Increasing Promiscuity
‘Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign LORD. In addition to all your other wickedness, you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square. At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and provoked me to anger with your increasing promiscuity. So I stretched out my hand against you and reduced your territory; I gave you over to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were shocked by your lewd conduct. You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied. Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied.
“‘How weak-willed you are, declares the Sovereign LORD, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute! When you built your mounds at the head of every street and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute, because you scorned payment.’” (Ezekiel 16:23-31)
Sometimes people need shock therapy. Ezekiel had problems with getting the people of God to actually hear what he was saying. They paid as much attention to his words as the average person pays to the lyrics of a song (see Ezekiel 33:32). God wanted his people to understand how their worship of other gods was making him feel. So he made use of explicit language; he wanted his people to recognize just how vulgar they had become. The underlying Hebrew that is translated “offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by” is very graphic. Literally, it says, “You spread your legs for everyone who comes by.”
God is shocked by what Israel and Judah are doing, how badly they have betrayed him. They are like an adulterous wife turned to prostitution. They have fallen into the arms of every other god but him. God is hurt. God’s heart is broken. And God is furious. He hopes his people can understand why, and he hopes by shocking them with graphic images that he can finally get their attention.
People forget that God has feelings. When he says that he loves us, he really means it. If betrayal hurts us, how can we imagine that it is any less painful for God?
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