Commentary on Ezekiel 16:1-15,60,63 or Ezekiel 16:59-63

(Note: Today’s First Reading speaks in rather explicit language about childbirth and prostitution. There is an alternative First Reading commentary below for those who might find the longer reading offensive or ‘indelicate’.)

Ezekiel 16:1-15,60,63
Today we have a rather striking allegorical history of Israel. In summary, Israel is seen as the unfaithful partner of Yahweh, a ‘prostitute’ to alien gods. This is a familiar image in prophetic literature from Hosea onwards. Ezekiel develops it in a long allegory (resumed in another form in chap 23) surveying the whole history of Israel. As in Hosea, this allegory ends with a free pardon from the husband who establishes a new covenant, thus prefiguring the marriage of God with his people in messianic days—a theme which is taken up in the New Testament.

In a touching and progressing series of images, the prophet describes how God chose his people, cared for them, showered them with all they needed and much more and how in the end they ungratefully abused all they had received. In spite of that he will not abandon them.

God describes himself as the spouse of Israel, who turns out to be an utterly unfaithful partner, prostituting herself (often literally) before false gods. The purpose of the allegory is for Ezekiel to confront Jerusalem with the terrible things she has been doing.

First, she is reminded of her pagan and idolatrous origins:

Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

The “land of Canaan” was roughly equivalent to Lebanon and Israel today. The Amorites were pre-Israelite, Semitic inhabitants of Palestine; the Hittites were non-Semitic residents of Canaan who had flourished in Asia Minor before 1000 BC. In biblical tradition, Amorites and Hittites refer generally to the pre-Israelite population. They are seen as different from Israel, which traced its origins through Abraham to Nahor.

Jerusalem had, therefore, a centuries-old, pre-Israelite history and the city for a long time resisted conquest by the Israelites. It did not come fully under Israelite rule until David’s time. (Perhaps a matter for reflection here on the mutual rights of Israelis and Palestinians today.)

To return to the allegory, as the city-state Jerusalem matures, the people have slowly adopted and often preferred the cultural appropriation of neighboring rituals and practices to its own Hebrew faith in Yawheh. Ezekiel struggles with many tensions. For example, as a postexilic (i.e. the period of Jewish history following the Babylonian captivity) work of sacred writing, it highlights the rift between the ‘people of the land’ and the ‘people of the exile’ as two competing groups representing those who stayed behind in Jerusalem and those who returned after several decades living under foreign occupation in Babylon.

This book of the prophet Ezekiel, in contrast to that of Isaiah, for example, is comfortable with anti-foreigner rhetoric. Israel has lost its way under the influence of its neighbors with foreign religious practices. The strong language in this chapter is a lamentation in the form of contempt for non Jewish worship of the Lord.

It is helpful to remember that the Bible is always in conversation with itself. If Ezekiel is anti-foreigner, you can find more abundant opposite sentiments in other places within Scripture. For example, the book of Isaiah will emphasise that “all peoples” will be gathered to the mountain of the Lord in Jerusalem for a rich wedding banquet:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. (Is 25:6)

There is also the example of Rahab, herself a prostitute and foreigner in the Book of Joshua. Rahab is depicted as a heroine for Israel and for its belief in the one God when she saves the Hebrew spies from the hands of their enemies (see Josh: 2:1-7).   

Today’s allegory with Ezekiel, in many ways can be applied to our own Church and its evolution from Gentile and pagan beginnings in so many parts of the world. We too have been blessed with an extraordinary cornucopia of spiritual and cultural richness over the centuries. But we have also perhaps at times allowed ourselves to be overly evangelized by a dominant secular culture rather than allow the Gospel to shift and challenge the world around us.  

This allegory has much to say to us. Let us not just read it as a condemnation of pre-monotheistic Jerusalem, but a salutary reminder for our own relationship with our loving God.

Ezekiel 16:59-63
The alternative First Reading is taken from the end of the same passage as the longer reading, but focuses on its conclusion. So to better understand its significance, it is helpful to have read the longer reading.

On the one hand, Jerusalem will be treated as she deserves for breaking her covenant with God. She will be destroyed and her people taken away into bitter exile in Babylon.

But God will not forget his people. He will remember the covenant he made in “the days of your youth”, i.e. when the covenant was first made at Mount Sinai, and God will now make a covenant that will last forever.

Jerusalem will then be reduced to a speechless silence of remorse for her faithlessness. He says:

Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your older and younger sisters and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of my covenant with you.

“Older and younger sisters” refers to Samaria and Sodom which came under the rule of Jerusalem.

In spite of everything, Yahweh’s people will be pardoned and the covenant will be renewed. On her part, Jerusalem will remember with shame and repentance the terrible things she has done.

We, too, provided we have genuine repentance and long to be reconciled again with our Lord in love, can be sure that God’s love and compassion will be poured over us.