A Painful But Vital Lesson to Learn

36 The Lord said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. 37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. 38 Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. 39 For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house. 40 They even sent for men to come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and behold, they came. For them you bathed yourself, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with ornaments. 41 You sat on a stately couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed my incense and my oil. 42 The sound of a carefree multitude was with her; and with men of the common sort, drunkards were brought from the wilderness; and they put bracelets on the hands of the women, and beautiful crowns on their heads.

43 “Then I said of her who was worn out by adultery, ‘Now they will continue to use her for a whore, even her!’ 44 For they have gone in to her, as men go in to a prostitute. Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, lewd women! 45 But righteous men shall pass judgment on them with the sentence of adulteresses, and with the sentence of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.”

46 For thus says the Lord God: “Bring up a vast host against them, and make them an object of terror and a plunder. 47 And the host shall stone them and cut them down with their swords. They shall kill their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses. 48 Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. 49 And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord God.” – Ezekiel 23:36-49 ESV

From the moment God gave Moses His law on the top of Mount Sinai to the days before the people of Israel entered the land of Canaan, they had received repeated warnings about practicing idolatry.

“Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction.” – Exodus 22:20 ESV

“Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.” – Exodus 23:13 ESV

“So do not corrupt yourselves by making an idol in any form—whether of a man or a woman, an animal on the ground, a bird in the sky, a small animal that scurries along the ground, or a fish in the deepest sea. And when you look up into the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars—all the forces of heaven—don’t be seduced into worshiping them. The Lord your God gave them to all the peoples of the earth.” – Deuteronomy 4:16-19 NLT

“So be careful not to break the covenant the Lord your God has made with you. Do not make idols of any shape or form, for the Lord your God has forbidden this. The Lord your God is a devouring fire; he is a jealous God.” – Deuteronomy 4:23-24 NLT

“When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ You must not worship the Lord your God the way the other nations worship their gods, for they perform for their gods every detestable act that the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods.

“So be careful to obey all the commands I give you. You must not add anything to them or subtract anything from them.” – Deuteronomy 12:29-32 NLT

But for four chapters, God has delivered His blunt assessment of their abject failure to obey His commands. From the loftiest leader to the lowest peasant, everyone in Israel and Judah was guilty of pursuing an ever-expanding list of false gods. They had turned idolatry into a national sport where it seems everyone had become an active and eager participant.

To make matters worse, in their desperate attempt to elicit a favorable response from their newfound gods, they had embraced the reprehensible practice of child sacrifice. God’s chosen people had literally offered up their sons and daughters as atoning sacrifices to their gods of wood and stone.

“They have committed adultery with their idols, and their sons, whom they bore to me, they have passed through the fire as food to their idols.” – Ezekiel 23:37 NLT

But they never fully abandoned their worship of Yahweh. They simply integrated their new gods into a new syncretic religious experience that allowed them to hedge their bets and call on any and all deities who might help them succeed. Yahweh was good but not good enough. They wanted to make sure that they had all the proverbial bases covered and a full contingent of deities at their disposal.

But they had failed to remember that Yahweh is a devouring fire and a jealous God. In their zeal to become equal-opportunity idolaters, they had offended the one true God. They had the unmitigated gall to sacrifice their children to a false god and then walk into the temple and expect to receive a warm and welcoming reception from God.

“In the very same day they desecrated my sanctuary and profaned my Sabbaths. On the same day they slaughtered their sons for their idols, they came to my sanctuary to desecrate it. This is what they have done in the middle of my house.” – Ezekiel 23:38-39 NLT

They saw nothing wrong with worshiping at the shrine of Molech and then waltzing into the sanctuary to give Yahweh an equal share of their affections. But in doing so, they desecrated the house of God and defamed the honor of His name. They made the name of Yahweh a laughingstock among their pagan neighbors. No other nation treated their god with such disrespect and dishonor.

By embracing the idols of the surrounding nations, both Israel and Judah had hoped to forge alliances with them. They believed the shared experience of a common religion would make it far easier to co-exist with their pagan neighbors. And God accuses both nations of selling themselves out to the highest bidder, like a common prostitute. They had no shame, offering to get in bed with anyone who might benefit them in any way. But even their “lovers” had eventually lost interest in Jerusalem and Samaria, viewing them as nothing more than “lewd women” (Ezekiel 23:44 ESV) of low morals and with no scruples. Even the godless nations will exhibit a greater degree of righteousness as they judge Israel and Judah for their unprecedented treatment of Yahweh.

So, God determines to bring this charade to an end. No longer willing to stand back and watch His chosen people denigrate and dishonor His name, God declares His intent to “put an end to the obscene conduct in the land” (Ezekiel 23:48 NLT). God had already brought judgment against the northern kingdom of Israel. Now it was time for Judah to experience the full weight of God’s wrath. One of the very pagan nations whom Judah had embraced as a lover would be used by God to deliver the knock-out blow that would bring an end to their serial infidelity. And God is brutally blunt when summarizing the outcome of His pending judgment.

“They will repay you for your obscene conduct, and you will be punished for idol worship. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.” – Ezekiel 23:49 NLT

The sad result of this devastating event will be a sobering awareness that there is only one God. When the dust settles and the ruins of Jerusalem become visible for all to see, the people of Judah will finally realize that Yahweh was exactly who He had always claimed to be: ăḏōnāy yᵊhōvâ – the Sovereign Lord of all.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Sickness of Heart

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be. 17 You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. 18 And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. 19 Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord God. 20 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter 21 that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? 22 And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

23 “And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! declares the Lord God), 24 you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square. 25 At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring. 26 You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, multiplying your whoring, to provoke me to anger. 27 Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and diminished your allotted portion and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior. 28 You played the whore also with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied; yes, you played the whore with them, and still you were not satisfied. 29 You multiplied your whoring also with the trading land of Chaldea, and even with this you were not satisfied.

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. – Ezekiel 16:15-34 ESV

The city of Jerusalem stood as a symbol of God’s blessings upon the people of Israel. It was a magnificent walled city filled with beautiful homes, stunning palaces, and the renowned temple Solomon had built for Yahweh. When the Queen of Sheba made a royal visit to Jerusalem, she had been blown away by all that she had seen.

…when she saw the palace he had built, she was overwhelmed. She was also amazed at the food on his tables, the organization of his officials and their splendid clothing, the cup-bearers and their robes, and the burnt offerings Solomon made at the Temple of the Lord.

She exclaimed to the king, “Everything I heard in my country about your achievements and wisdom is true! I didn’t believe what was said until I arrived here and saw it with my own eyes. In fact, I had not heard the half of your great wisdom! It is far beyond what I was told. How happy your people must be! What a privilege for your officials to stand here day after day, listening to your wisdom! Praise the Lord your God, who delights in you and has placed you on the throne as king to rule for him. Because God loves Israel and desires this kingdom to last forever, he has made you king over them so you can rule with justice and righteousness.” – 2 Chronicles 9:3-8 NLT

Yet, God did not share the Queen of Sheba’s glowing assessment of the city. He found it to be a moral and spiritual cesspool filled with people who were more than happy to enjoy all the physical benefits He provided, but who refused to keep His commands. They were so unfaithful that God was forced to describe them as little more than spiritual prostitutes.

These people had committed the very crime that Moses had warned them about long before they ever entered the land of Canaan.

“The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill in this land,  be careful not to forget the Lord, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. You must fear the Lord your God and serve him. When you take an oath, you must use only his name.

“You must not worship any of the gods of neighboring nations, for the Lord your God, who lives among you, is a jealous God. His anger will flare up against you, and he will wipe you from the face of the earth.” – Deuteronomy 6:10-15 NLT

Now, generations later, God was declaring their guilt and describing the abysmal spiritual conditions within the city of David. They had grown perversely proud of their vaunted position as God’s chosen people. They had allowed their set-apart status as God’s prized possession to go to their heads and give them the misguided impression that they could do no wrong. In their minds, they were invincible and immune to failure. Their status as descendants of Abraham and heirs of God’s covenant promises had made them overconfident and cocky.

The brazen nature of their crimes against God is difficult to comprehend. All that they enjoyed had been given to them by God and yet they turned around and used those resources to manufacture idols to which they offered sacrifices. And not only did they offer these false gods the very gifts God had given them, but they also practiced child sacrifice, offering up their own children as tributes to their pagan deities. 

“Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough? Must you also slaughter my children by sacrificing them to idols?” – Ezekiel 16:20-21 NLT

One of the greatest gifts God had given the people of Israel was their offspring. The psalmist declares, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3 ESV). And yet the unfaithful and ungrateful citizens of Jerusalem were guilty of having treated God’s precious gift of children with blatant disregard. They had dared to deem the offspring promised by God as a sign of His covenant commitment as expendable and disposable.

But as egregious as child sacrifice may be, God also accuses them of spiritual adultery. They had erected idols, high places, altars, and shrines to their false gods all over the city. They had become equal opportunity idolaters, willingly bowing their knees to any and all false gods that came along. And when God brought judgment upon them for their unfaithfulness, they turned to foreign powers for rescue. Rather than acknowledging their sin and returning to Him in humble contrition, they sought the aid of the superpowers of their day. In an attempt to escape God’s judgment for their unfaithfulness, they made things worse by seeking help from countries like Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon.

“You have prostituted yourself with the Assyrians, too. It seems you can never find enough new lovers! And after your prostitution there, you still were not satisfied. You added to your lovers by embracing Babylonia, the land of merchants, but you still weren’t satisfied.” – Ezekiel 16:18-19 NLT

And it’s interesting to note that God used the Assyrians as His instruments of destruction when punishing the northern kingdom of Israel. And, eventually, He would use the Babylonians to destroy the rebellious southern kingdom of Judah. The allies the people of Israel turned to for help would become their enemies and the means of their destruction.

The situation in Jerusalem was far worse than Ezekiel could have imagined. God discloses that the citizens of the city suffer from a deadly heart condition.

“What a sick heart you have, says the Sovereign Lord, to do such things as these, acting like a shameless prostitute. You build your pagan shrines on every street corner and your altars to idols in every square. In fact, you have been worse than a prostitute, so eager for sin that you have not even demanded payment.” – Ezekiel 16:30-31 NLT

They suffered from a compulsive disorder that made them far worse than spiritual prostitutes. Rather than selling themselves for whatever benefit they could get in return, they were guilty of paying others for the privilege of committing adultery.

“Prostitutes charge for their services—but not you! You give gifts to your lovers, bribing them to come and have sex with you. So you are the opposite of other prostitutes. You pay your lovers instead of their paying you!” – Ezekiel 16:33-34 NLT

The false gods they worshiped were incapable of bestowing any favors or blessings, but the people of Judah worshiped them anyway. The nations they turned to for rescue were powerless to deliver any aid, but the citizens of Jerusalem repeatedly sought their help. And all the while, they spurned God’s calls to repent and be restored to their former condition as His chosen people. And, as Ezekiel was about to discover, God’s long-suffering patience had finally run out. They suffered from a fatal heart condition and the remedy was as deadly as the disease.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

An All New Low.

“For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.” – Jeremiah 7:30-34 ESV

This particular passage should have a painful familiarity to it. Not because we have read it before, but because it sounds eerily like our own day. In these closing verses of chapter seven, God points out a specific sin committed by the people of Judah that should leave us shocked and appalled. They were offering their own sons and daughters as human sacrifices to Molech, the god of fire. Both Ahaz and Manasseh, kings of Judah during Jeremiah’s long term as prophet, we guilty of practicing child sacrifice.

Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. – 2 Kings 16:2-3 ESV

Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. – 2 Kings 21:1-6 ESV

When we think of the kind of idolatry practiced in those ancient days, we tend to picture little statues or figurines to which the people offered their sacrifices and before whom they would worship. It all sounds fairly innocuous and silly to us. The very thought of bowing down before an inanimate object and treating it like a god sounds ridiculous to us. But there was far more to the idolatry practiced by the people of Judah than simply offering sacrifices to a wooden figurine or saying prayers to a motionless stone statue. The inherent problem with idol worship is that these false gods never seemed to be satisfied. They require increasingly more intense and costly sacrifices. Because they are not real and cannot answer the requests made to them, the natural conclusion by those who worship them is to up the ante. They assume that their sacrifices are not enough. The gods require more. To get the attention of the gods, the cost of the sacrifice must be increased. The life of an animal must not be enough. Perhaps the god would answer if we sacrificed something hear and dear to us – like a son or daughter. And there were those pagan religions that practiced this kind of sacrifice. And before long, the people of Judah, just like their northern neighbors in Israel, began to escalate their worship of false gods by practicing child sacrifice. All in spite of the warning God had given them long before they entered the land of Canaan.

“You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” – Leviticus 18:21 ESV

“Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones.” – Leviticus 20:2 ESV

And yet, here was God accusing the people of Judah of doing the very thing He had forbidden them to do. How had they gotten to this point? What would have caused them to sink so low that they would take the lives of their own children and offer them up as sacrifices to false gods? It all began with their forsaking of God. Slowly, but steadily, the people had begun to seek and serve other gods. They had turned their backs on Yahweh and sought help from other sources. It had all begun innocently enough. In fact, it had all made perfect sense to them. Why not hedge their bets and take advantage of the many gods of their foreign neighbors. After all, what did they have to lose? What if these gods really could deliver what they promised? And by worshiping the gods of their foreign neighbors, it made the people of Judah seem far more accommodating and tolerant. It allowed them to fit in to the world around them. And step by step, slowly but surely, the number of idols in Judah grew, and the intensity of their worship and the cost of their sacrifices increased. Before long, they had actually placed false gods in the temple Solomon had dedicated to Yahweh. And not only that, they had created a specific place in which to offer their own children as sacrifices to Molech: Topheth in the valley of Hinnom. The name “Topheth” is likely from the Aramaic tephath, which refers to a fireplace, oven, or hearth. It was in this place that the people of Judah would burn their children as offerings to the fire god, Molech.

The very idea of this appalls us. We find their actions despicable and inexplicable. How could they do such a thing? What would possess anyone to consider killing their own children and calling it worship? But before we pick up stones to throw at the people of Judah, we might want to consider our own modern context. Even we, as modern Christians, are guilty of offering up our children on the altars of our modern-day gods. We sacrifice our children to the god of sports and academics, vicariously living our lives through theirs as they spend countless hours practicing, performing, and pursuing fame and fortune through these man-made activities. I am not suggesting that playing sports or pursuing an education are wrong, but we must admit that far too often we allow these things to become like gods in our lives; driving our schedules, consuming our time and resources, and promising us outcomes that they can’t deliver.

Consider how much time we allow our children to sit in the innocuous glow of a TV, smart phone or tablet, wasting hour after hour of their day consuming entertainment and information that has no lasting value and actually sucks the spiritual life right out of them. These modern-day technologies, while not evil in and of themselves, have become not-so-subtle tools of the enemy, drawing our children away from God and distancing them from their own families. While they spend countless hours “connected” they are actually disconnecting from the very One who made them. Despite their growing number of online “friends” and increasing community within the wireless world, our children are growing more lonely, despondent and, as research has proven, more suicidal. A 2013 study by the University of Oxford concluded:

Moderate or severe addiction to the internet is also connected to an increased risk of self-harm, as well as increased levels of depression or thoughts about suicide, according to the Oxford review.

But perhaps the most striking parallel between the people of Judah and our modern-day context is the growing number of abortions taking place around us. Ever since the passing of Roe V. Wade in 1973, there have been an estimated 59 million babies murdered through abortion in the United States alone. Worldwide, the number is rapidly nearing the 1.5 billion level. Those staggering numbers represent countless innocent lives that have been sacrificed to the gods of pleasure, promiscuity and personal rights. Worshiping at the altar of self-satisfaction and self-gratification, we offer up our own children as sacrifices to the gods who promise us a life of happiness and uncluttered contentment. The children become expendable, explained away as nothing more than discarded human tissue. They are considered no more valuable than an unwanted growth or dangerous tumor. So, they are removed. Their lives are sacrificed at the altar of self.

And we would do well to remember what God told the people of Judah:

“But I will be merciful only if you stop your evil thoughts and deeds and start treating each other with justice; only if you stop exploiting foreigners, orphans, and widows; only if you stop your murdering; and only if you stop harming yourselves by worshiping idols.” – Jeremiah 7:5-6 NLT

We have more than our fair share of false gods. And our unfaithfulness has manifested itself in the willing sacrifice of our own sons and daughters. God would have us wake up and recognize the error of our ways. He would have us be appalled at how low we have sunk in our pursuit of the gods if pleasure, prominence, popularity and power. We have adapted to the ways of the world. We have adopted the gods of this world. And we have done evil in His sight.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson