentary passing fling with someone else; she consistently dedicated herself to seeking out many lovers, taking the very gifts the Lord had given her and lavishing them on her paramours. The resources intended for the temple were spent on her idolatrous shrines, while the gold and silver the Lord had given her went to make idols, which she then clothed in her own embroidered garments (Ezek. 16:17–18). She also set out her own food before these idols and offered oil and incense before them.116 Worst of all, she took her sons and daughters, the Lord’s own children, and offered them as burnt offerings to these idols (v. 20). She did not remember the poverty and abuse of her youth, from which the Lord had rescued her. She did not remember that the things she offered to her idols came to her as gifts from her true husband, God. She ignored everything he had done for her.

In terms of Jerusalem’s history this is a regrettably apt description. From as early as the time of Solomon idolatry was a key sin of God’s people; Solomon built temples in Jerusalem to the gods of his foreign wives out of the wealth the Lord had given him (1 Kings 11:7–8). Repeatedly the writer of Kings condemns the kings of Israel and Judah for failure to deal with the high places throughout the land, where idolatry was openly practiced (e.g., 1 Kings 14:23). Sometimes even the royal temple in Jerusalem was defiled, as in the days of Manasseh, who built altars for the host of heaven within the sanctuary itself, along with an image of Asherah (2 Kings 21:3–7). Manasseh was one of many in Israel who burned his own son as an offering to the gods (2 Kings 21:6; cf. Jer. 7:31; 19:5).

16:23–29 The image of Jerusalem as an adulterous woman is developed from Hosea’s depiction of the northern kingdom as an ungrateful wife who abandons her faithful husband to pursue lovers (Hos. 2:4–14). Hosea also uses the image of marital unfaithfulness to describe the people’s idolatry. But Ezekiel’s Jerusalem is much, much worse than Gomer, Hosea’s wife—much more brazen in her prostitution and much more committed to her idolatry. Gomer may be pursued and bought back by her husband (Hos. 3:1–5), but Jerusalem seemed to be beyond redemption. She constructed “houses of prostitution”117 in every open space and elevated location in the city. Once again, she offered herself to any passerby (Ezek. 16:25; cf. v. 15).

Now, however, the charge has shifted from religious idolatry to political alliances. First was the Egyptians, with their enormous organs (lit., “great of flesh,” v. 26; ESV modestly renders it “lustful”; cf. 23:20 for even more explicit language). Instead of trusting in the Lord, King Zedekiah sought an alliance with Pharaoh Psamtik II, which Ezekiel will criticize in chapter 17 as a breach of his oath taken in the Lord’s name to submit to Nebuchadnezzar.

Previously Judah’s kings had aligned themselves with the Assyrians, such as when Ahaz specifically refused Isaiah’s invitation to ask the Lord for a sign to bolster his faith (Isa. 7:11–12). He had already determined to ask for help from the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III against an alliance of Israel and the Syrians, a decision that would later have disastrous consequences (Isa. 7:17–25). All the help offered by these foreign powers came to nothing when the Lord stretched out his hand against his rebellious people and delivered them to the “greed” (lit., “throat,” Hb. nepesh; Ezek. 16:27) of their enemies. Their allotted portion of territory was diminished as the Philistines grew more powerful. But these pagan alliance partners are themselves described as being ashamed of Jerusalem’s wanton behavior; even they would not stoop so low (v. 27). Finally Jerusalem pursued the Babylonians (here called “Chaldeans” [v. 29], since this ethnic group formed the ruling class in Babylonia in Nebuchadnezzar’s days), and even then she was not satisfied (v. 29). Hezekiah began the process of seeking an alliance with the Babylonians already in the days of Merodoch-baladan, for which Isaiah roundly condemned him (Isaiah 39).

These alliances were very costly in material terms, as the junior vassal was expected to pay significant tribute annually to his overlord. Often the promised help from the senior partner failed to materialize. But even more damaging was the spiritual cost. Trusting in other nations meant on some level recognizing their gods, for they were the ones who would punish any breaches in the treaty. The Assyrians did not generally impose their state religion on their vassals, but the temptation to syncretism was nonetheless real. It is no coincidence that Ahaz introduced Syrian-style innovations into the Jerusalem temple immediately after meeting with Tiglath-piliser III, king of Assyria, in Damascus (2 Kings 16:10–16). On any scenario trusting these nations was the opposite of trusting the Lord, as Isaiah told Ahaz (Isaiah 7). If the prophet uses offensive and graphic images to describe Jerusalem’s behavior (and he does), it is because the sin behind the metaphor is equally offensive.

16:30–34 The Lord reveals his own response to Jerusalem’s actions. Depending on the derivation of the Hebrew words in question, his response could be “How sick is your heart” (in the sense of “fevered,” “lovesick”)118 or “How I am filled with anger against you.”119 Either way, the response expresses the Lord’s disgust and righteous anger at the city that he has chosen and richly blessed but which has turned away from him so comprehensively. Most prostitutes have some financial motivation (or, in many cases, desperation) that drives them, but Judah not only is unpaid for her embraces but pays her lovers to join in her debauchery (Ezek. 16:33). Again, the historical background is the costly commitment to political alliances with other nations. These relationships do not even make financial and political sense, let alone theological sense. The Lord, however, is not merely objectively and impartially against such transactions; he is disgusted and personally wounded by his people’s rejection of him, the one who has loved them so well from their birth.

16:35–43 After Ezekiel, as prosecuting attorney, reveals the sordid metaphorical description of all Jerusalem’s sins, the Lord as judge declares the sentence. When she was an infant, Jerusalem was naked through no fault of her own; the Lord graciously covered that nakedness for her. Now, however, she has chosen nakedness sinfully in pursuit of her lust for foreign lovers. Such a combination of rampant prostitution, idolatry, and the murder of her children could merit only one sentence: death. Bizarrely from the point of view of the metaphor, but realistically from the point of view of history, the sentence will be carried out by Jerusalem’s various lovers: Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon (as well as those she hates—the Philistines; cf. v. 27). Those she has gathered to her for love will now gather against her in hate. They will throw down her houses of prostitution, strip away the good gifts God has given her (which she has squandered on her idols), and destroy the city. In place of the Lord’s covering her with his garment as a sign of his commitment (v. 8), he will strip her naked as a sign of their divorce (v. 37; cf. Hos. 2:2–3). Then the sentence of death will be carried out. There is discussion about the extent to which this would be the normal practice for adultery (cf. Deut. 22:21; Nah. 3:5), but it certainly fits as the punishment for the covenant breaking that underlies the metaphor.

Only when Jerusalem’s rampant prostitution and purchasing of foreign alliances is at an end will God’s wrath and angry jealousy against the city finally cease (Ezek. 16:41–42). God’s “jealousy” is not a sinful refusal to share things that ought to be shared, as we often use the word, but refers to the righteous anger provoked by an inappropriate sharing of what ought not be shared (cf. Ex. 34:14). The city that has failed to remember the days of her youth—the Lord’s care for her and their exclusive marriage to one another—faces the punishment for her own wanton destruction of that relationship through idolatry and alliance with alternative sources of confidence and security. Her misdeeds will return on her own head.

16:44–52 At this point Ezekiel shifts the metaphor from unfaithful wife to true daughter and sister. The proverb “Like mother, like daughter” could be positive or negative; it simply reflects the fact of common family likeness. In this case, however, it is as negative as the family in question. Jerusalem is just like her Hittite mother, as well as her two sisters, Samaria and Sodom, who form the primary point of comparison in what follows. Jerusalem is placed between Samaria, her older (or larger) sister, and Sodom, her younger (or smaller) sister both in size and geography, with Samaria and her “daughters” (the surrounding settlements) being to the north of Jerusalem and Sodom to the south. Samaria, as the former capital of the northern kingdom, has become a byword in idolatry because of the state-sanctioned worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:28–29), while Sodom is an icon of social and sexual sin because of the events of Genesis 18–19. The term “Did an abomination before me” (Ezek. 16:50) may refer to the attempted homosexual gang rape of Lot and the angels in Genesis 19:5 (cf. Lev. 20:13).120 Ezekiel also names Sodom’s other sins as pride, excessive consumption, and a lack of compassion for the poor and needy (Ezek. 16:49). These may refer to the preexisting wickedness of Sodom, which the angels had been sent to investigate; the “outcry” to the Lord (Gen. 18:20) was presumably the cry of the oppressed poor.

But Jerusalem has the dubious distinction of having been even worse than these twin towers of iniquity. Her abominations make her two sisters appear positively righteous by comparison (Ezek. 16:52). Of course, the other feature Sodom and Samaria have in common is being handed over by the Lord for destruction. If he acted justly against Sodom and Samaria in destroying them for their sins, how much more will the Lord’s justice force him to act against all the abominations of Jerusalem? Jerusalem should hang her head in shame.

16:53–58 There is another shocking twist to come in this story, however. The Lord will restore the fortunes of Jerusalem, but only in company with Sodom and Samaria. Restoring their fortunes implies not merely a fresh start for these cities but a removal of the causes of the original judgment (cf. Deut. 30:1–10; Jer. 33:6–9).121 Before Jerusalem’s humbling and destruction, she prided herself in being in an entirely different class from such places as Sodom and Samaria. Jerusalem might have described those places using the terms applied to her in this chapter, looking down on them with haughty moral superiority. But by the end of Ezekiel’s exposé there is no place for any moral superiority on Jerusalem’s part. If she is going to be restored after her fall—and the Lord has declared that she will—it will occur only on the basis of sheer unmerited grace. Restoration based on such completely unmerited grace and not on any obedience to the law allows for a salvation that reaches out not simply to God’s chosen people of Judah, along with the former northern kingdom of Samaria, but to the Gentiles as well, represented here by Sodom.122 This concept of a salvation by grace alone apart from works of the law that includes the unrighteous Gentiles along with the unfaithful Jews in God’s people in order to exclude any boasting is the foundation of Paul’s argument in Romans 1–4.

16:59–63 The fundamental sin behind the other sins of Jerusalem described in this chapter is her “despising the oath in breaking the covenant” (Ezek. 16:59). When an ancient Near Eastern covenant was established, the parties would frequently undertake a ceremony involving a self-imprecatory oath of some kind. For example, they might pass between the pieces of a dismembered animal as a solemn injunction that, if they broke the covenant, the gods should dismember them just like those animals (cf. Genesis 15). One of the Sefire treaties from around 750 BC reads,

Just as this piece of wax is burned with fire, so shall Mati’el be burned with fire. And just as (this) bow and these arrows are broken, so shall Inurta and Hadad break the bow of Mati’el . . . and just as (this) man of wax is blinded, so shall Mati’el be blinded. Just as this calf is cut up, so may Mati’el be cut up.123

Having undertaken a similar oath of loyalty to the Lord, Jerusalem has despised the threatened consequences, thereby showing contempt for the Lord who stood behind them. She has broken that covenant repeatedly and flagrantly, as if it were nothing. Yet the Lord is the one whose actions are ultimately definitive, first in judgment but then in faithful remembrance of his promises in the days of her youth. He will establish an everlasting, unbreakable covenant (cf. Gen. 17:7) that will accomplish the goals of that original covenant: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God” (Ex. 6:7).

This is essentially the same promise the Lord made in Jeremiah 31:31–34, where he promised to establish a new covenant with his people. What would be “new” about this new covenant was its unbreakable nature, in contrast with the Sinai covenant, which inevitably ended in the curse of exile because of the people’s long history of unfaithfulness. The Lord would in the future establish a covenant with his people in which the promise of blessing would be based not on Israel’s own works but on God’s sovereign saving act, a covenant that would include her disgraced sisters Samaria and Sodom, even though they were not previously part of that covenant. The Lord would atone for all their sins and restore their relationship (Ezek. 16:63), thereby creating in his people the sense of memory and (appropriate) shame over sin that had been previously lacking. Shame here indicates not a psychological sense of internal worthlessness but a humbling acknowledgement of personal failure that opens the way for repentance.124 Every boast will be silenced in the face of the Lord’s astonishing and extravagant grace.