Ezekiel 23:22-35 – Th price of being unfaith to God.

Having established Oholibah’s deplorable unfaithfulness, The Lord  now in Ezekiel 23:22-35 describes the just dessert they deserved. He showed what Babylon, her lover whom she was so besotted and given herself so freely to, would now turn and do to her. This would be the third and final invasion that the Babylonians undertook against Jerusalem. Verse 23 identifies Judah’s invaders. In referring to her attackers as “the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them” God was saying that the whole Babylonian empire, the dominant power of the day would come against her. The whole empire and culture, which Judah found so attractive and was so obsessed and infatuated with, would now not turn on her.   

 

Allegorically, the Lord depicts the attractive Babylon that Judah the harlot had fallen in love with, turning against her.  With unimaginable hatred, the Babylonians would beat her and the people of Judah up. Many would lose their lives and survivors would find themselves without ears and noses. In the culture of the ancient Near East, punishment for an adulteress included cutting off her nose and ears so that she could not wear any ornament of attraction on them. Hence, she would no longer be attractive to any man anymore.  

 

The “cutting off of the nose and ears” is by way of saying that their significant people would be removed from Jerusalem. Many would be taken into captivity. Meanwhile, Jerusalem would be stripped of her possessions by the people she came to loathe. Jerusalem would be like a harlot being left naked and bare.  In what God had done, their harlotry which began with Egypt would be forgotten.  In other words, their hope of rescue from Egypt would not be realized.

 

For emphasis, in verses 28-31, Ezekiel repeated he had already warned what would happen to Jerusalem. She would be given into the hand of Babylon whom she had come to hate. The latter would reciprocate Judah’s hatred with hatred. Oholibah’s possessions would be confiscated, and she would be left bare and naked. In all that Jerusalem was made to go through, the full extent of her harlotry would be exposed. Oholibah’s had defiled herself. Her idolatry led her into the same path that her sister Oholah had embarked on.      

 

Since she had chosen to follow the path of her northern notorious sister, the judgment her sister had experienced would also be what Oholibah would receive.  Verses 32-25 illustrate the wrath of God which Judah would receive with the metaphor of a drinking cup. It would be in the same way as Israel in the north had drunk. When Israel fell into the hand of Assyria, Judah had unwisely celebrated her defeat. She gloated over Israel’s misfortune too early. Now the rooster had returned to roost. She would share the same fate as her northern sister, drink and empty the cup that her sister had drank. And she would become a laughingstock.  Oholibah would experience what Oholah had experienced and even worse.  

 

Conscious of it or not, like how He dealt with Judah, God will also educate us through discipline. “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11).”  When we are receptive to God, we will realize the purpose of His discipline. He wants us to never forget Him or to turn our back on Him. He wants us to know that He alone deserves our worship and allegiance. And He truly is.