Ezekiel 16:30-43--Jerusalem, the Unfaithful Bride (Part 2)

Ezekiel 16:30-43
English Standard Version
​30 “How sick is your heart, declares the Lord GOD, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, 31 building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. 32 Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. 34 So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

35 “Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the LORD: 36 Thus says the Lord GOD, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, 37 therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. 38 And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy. 39 And I will give you into their hands, and they shall throw down your vaulted chamber and break down your lofty places. They shall strip you of your clothes and take your beautiful jewels and leave you naked and bare. 40 They shall bring up a crowd against you, and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords. 41 And they shall burn your houses and execute judgments upon you in the sight of many women. I will make you stop playing the whore, and you shall also give payment no more. 42 So will I satisfy my wrath on you, and my jealousy shall depart from you. I will be calm and will no more be angry. 43 Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me with all these things, therefore, behold, I have returned your deeds upon your head, declares the Lord GOD. Have you not committed lewdness in addition to all your abominations?

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Back to the ESV today (it looks like I switched to the ERV the other day and forgot to change back).  The LORD declares that the heart of His Bride Israel is sick.  She would continue in her life of brazen prostitution if He did not intervene to stop her, and His intervention was for her good, even though it may look to her in the moment like He is trying to keep her from pleasure.

Unlike regular prostitutes, she's not even doing this for money.  That is how depraved her heart and mind have become (see the progression in Romans 1 where sin, especially sexual sin, starts to lead to delusions and an irrational mind.  Instead, she gave away all of her gifts to the "johns" that she whored herself out to.  Not only did she give herself, but also her priceless treasures that the LORD had given to her.  She had been dressed like and treated like a princess, but now she is wretched and unclean and shameful.

The LORD is going to cause all these Gentile nations that Israel thought of as her "lovers" against her.  They will all join against her, and the LORD will give Israel into their hands.  She will be allowed to be abused by them as they see her as nothing other than an object for their pleasure, and when they are no longer pleased with her, they will discard her like refuse.  She will be in very much the same situation as where she started--abandoned, dirty and in need of someone to clean her up, lover her, and care for her.  But who would want her at this point?  She has prostituted herself to so many others and proven herself unfaithful.  Would the LORD take her back?  We'll see that going forward, but, for now, the LORD thinks it right and good that she should face the consequences of her choices.  She will not come to her senses unless she is like the prodigal son who was forced to live among the pigs and feed them and desire the pig's food for himself because there was a famine in that land.  So it would be with Israel that they would go into a place of moral and spiritual famine that is unclean and the Gentiles would try to make them as unclean as they were.  They would ask questions like "Where is your God?" because they would accuse God of abandoning His people, but God never abandons His people, even when His people walk away from Him.  Eventually, Israel will hit rock bottom and they will cry out to the LORD for salvation once again with hearts that are broken and contrite and He will hear them and will save them once again.  But, He has set the years of their judgment as 70 years (see the book of Jeremiah) as the Land needs time to rest and to be purified from all their iniquity--especially from the blood of the child sacrifices that polluted the ground.