Ezekiel Chapter 16

Wednesday, 01/14/26 at 10:22
Solitary Man
solitaryman.substack.com

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Eze 16:1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

I hope that you did not enjoy the brevity of the previous chapter too deeply, as I can proclaim with the utmost certainty that those days are definitively over! On other words, I pray that you did not get used to 8 verse chapters, as we move from the shortest chapter in this book to the longest.

Buckle up, pack some provisions, get out your emergency supplies, as we will be here awhile.

Before we begin, let us deal with some larger issues that will crop up and potentially cause some of you to be offended and stumble.

We are going to be comparing Judah to an exceedingly immoral whore. The language will be harsh, and the commentary will pull no punches. Some will automatically think that I personally hate all women by the words that will be used. Some will think that God hates all women.

The truth is that God has chosen to use the analogy of a particularly sluttish whore as sort of a last gasp effort to penetrate the jaded hearts of his hearers. God could have chosen to use a male example. He could have chosen to compare Judah to a male sodomite, or a male Moloch worshipper, or a male mass murderer. Instead, he decided to use the imagery of a whore. That’s all that there is to that. There is no sexism implied. Instead there is a great lesson about how God really feels about illicit sex. Especially for our modern culture, where illicit sex is so prevalent, we all need a refresher course as to how much improper sex really offends and angers God. So put aside your thin skin, and let the Holy Spirit realign your moral compass, if it indeed needs realigning.

I have made it quite clear in my commentary that I believe our cell phones are the idols of our day. A strong argument can be made that an addiction to the internet is not the same sin as bowing down to a statue of Moloch. It is more akin to alcoholism, or drug addiction. And I agree. But there is precedent in the bible for labelling a specific sin as something else. Remember what the prophet Samuel told king Saul:

1Sa 15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity (aw-ven – nothingness, vanity, wickedness, a form of idolatry) and idolatry (ter-aw-feme, or teraphim – an image used as a healer, a family idol). Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

Saul had not carried out the command of Yehovah to the letter when he went out to destroy the Amalekites. He carried out God’s orders partially. Saul did not kill the king, and he spared the best of the animals. God had explicitly told him to kill them all, all people and all animals. For not obeying perfectly, and then for trying to justify his actions, God called it rebellion and stubbornness. Rebellion for not obeying the original order, and stubbornness for not immediately repenting of his actions when confronted by the prophet.

But God went a step further. Through Samuel, God said that rebellion (or disobeying a direct order from God) is the same as practicing witchcraft. To then try and justify your sin is like one who is an idolater. Note that the word teraphim means an image, or a family idol. Iniquity meant a form of wickedness that was tied up in some sort of idolatrous practice.

At first glance, this is confusing. How is not obeying God akin to witchcraft? How is what Saul did (or did not do) akin to idolatry? Well, I think God is saying that certain sins manifest in various ways. You can be an idolater, as these ancients of Judah were, by actually bowing down before a block of wood, or actually weeping for Tammuz. But you can also be an idolater whenever you reject some direct command of God because, in your heart, something else is more important than pleasing the Lord. In Saul’s case, it was to be popular among the people. The people wanted to spare the best of the animals for themselves, and Saul, ever the good politician, acquiesced.

The verse tells us that God considered that decision an example of idolatry in action. Saul did not bow down to a statue, nor did he weep for Tammuz, but as far as God was concerned, he might as well have. Putting his political reputation above obeying God was equivalent to worshipping an idol in Yahweh’s mind.

So this is why I make the claim that an addiction to your cell phone is idolatry. If you choose not to agree, that is your choice. I believe this verse in 1 Samuel gives us ample precedent to do so. While I am convinced this is idolatry in action, it is unarguably an addiction like alcoholism or drug addiction. It is a sin, and needs to be dealt with.

God demands our hearts. Putting him first in our lives is non-negotiable. Any way you cut it, we are all under strict orders to put God first in our lives. This chapter will be another long lesson that basically revolves around this imperative. God will use the most graphic language imaginable in order to emphasize and reemphasize his point.

Eze 16:2 Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations (to-ay-baw – morally abhorrent and disgusting, idolatrous),

We are about to embark on a journey, such that is found nowhere else in all of scripture. I can guarantee that almost all of you have never heard a sermon on this chapter. What we are about to read will stretch your ability to endure, and then process, exactly what is being said.

The word that came to Jeremiah was certainly obeyed by Ezekiel:

Jer 26:2 Thus saith the LORD; Stand in the court of the LORD’S house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the LORD’S house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:

No matter what God whispered in his ear, Ezekiel did not choose to rephrase things to make the message more user friendly! I do wonder that when it came to this particular message, was the prophet tempted to use more socially acceptable language? Sort of like us today, who never use the ‘f’ word, not even things like sh*t or other ugly words such as that. We reason that civilized, nice, polite, well mannered people don’t speak like that in public. And of course, a casual, regular use of swear words is a definite indication of a serious problem in one’s soul.

But on the other hand, we are forced to deal with the contents and language of this chapter. None of us would ever dream of giving a word such as this. We reason that a church is not a bar, or a construction site, or a brothel. Yet we will have to come to grips with the foul language used by Yahweh himself in this chapter. You will have to decide for yourself what to make of it. Will you let the intensity of its original purpose sear your sin ridden soul, or will you simply turn God off in your mind, secretly accusing God of being gross or out of line, because of the words he has chosen to use, and the message that he brings?

We are about to witness a side of Yehovah that few have even imagined as an extremely unlikely possibility, let alone a stark reality. In typical Christian circles, if anyone was ever caught speaking the way Yehovah speaks in this chapter, women would scream, children would run crying to their mommies, ushers would ush, bouncers would bounce, grandmothers would have instant heart attacks, the deliverance team would immediately spring into action, casting out spirits left and right, all cakes being baked for the church social would immediately flop, and men would circle the wagons and prepare for an all out assault. In other words, no one is prepared for what is about to take place.

So what am I babbling about? What sort of things are we about to encounter that would make your hair to stand on end, your heart to want to burst from your chest, and your body to break out into a cold, clammy sweat? It is the words that Yehovah chooses to use in this latest instalment of trying to accurately describe the precise spiritual condition of his one remaining tribe that is left in the promised land. God has attempted again and again to present a clear picture of just how awful and hopeless these sad sacks in Judah have become, from a moral point of view. God has used many words, given several comparisons to many things, repeated himself over and over, but still he is obviously not satisfied that he has gotten his message across. Though most of us believe Yehovah has never used harsher language when speaking about anything, we are about to find out that he has just been warming up.

What do I mean by that? This verse gives us a hint. Yahweh wants to put words in Ezekiel’s mouth that will leave absolutely no room to doubt about how he feels about the sorry remnant that yet remains in the city of Jerusalem, and by extension, the as yet unoccupied land of Judah. He wants Ezekiel to cause the citizens of Jerusalem to realize their abominations. That is, their morally abhorrent and disgusting lifestyles, that scream idolatry with every breath that they take. As to how the people of Jerusalem will hear this when Ezekiel is so far away in Babylon, God does not tell us. Perhaps he instructed Ezekiel at some point to send all these prophecies by courier to Jerusalem. It also could be God speaking rhetorically. Whether or not the citizens left in Jerusalem get to hear this or not may not be the crucial point. The crucial point is that God wants these words pronounced, then recorded for all time. They are to be preserved for the people of God for all ages, so that we may all fear and tremble. And believe you me, when we are done this chapter, you may need some serious coaxing to come out from under the table or the bed that you will be hiding under!

I must have whetted your appetite by now, haven’t I? You must be all wondering what has caused this silly writer of commentaries to be so worked up over? Well, I will now tell you. It is the language. The language that God, Yehovah, Yahweh, the Lord God of heaven and earth, decides to use to get his message across. It is about the most politically incorrect denunciation that you could ever imagine. You will wonder how did something like this ever make it into scripture? Aren’t there laws against such things? If someone tried to speak like this in any church, they wouldn’t get through the first quarter of the message without being shouted down, collared, and promptly kicked out! Many of the words God chooses to use would be classified as strong swear words today. The King James translators softened the words somewhat, dulling the true effect. I can just imagine what the sissified modern translators would have done to this passage (I don’t really want to know). I shall not do so. You will receive the full meal deal, as they say.

If we think we “sort of understand” God’s furious, seemingly out of control anger at these Judeans thus far, we really have no idea how he feels. I get the sense that any vocabulary and language used by man is an inadequate vehicle to convey the depth of feeling and truth of the situation, from God’s point of view.

And this brings to mind the fact that portions of scripture such as this should hammer into our thick heads that God sees certain deep sinfulness as far, far worse than anything that we can imagine. No matter how much you think you know how awful sin is, none of us has really grasped the calamity of rebelling against the creator. We just cannot grasp how horrible sin is. To get God so worked up that he resorts to speaking in a manner that resembles some enraged man who is so out of control that he is literally on the verge of incoherence, the fact of this is truly terrifying indeed.

If you haven’t grown in a genuine fear and terror of the Lord by leaps and bounds after you are done reading this chapter, then God pity you and your granite-encased soul.

Eze 16:3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity (mo-leh-deth – birth place, lineage, offspring, kindred) is of the land of Canaan (merchant, trafficker); thy father was an Amorite (prominent, mountaineer), and thy mother an Hittite (fear, terror, from a root meaning to break one or make them prostrate via violence, confusion, terror).

I think you will find almost all commentators unwilling to try and match the ferocity and bottomless rage of Yehovah which he will explicitly depict in this chapter. As a result, most of what will be said will not be much influenced by the scholars of old. Something is burning deep in my heart as I am preparing to write about this chapter. I am trusting that the Lord will take this in the direction that he wants it to go. It is not a question of whether you will be offended, that I can guarantee. It is a question of whether you can endure to see past the ‘shock talk’, so to speak, and perhaps obtain a glimpse of the true wrath of God. As his love is endless and boundless, so is his wrath. While he protects and cares for his own, his jealousy is something that is unbelievably terrifying. While God’s anger smolders against the pagan, this chapter will give us a window on how exponentially more does his rage burn against his own children, who have decided to turn away and live a life dedicated to idolatry. We may have seen an out of control man of extreme violence behave when he let his sin nature run amok. Or perhaps we’ve only seen examples of it on TV, such as on the news, or maybe in the movies. But the worst temper tantrum by any man at any point in history is as nothing in comparison to the poisonous, jealous, white hot rage of Yehovah when he has to pass a final, eternal judgment on someone who at one time claimed to be his own child, or at least grew up in a place where everyone was supposed to be a servant of the Lord, but who has chosen to live a life of defiance and rebellion to the holy will, choosing instead to worship Yahweh’s enemies, and spend their life in a hatred of God and all his holy ways.

Yehovah wants to set the stage for what he is about to say. If you take this verse literally, you will become confused. God is not saying that the Jews physical lineage derives from the tribes that inhabited Canaan before Abraham was sent there. We know where Abraham came from. What God is trying to get across is that their spiritual lineage has devolved into one where one could rightly say that spiritually speaking, they are the direct descendants of the Canaanite people. That is, their deh-rek, or course of life, has sunk so low, that they are at the same spiritual level as those awful Canaanite people, whom God told them to utterly destroy when they first entered the promised land. At that time, Yehovah warned his people that if they did not completely eradicate the Canaanites, they would become and thorns and snares to them. And here they are, now in 593 BC, and sure enough, what God warned about has come to pass. They are now just like them.

Once again, we are not talking physical lineage, but a spiritual one. Amorites and Canannites were the two main tribes of the Canaanite region, and were a good choice to represent the typical Canaanite culture and belief system. Perhaps Amorites were chosen because God kept a special watch on them, waiting for them to fill up their measure of sin before God would exterminate them:

Gen 15:16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

Esau, the one cursed by God, whom God said he hated, added to his sins by marrying two Hittite women:

Gen 26:34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:

These stories would be well remembered by these apostate Jews, so to label these Hebrews as the offspring of the wicked Amorites and Hittites is exceedingly appropriate.

Eze 16:4 And as for thy nativity (no-leh-deth), in the day thou wast born thy navel (umbilical cord) was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple (mish-ee – inspect, only time in OT) thee; thou wast not salted at all maw-lakh maw-lakh – rubbed rubbed), nor swaddled at all (khawthal khawthal – only place in OT).

Yehovah continues his little history lesson. This is not the story of Mary and Joseph, that wonderful Christmas story where a babe was found in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Where the heavens opened, and the angelic chorus sang glory to God in the highest, and peace to all those on earth. No, the words should begin to ring some inner alarm bells that the tone and tenor of this birth narrative is something completely different. A story meant more for Halloween (and no, I do not celebrate or condone Halloween, I use it here for descriptive purposes) rather than Christmas.

The picture here shows how despised, helpless, and forlorn Israel was as it struggled to survive when it first came into existence. One may wonder what time in Israel’s infancy is God referring to. Was it at the time of the call of Abraham, or when they went down to Egypt during Joseph’s reign, or when they were led out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, only to wander in the wilderness? Was it when they began to conquer Canaan under Joshua, or maybe the 400 year struggle that then ensued under the time of the Judges?

I don’t think the point is to try and pinpoint the exact time that God is referring to. He is simply saying that Israel’s struggle to become a secure and thriving state could not have taken place without the sovereign hand of Yahweh on their nation.

The language Yahweh uses is one of a helpless baby that no one took the time to help. No nation cut their umbilical cord. That is, no one helped Israel as it was born. Sort of reminds us of 1948. As soon as the UN granted Israel statehood, instead of helping them, several muslim nations immediately attacked it. Only the hand of God preserved Israel at its new birth.

If we look at verse 6, the appropriate image is sharpened for us to contemplate. A baby is usually born in blood. It is unpleasant to behold. It must be washed in water. Unless someone cares enough to cleanse it at its birth, it will not survive.

Now, I can see that those, whose faith tradition includes the practice of infant baptism, would see a confirmation of the practice in an allegorical verse such as this. I am sorry to disappoint you, but this is a perfect example of the correct and incorrect way to allegorize scripture. Because God wants us to take his word extremely seriously and literally wherever possible, we must be very careful when we desire to allegorize something. For example, seeing Jesus as the good shepherd is an easy allegory to embrace, as there are many confirming scriptures that speak of the Savior’s love and concern for his disciples. However, scripture gives us no examples of baptism before belief. Just as you cannot believe for someone else, no, not even your own children, so you cannot choose to baptize them either. Everything that we do for God must come from our own free will. You as a parent, or you as a priest or pastor, cannot drag anyone with you into heaven. All must choose for themselves as to whom they will serve.

Some would then say: ‘I’ve baptized my child just in case they die before they reach the age of accountability. Does not the scripture say that he who believes and is baptized shall be saved? Yes it does. But that is just one verse of many on the topic of salvation. Several others scriptures make it clear that it is by faith through grace alone that one receives salvation. By taking the entire bible as your instruction manual, you would logically conclude that baptism is not strictly necessary for salvation, only expected if it is at all possible. The thief on the cross did not have time for baptism, but he is in paradise today. The point of all this is that you cannot allegorize one verse in the bible to ‘prove’ your pet denominational doctrine if the rest of the bible does not back up the doctrinal point that you are attempting to make. This is called critical thinking, and rightly dividing the word, two things that seem to be in very short supply in the church (and on the entire planet) today.

In the middle east, salt would have been rubbed into the skin after washing. Matthew Poole’s commentary explains:

Salt is of a drying, abstersive, and cleansing nature, and was used to purge, dry, and strengthen the new-born child, to make it the more lovely and lively. [end]

In case you’re wondering, abstersive means a cleansing substance. It is remarkable how many words in the English language have been lost while we continue to add nonsensical things such as misinformation, disinformation and malinformation (which are all euphemisms for lying). How about transgender (what the heck is that). Woke, binary, gay – the words being added are to normalize nonsense, blasphemy and mental illness, while actual words are being dropped from normal use as being too difficult to comprehend, due to the abysmal educational standards that have fallen off a cliff in the west.

While the baby may cry for a bit from the irritant of a good salt rubbing, it was all for their own good. How many baby Christians cry at the slightest setback of their fantasy of God as their personal servant, when he doesn’t immediately come through for them? Let the salt of God’s word rub into your flesh, to cleanse it, and make you more alive to the Spirit.

Finally, Yahweh swaddled Israel. We think of swaddling as giving the baby the sense of being safe and secure as if still in the womb. The commentators say the ancients did this in order ensure that its limbs were set in their right and orderly posture. It was to ensure that the baby had the best chance of developing its body correctly during those first few helpless days of its life.

And do we not need the extra attention by God and his church when we first come to the faith? Is it not up to the church to ensure that those who have recently come to faith in Christ be given that extra attention, so that their frail and vulnerable soul is nurtured and protected by the adults that surround them? That is why we are not so hard on the new converts. You can’t expect them to know the bible like someone who has been walking with the Lord for many years. Nor can you expect them to understand sin at the same level that you do. God gave us much grace as he patiently waited for us to respond to his grace. So, too, we must imitate God, and extend grace to the little ones in the faith.

Eze 16:5 None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out (thrown out) in the open (pawneem – face, in the face of) field, to the lothing (go-al – abhorrence, from a root meaning detestable, vile, something cast away, only time in OT) of thy person (nephesh – soul), in the day that thou wast born.

Yahweh continues to paint a stark, grim picture of the harsh reality that Israel faced as it struggled to establish itself as a nation. Echoes of Pharaoh’s decree telling the midwives to slay all the Hebrew male children when they were born. And isn’t this the case throughout all of history, even to this very day? Does not Israel face more hostility, more opposition, than all other nations combined? Islam was created by satan for the sole purpose of giving a theological justification for murdering Jews and Christians, the only people of Yehovah on the planet. While muslims will persecute everyone, nothing is more important to them than killing Jews.

God wants us to see how his people are viewed in the eyes of the wicked. Everyone else on this planet is of the father the devil. Indeed, we Gentiles were all part of satan’s flock until Yahweh himself opened our eyes and allowed us to be grafted in to the family of God. No one pities us. Just look at how the people of God, whether Jew or Christian, continue to be slaughtered all around the world. And for what reason? Are we harming anyone? Are we a threat? Does Israel ever attack anyone first? Do those Nigerian Christians ever initiate conflict with their muslim neighbors? All God’s people want to do is to live in peace. But satan will have none of it. He ensures that first and foremost, Jew hatred is firmly implanted in his children’s hearts.

Is it not shocking, disgusting, disheartening, and disillusioning as to how many on the so called ‘right’ have now taken up the call of jihad in their own podcasts? About how many conservative commentators parrot and mimic every lie of Al-Jazeera, and other lying muslim mouthpieces? I think Glenn Beck said it best. We may disagree on any specific government policy of the government of Israel, just as we may disagree on any one specific policy of our own government. But if you are with me, and with God, you cannot condone October 7th in any way, shape, form or fashion. You cannot justify a single action of Hamas. If you do, you are part of the cult of death that islam and Marxism represent. You are not of us.

But regarding this disclaimer that so many throw in, about allowing others to condemn the Israeli government, I find that I do not agree, as so many try to use this as a legitimate loophole for the inner hatred that they refuse to let go of. Why is Israel always singled out for criticism, but these same people will not bring up China, or North Korea, or any muslim nation’s government’s decisions? No, only Israel is endlessly spoken of and picked apart incessantly. I am sick of it. The truth is that this supposedly ‘pagan, Christ denying’ government of Israel has proven to the world that it is currently the most righteous and ethical government in the history of the world as far as how to conduct a just war. The courtesies that they extend to their enemy is unbelievable. I won’t go through all that they do that they don’t have to do, you can look it up for yourself, if you really want to. All I know is that no western nation has ever acted with more restraint and charity towards their enemy, whose inhabitants overwhelmingly repay them with nothing but continual hatred, than Israel.

To the lothing of thy person means that your bloody, dirty, unclean infant carcass was viewed by everyone around you as vile, detestable and disgusting. In other words this phrase represents how everyone else saw you. You were vile, and fit only to be thrown away as garbage. Your laws challenged their way of life. You were given standards of conduct which stirred up uneasy, uncomfortable feelings within their hearts. That was called a conscience. Most people do not want their consciences stirred. They love their ignorance. They want to be left alone, just as they are. The reason why the real people of God are hated so much is that we wake up their dead hearts to the fact that what they are doing is evil. A fear is awakened. A fear of a reckoning some day in the future. The immediate remedy of such an uncomfortable reality is to destroy the one that has awakened such a feeling within. Exterminate the godly man, and the bad feeling goes away! Get rid of the man of God, and immediately you start to feel better, now that any and all reminders of your sin have been taken away.

The main truth of this verse is that right from the birth of God’s people, the rest of the planet found its number one enemy. I believe this goes back to the alternate rendering of that one special verse in Deuteronomy:

Deu 32:8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

God is speaking through Moses at this, Moses’ final address to the people before he dies. I think it is clear that God is speaking about the tower of Babel. It is generally agreed upon that, due to the genealogy of the chapter preceding Genesis 11 and the Babel story, God divided mankind into 70 distinct people groups after he confounded their language. Now to try and explain exactly how God divided everyone based on the first 70 descendants of Jacob is impossible to do, as none of these nations were in any way a part of the line of Jacob. I suppose some rabbi would try and make a case that all the Gentiles were to be ruled by a literal Jew, based on the first 70 lineages from Jacob. The rest of the bible makes that type of logic absurd.

The Septuagint has a different rendering of the last phrase. Instead of “children of Israel”, it has ‘the sons of God’. This is a direct reference to the fallen angels story found in Genesis chapter six. The book of Enoch develops that story most fully. It is thought that God gave rebellious mankind over to the remainder of these fallen ones, those that escaped the chaining that Peter spoke about:

2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

The Gentile nations now have a principality over them. God will judge them all in the end:

Psa 82:1 A Psalm of Asaph. God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.
Psa 82:2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.
Psa 82:3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Psa 82:4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
Psa 82:5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
Psa 82:6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
Psa 82:7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
Psa 82:8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

Some see this psalm as an oblique reference to the fallen ones who were given rule over the nations after Babel, but who will be called to account for their reign at the end.

Remember that the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures) was in use during Jesus’ day. That is why so many quotes in the New Testament do not quite match the verse found in the Old Testament. Jesus and his disciples were quoting the Septuagint version of the scriptures.

The Masoretic text is what we get the King James version from. As you can tell, I am one of those who works exclusively with the King James version of the bible. I find it is less confusing to use one translation, and to closely examine the original wording from one version only. It has stood the test of time, and it is still the most common version available. The original translators were godly men, much more so than most of those who keep churning out alternate translations today, often for less than savoury reasons.

So why would I lean toward the Septuagint in this one case? I think a strong case can be made that when the Masoretic text was being written, based on the original Hebrew manuscripts, there was a strong bias against the fallen angels doctrine in the church. Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the greatest theologian of the church of all time, rejected the fallen angels interpretation of Genesis 6. Instead, he promoted that the godly lineage came from Seth, while the wicked daughters came from Cain. Besides the fact that Genesis 6 says no such thing, it obscures the reality of this second rebellion in heaven that produced the giants, or the Nephilim, of which there are many references. Augustine wanted to take out the supernatural from this story, so a strong case can be made that the text of Deut 32:8 was deliberately altered, and the Septuagint version preserved the original meaning. While I hate to propose this as a possible explanation, as I believe that God has supernaturally preserved his word, in this one case I am willing to make an exception. The fact that the more reasonable and correct wording has been preserved for us, in a version that was used by Jesus himself, causes me to believe that this was indeed the case.

Looking at the next verse:

Deu 32:9 For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

We see that there was one tribe that God reserved for himself. And thus the explanation for the irrational, universal, hatred of the Jew. They are different. They are alone. No other human being shares their DNA, or God’s favor. And that is why we must be grafted in, or we too will find ourselves outside of God’s family.

Can you begin to understand what is going on regarding Israel even today? Why they are so universally despised? It has nothing to do with them controlling all the world’s money, or Hollywood, or inventing communism, or any other such garbage. It has all to do with satan’s children automatically hating the only people God reserved for himself. If a person does do that and thinks that he or she is a real Christian, they should think again. You cannot hate your own brother if you have entered the true sheepfold by the one and only gate. And that gate is through Christ, to be grafted into the one tribe that God himself chose for all eternity.

Eze 16:6 And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted (boos – trampled, lothed, under foot) in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

Is this not also a picture of each and every one of us? How we too, at one time when we were alienated and strangers to the covenants of promise, were all polluted in our own blood. Like the unwanted child, who is tossed all bloody and unclean upon the garbage heap, as some pagans were wont to do, so we too were dead in our trespasses and sins. Satan had cast us upon the garbage heap of eternal destruction, blinded and lost with no hope of resuscitation.

But then God came along. As he passed by us, as a stranger encountering an abandoned infant by the side of the road, his love moved him. This love compelled him to shout ‘live’, and we lived. His mercy stirred him to not pass by, but to share his eternal life with us, when every other creature had abandoned us to our fate. No one else wanted us. No one else cared. But God did. He saw us squirming in our own blood, utterly weak and helpless, like a newborn infant. And he took pity on us and gave us life. His life. Life eternal.

How can we possibly repay him? How can we possibly show him enough gratitude? Maybe by studying his word like never before. Maybe by opening up our hearts to what he is really trying to get across to us in stories such as this, while most simply choose to pass by.

Eze 16:7 I have caused thee to multiply as the bud (sprout) of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent (ad-ee – finery, trappings, outfit) ornaments (ad-ee): thy breasts (shad – bulging, pap, teat) are fashioned (koon – erect, sit up, to stand perpendicular), and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked (ay-rome – from a root to be subtle, cunning and crafty in a bad sense) and bare (er-yaw – from a root meaning to disgracefully expose the female genitals).

Now we come to it. From the tone and wording so far, we see that Yehovah is not crafting a speech that is suitable for the lady’s afternoon social and bake sale. He is speaking of ugly things. Babies abandoned and wallowing in blood. People who look upon helpless infants and instead of feeling compassion, feeling disgust and revulsion.

But now, God takes it up a notch. From now on, the story will be laced with, and revolve around, the topic of sexuality.

Gasp! What? How dare you! No, what you are really saying is ‘How dare God!’.

Well, I have news for you. God is not as squeamish as you are. God does not have a single politically correct bone in his body. God has absolutely no interest in how many of you he is going to offend. He has a truth to impart, and he is choosing to do it by telling a story that revolves around sex.

But this story is not about good or wholesome sex. No, this story is all about everything about sex that is unclean, morally disgusting, vile, blasphemous, idolatrous, selfish, and evil. You see, there is a reason why our grandparents considered any talk about sex completely off limits. If they saw what was going on today in our culture, they would be disgusted and outraged beyond measure. To give you an idea of how far we have fallen, I remember several years ago when my mother was still alive. Now she was old school, and had lived a very sheltered life, mostly on a farm. When somehow the topic of homosexuality came up, she couldn’t even grasp what that meant. In her worldview, the idea of 2 men having sex with each other was beyond her imagination. I cannot remember if she was able to understand the concept when it was brought up. Compare that to kindergarten children being taught by sick, perverted, demon possessed men in outlandish women’s apparel in something called drag queen story hour.

We have become Canaan, and Canaan has become us.

Pastors seem to go out of their way to emphasize the idea that sex is really wonderful and clean and so good, just as long as it is practiced between a husband and wife. But they are very hesitant to speak of the other side of sex, which is that every other kind of sex is disgusting, vile, dirty, filthy, and an unbelievable offense in Yehovah’s eyes. 98% of pastors will not even tell their congregations that homosexuality is not only a sin, but an abomination. They might tell you that simple fornication is a sin, but they are terrified of the alphabet crowd. They know how violent and how much political power they wield these days. Heck, a good chunk of their audience is sympathetic to the sodomites, as so many Christian homes have sodomite children in them!

I want to make something absolutely clear from the outset. The two worst sins found in the bible, without argument or debate, are idolatry and immorality. A close study reveals an intimate connection between the two. We find that connection here. God condemns Judah’s idolatrous practices as a spiritual type of adultery and harlotry. Chasing after the pagans and looking to them for your salvation rather than Yehovah is spreading your legs as a harlot would. God uses the ugly imagery of illicit sexual practices to make us understand what he sees when his very own people betray him by abandoning him and running to the pagan for their needs to be met. Abandoning the desiring of the will of God for the desires of their evil, sinful flesh. Abandoning all faith in God and putting one’s faith in wicked men.

In 99% of the instances where sex is discussed in the bible, it is in a sinful, unclean, dirty and wrath inducing sense. There is a reason why our ancestors considered sex so dirty and sinful. We love to mock our ancestors for treating sex as something dirty and evil, and a necessary evil that should only be used for procreation. No, we teach that any sexual act between husband and wife should be encouraged and explored, as long as both are comfortable with it. We should have sex inside marriage just as often as we possibly can! Those monks and nuns who took vows of chastity, that was wrong and even sinful somehow. We condemned that which we did not understand.

While that sounds good, are we sure that we are not succumbing to the spirit of the age? The world worships sex. They can’t get enough of it. It is no secret that the further a nation departs from God, the worse their sexual perversions become. Even in something utterly satanic like islam. Sure, they have the death penalty for adult homosexuals. But they teach that pedophilia is perfectly okay, especially sex with little boys, since the koran does not explicitly prohibit it. Imams have ruled that you can have sex with your wife’s corpse for up to 6 hours after she’s dead. One of the greatest ‘gifts’ that a jihadist can have is as many sex slaves as he desires. He can rape them all day and all night, and then torture and kill them if he so desires. So while they have this outward show of covering up their wives in public like some bank robber, that is just to dominate and enslave their women. Sure, you can be killed for taking another man’s wife, but that is not because they care anything for the value of a woman. No, it is because you’ve violated another man’s property. And this is the fastest growing religion in the west, and in the world today. And these are the people that we are bringing into our lands faster than any other people ever.

The point I am trying to make is that we have watched so many filthy movies, have been exposed to so much pornography in our lives, that we have lost our God-given revulsion over sinful sexual practices that God created us with. We have become so desensitized through our television and our culture that our hearts have become extremely hardened. Now we can look at a scene of adultery, even men embracing one another, and not break out in shame and disgust, rationalizing that it’s only one scene, and the story is real good! Our morals have degenerated to such an extent that we have lost all our God-given shame over illicit sexual practices.

If that is the case, then perhaps God’s unbelievably strong depiction of the filthiness of Judah’s behavior will not so much as cause you to blink an eye. Perhaps God’s barroom language will not faze you one bit. And that is because the topic of sex does not bother you at all. Maybe you wallow in filthy sexual practices yourself. Maybe you are a serial pornographer and masturbater. Maybe you have sunk yourself into filthier and filthier porno movies every time you’ve indulged yourself. Maybe you are now regularly watching homosexual and lesbian and transsexual and God knows what other sort of vile movies as you need a grosser and more perverted fix to satisfy your ever growing decadent lust. Straight fornication doesn’t do it for you anymore. The sex has to get grosser, weirder, more filthy and perverted every time. You are finding it harder and harder to repent. You may not even want to repent anymore. The instant moment of pleasure feels too good. In your heart, you don’t really want to give it up. But yet you continue to say that you love the Lord. That you really are born again, and going to heaven.

So why am I talking like this? To prepare you for what God is about to say. He will compare Judah to an insatiable whore. One who goes deeper into depravity and abominable practices than any other whore that the world has ever seen. While whores engage in filthy behavior regularly, Judah will be shown to be a special class of harlot. Instead of causing everyone around her to be mesmerized by her sexual practices and to admire her audacity and boldness in her willingness to go above and beyond into sexual depravity, she will instead cause everyone, even the most wicked and vile, to be disgusted with her, because she is so filthy and depraved. Even the worst of the idolaters and immoral people that she associates with will have hit their limit in being able to tolerate her unbelievable filthiness. In other words, Judah will descend into a moral abyss so deep, that no one will have ever been previously found there.

Are you now starting to grasp just a little bit of what God wants to say to us? Are you willing to prepare yourself for the real truth about how far a child of God can plummet, if they allow sin to continue in their life? Now don’t get me wrong, this downfall did not occur over one person’s lifetime, or during one generation (though I suppose it certainly could). No, this sort of moral demise happens over a long time. From the time of Solomon to this moment in history of 593 BC, was a period of well over 300 years. In that time, there were many ups and downs, spiritually speaking. But the overall trajectory was down. Because they generally refused to listen to the word of God and the prophets that God sent, any revival or repentance never lasted very long. It seemed that as soon as any one righteous king died, the people picked up in sin where they had left off and continued their descent into perdition.

And that is an important point. It is said that for any alcoholic, no matter how long they have stopped drinking, if they do start again, they will pick up right where they had left off. There is no reset back to when they began drinking. No, if they were drinking a quart a day when they quit, even if they quit for 40 years and then start drinking again, they will quickly go back to the same level of intake and inebriation as if they had never quit at all.

That is why we see Israel and Judah immediately fall back into the same level of sin, and worse, as soon as a righteous king died. When Josiah died, they quickly picked up where the previous wicked king, Manasseh, had left off. After that, it was all over. America, after Trump, don’t be surprised if it will be all over for you also. You will pick up right where Biden left off, unless you truly repent.

So with all that off my chest, let us go back to the text! God caused Israel to multiply like the grass in the field. God caused them to increase and become a great nation. They were decked with all sorts of signs of wealth and favor, even as a rich woman would be decked out in the most expensive jewels.

So far so good. Now God’s language takes on the tone of the blue collar workplace. God has no trouble saying that, my children have now grown up past the age of puberty. Even as a girl child transforms into a marriageable young woman, so I caused you to grow up and mature. God says that, you were like a young woman who gets her breasts. They were fat and plump, and they stood fully erect. All of us men immediately know what God is talking about. Something about large, firm breasts triggers the lust response in men. God knows this, and is not skittish of speaking this way. Now, he could have used many other analogies, could he not? But he knew that a sexual analogy would at least get the men to pay attention! Any sexual story will be eagerly listened to by men who have lost their fear of God. God is willing to speak in an unwholesome manner, in the hopes of breaking through their spiritual blindness, and their hard, greasy, stony, evil hearts that are now filled with nothing but idolatry and filthy sexual thoughts anyway.

Seems to me that our generation is also a very appropriate generation to speak to this way, since we also have filled our minds with so much filthy sexual imagery.

This young woman has a full head of hair. Long hair is always meant to be a glory for a woman, even Paul says so:

1Co_11:15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.

Baldness was a sign of mourning, or captivity.

Yahweh finishes the verse by saying that, I have caused you to mature like an attractive young girl, though I found you naked and bare. The words used for naked and bare mean completely naked, in the sense of exposing your female genital parts for all the world to see. Also, the Hebrew word for naked contains the idea of someone who is subtle, cunning and crafty in a bad sense. This speaks to the corrupt sin nature that is found in all of us. God wanted to especially point out that fact when it came to his people.

So why is God seemingly obsessed with speaking of the female genitalia over and over in this chapter? Because it is the most likely topic that will cause the hearer to cringe in shame and discomfort. God wants to make us as uncomfortable as possible when we read this. This passage is not meant to comfort us, it is meant to shock us. To shock us out of our spiritual lethargy. To wake us up as to our real spiritual condition, not the lies that our pastor is telling us. Chances are, we are not nearly as loved, nor safe and secure, as all those milk toast feeble and feminized messages of building self esteem have been telling us. God does not want to build our self esteem. He wants to do the exact opposite. The truth is about as far away from what is normally being preached today as the east is from the west. That is, they are infinitely apart.

Yahweh wants to start us off with this image of ourselves. As we were lying on the garbage heap, filthy and naked, covered in our own blood, with our vagina exposed for all the world to see, God happened to come along and see us. He took pity on us when no one else would. He not only cleansed and covered us, he caused us to grow into a beautiful young woman. With large, perky breasts, and the finest jewelry that money can buy.

That is just for starters. Hold that thought as we continue the story, for the story has barely begun.

Eze 16:8 Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love (dode – to boil); and I spread my skirt (edge of my garment) over thee, and covered thy nakedness (er-vaw – exposed female genital, also shame, disgrace, uncleanness): yea, I sware (shaw-bah – to seven oneself, to bind oneself with an oath as if repeating oneself seven times) unto thee, and entered into a covenant (ber-eeth – a cutting, a passing between pieces of flesh) with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

The commentators are all afraid to actually tell you what this is really saying. They use every euphemism in the book. They soften the language, where God is hardening the language beyond all human norms of decency. I will stick with God. Let the commentators subtract from the word, I will not.

Now God has caused this hopeless infant to mature into a young girl who has just had her period and is ready to take on a husband, since that was the understanding of all people at that time in history. Once a girl flowered, she was ready to be married, since she could now reproduce. Our culture would call this pedophilia, the taking of a girl before she is 18. Not so in bible times. This further reinforces the idea that the primary reason for sex was reproduction. Pleasure was an added bonus, thrown in by God as a reward for those couples who obeyed the mandate to replenish the earth. Pleasure was not the primary reason to have sex, even though the Song of Solomon has been used as a justification for that reason. While I am not laying down some law and saying that sex within marriage is only for procreation, I just think our sex soaked culture has caused the church to put far too much emphasis on preaching on the pleasures of sex in marriage. It’s important, but not to the level that is sometimes taught. If you read Paul’s thoughts on the subject, his primary directive to the churches was to ensure that everyone, including all husbands and wives, always put service to the Lord first.

So God has raised his chosen people up. When it was time for them to multiply and reproduce, God was there. God wants us to picture a young virgin, one who has just reached puberty. She is beginning to boil. That is, her sex drive has just become alive. God, at that moment, comes and takes her for a bride, and consummates the marriage with her. That is, he has sex with her (he spreads his skirt over her). By taking her as his spouse, he covers her vagina from being seen by any other. An exposed vagina is the ultimate symbol of shame in the bible. It would be considered as the deepest disgrace, the worst shame, the dirtiest of things that one could ever experience.

So not only does God marry and consummate the marriage with this shameful, filthy creature, but he then goes way further by binding himself with the strongest oath imaginable that he was permanently attached to this creature. The oath he swore is one where he would have ‘sevened’ himself, that is, it was as if he repeated the oath seven times in order to make it absolutely clear as to how serious he was. In other words, this was a vow that was as genuine and permanent as any vow could possibly be. There could be nothing more that God could do to make the vow of this covenant between him and his bride more binding.

And isn’t that a perfect picture of the cross? Could there be anything that would bind God to man in a more permanent and unchangeable manner than Calvary itself? It’s as if God swore seven times over that he would not leave us to our fate. I will give up my most precious possession, my son, my only son, just for the chance, just a chance, mind you, that you will choose to accept this sacrifice and come back to me, your creator.

Think about that for a minute. It would have been one thing if God had given up his precious son in order to guarantee that all his children would be restored to him. But no, all it did was provide the way. Each and every one of us would then need to make a choice. We could all choose to ignore, or to reject, that priceless gift. And ignore and reject it we did.

Is there are doubt as to why Yehovah will have to, one more time, destroy everyone and everything that he has created? If Judah was willing to walk away from the covenant that God swore with Abraham and with Moses, is it any wonder that an even greater punishment is being accumulated by the church, who has also chosen to walk away from the new covenant that was cut at Calvary?

If we truly understand the depth of our betrayal, we should have no problem with having a deep desire to truly immerse ourselves into the imagery of this story, so that the filthiness and the depravity of Judah that God is trying to get us to understand will so scare the hell out of us, that we will do whatever it takes to run to the cross, and cling to it, as a dying man desperately clings to a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean, after his boat has sunk and he has no other hope to cling to.

Eze 16:9 Then washed (bathed) I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.

This sounds like God cleansed them a second time. Once at birth, now just before betrothal. Perhaps this references the two covenants God made with them. One with Abraham, the other at Mount Sinai. Also perhaps the old and new covenants in Christ, where Israel will have to undergo a second regeneration. Once at mount Sinai, the second and permanent one at the cross. Perhaps even a hint at being born again, and then being filled with the Holy Spirit. The reference to water and oil may speak of the regeneration of the new birth, and the oil of the Holy Spirit anointing us at the time of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Eze 16:10 I clothed thee also with broidered work (rik-maw – variety of color), and shod thee with badgers’ skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.

Yahweh continue to describe his generosity with his bride. He spares no expense in clothing her with the finest garments. Do we understand just how lavishly God has clothed us? Are we clothed with the garment of praise? Have we taken possession of the armor of the Lord? Have we kept our robes of righteousness spotless and clean? Are we cognizant and thankful for the abundance of his riches and grace that he has bestowed upon us? Or are we like the unfaithful bride, who disdains her garments, always casting a roving eye on what her neighbor possesses, constantly lusting and coveting the next thing?

Eze 16:11 I decked (adorned) thee also with ornaments (ad-ee), and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain (collar) on thy neck.

Not only is she given the finest garments, but the most dazzling and expensive jewelry. There is no luxury that she is missing. Sadly, too many western Christians who belong to the Laodicean congregation in spirit take these things literally, exclusively on a physical level. They lust over actual jewelry and fine apparel, rather than the priceless spiritual treasures that heaven brings. Things such as perfect peace, a blessed assurance of salvation, strength for the journey, gifts to do the will of the Father – these are the true ornaments and apparel of a child of the King.

Eze 16:12 And I put a jewel (nose ring) on thy forehead (af – nostril), and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head.

Some commentators try to soften the imagery by stating that this could have been a jewel that was placed on a string that was placed on the forehead so that the jewel rested on the nose. The Hebrew text clearly leans towards an actual nose ring.

This is problematic from our cultural point of view. In fact, I have just happened to come across a video that examined several young girl’s social media posts who all wore these nose rings that pierced the septum. In every instance, they were far left and insane. The podcaster likened them to animals, such as bulls, which may have a nose ring that farmers use to control the animal more safely and effectively. In these old eastern cultures, a nose ring was a benign sign of beauty, whereas in our culture it is a sign of rebellion and self mutilation. Thus we need to treat it in the context of Judah’s culture at the time. Whether or not the nose ring was to be symbolic of God leading these people in a safe and effective manner is to be debated.

The crown is a sign of queenship. Thus, Israel was elevated to be a joint heir in the marriage of Yehovah to his people. How much more does the symbolism apply to Christ and his church! Jesus has taken for himself a bride. He has clothed her with the robe of righteousness, after washing away her sin. He had crowned her with many crowns, including the crown of righteousness:

2Ti_4:8 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.

The idea is a woman that has been completely taken care of, with all of her needs met, by her husband.

Eze 16:13 Thus wast thou decked (adorned) with gold and silver; and thy raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work (rik-maw); thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceeding beautiful (yaw-faw med-ode meh-ode – utterly utterly bright, fair), and thou didst prosper into a kingdom.

Yahweh summarizes exactly what he has done for Israel. She did not lack finances. She lacked nothing in apparel. And not only apparel, but in sustenance as well. She was not given table scraps to eat. She was given the choicest morsels. The result was a beautiful bride, unmatched by anyone else. That is why the word meh-ode is doubled. In fact, we will see God double certain words time and time again, in the same vein that Jesus used the word verily, verily on more than one occasion to emphasize the absolute truth of what he was about to say.

Yahweh then states that he made her into a kingdom. This all culminated in the kingdom of David and Solomon, when the kingdom was yet undivided, and it had reached the utmost heights of glory and honor.

Eze 16:14 And thy renown went forth among the heathen (goy – gentiles) for thy beauty: for it was perfect (kaw-leel – complete) through my comeliness (haw-dawr – magnificence, splendor, excellency), which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.

God then ensured that the surrounding nations were made aware of what he had done. He was so proud of his bride, that he showed her off in front of all the Gentiles. God calls what he had created perfect, that is, complete. What God bestowed upon Israel was a magnificence, splendor, and excellency that could only have come from God alone. He put all that upon them. They did not put any of that upon themselves.

God adorns us with his ‘comeliness’ in order that all nations may see what God has wrought. Our lives are supposed to be a praise and an honor and a cause of envy to the nations. Does our life cause envy in the sinners that we encounter? Do they sense an inner glow, a light of life, a brightness that they cannot put their finger on, but is utterly undeniable regardless? Do they envy us? Or do they see the same thing they see in everyone else? Do they see someone who is unhappy, dissatisfied, down in the dumps, depressed, cranky, irritable, and just like everyone else in the crowd? If this is so, then maybe it is because you are living your life in pursuit of the same things as the heathen. Maybe you are chasing after money, health, fame, recognition, self esteem, a spouse that will meet all your wants, a career. In short, any and every thing that vanity fair has to offer. Any and every thing that Babylon is dangling out in front of you.

Eze 16:15 But thou didst (baw-takh – to hie for refuge, put your confidence in) trust in thine own beauty (yof-ee – from a root to make yourself fair), and playedst the harlot (zaw-naw – commit adultery, become idolatrous, act wantonly) because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications (taz-nooth – harlotry, idolatry, comes from the root zaw-naw) on every one that passed by; his it was (whoever it was, whoever existed).

Up until now, God’s language may have been a little rowdy, but all in all, we’ve been able to weather the tale. Well, that is about to suddenly change. We now are entering into the part that I have been warning you about. Up until now, Yehovah has simply been setting the scene. He wanted to remind these Judeans about where they had come from. About how God himself is the only reason that they are where they are today. If God had not done what he had done throughout history, they would have gone extinct a long time ago.

So what is the first indictment that Yehovah makes against these wicked idolaters? You placed your confidence and all your hope in yourself. Everything that is good and useful in your life came from me (God). But you decided that those things I (God) gave you is what you should put your faith in. Scriptures such as the following speak of this:

Deu 32:15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

Hos 13:6 According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.

Oh how often do the blessings of God become a deadly snare! I dare say that we should all be falling on our faces every day, thanking God for the material things that he did not give us, rather than crying about it. He knows what abundance causes in most souls. When times are good, men forget about God. When times are bad, then they might turn to him.

A ridiculous, but timely example occurred in the recent World Series. I know, you exceedingly virtuous believers out there are gasping in horror that this supposed man of God actually watched a baseball game? Well, it was the first time in 32 years that Canada’s only team had made it thus far. I figured a once in 32 year indulgence was not going to permanently derail me spiritually! In any event, when the Blue Jays were starting to let the final game slip away for them in the last couple of innings, when it seemed so certain early on that they had a safe lead, the cameras kept showing the extreme anxiety of the fans in the stands. You wouldn’t believe how many instances that they caught people looking up as if they were actually praying for God to help their team win this game! It would have been very amusing if it weren’t so sad, pathetic, and in reality, blasphemous. I can say with all confidence that most of them probably never prayed a serious prayer in their life. Ignoring God, allowing evil to run roughshod over the nation, consumed with their little lives, paying thousands of dollars for these highly coveted tickets to this game 7, the only thing in their life that they cared enough to pray about was their ball team to win this once in a lifetime game 7!

I shudder to think about what it will be like in hell for these wretches, when they have all eternity to ponder that the most sincere prayer they ever prayed in their lifetime was over something as utterly meaningless as a stupid baseball game.

Eze 16:15 But thou didst (baw-takh – to hie for refuge, put your confidence in) trust in thine own beauty (yof-ee – from a root to make yourself fair), and playedst the harlot (zaw-naw – commit adultery, become idolatrous, act wantonly) because of thy renown, and pouredst out (sprawled out) thy fornications (taz-nooth – harlotry, idolatry, comes from the root zaw-naw) on every one that passed by; his it was (whoever it was, whoever existed).

So Israel began to forget the God who rescued them, cleansed them, married them, and gave them a kingdom. Gradually they began to believe that their own power made all this magically come about. Eventually they decided to play the harlot. And not just play the harlot once or twice, but with everyone that passed by. Whoever it was wasn’t important. They began to spread their legs for everyone.

Israel was married to Yehovah. They decided that their husband wasn’t exciting enough. They started to believe that all that they had was not provided by their husband, but by their own wisdom and cunning. They knew that they had gained a reputation amongst the nations as someone to be reckoned with. But they came to the conclusion that they alone were responsible for their elevated stature.

As they looked around at the nations all around them, they decided all by themselves that there was more to be had in this life. The allure of the gods of the heathen began to ensnare them. They started to lust after these other gods, as their practices seemed far more stimulating and exciting than their boring old single deity. So they decided to sprawl out a little. In fact, they decided to sprawl out a lot. They inquired and pursued the knowledge of everyone’s gods. None were too vile or detestable for Israel’s sophisticated palette. Any Renaissance man will tell you that to be open minded is one of the highest virtues to be acquired. Surely everyone has something good to teach us, do they not? Don’t you all know that diversity is our strength?

I will speak of this truth one more time, and no more. The image of the insatiable harlot who knows no moral boundaries is the image Yahweh has chosen to try and describe the nation of Judah’s true moral nature at this point in their history. The fact that the comparison is to a female figure is not the issue. What is important is that we truly understand just how detestable was a harlot with no moral limits in Yahweh’s eyes. If we can grasp the seriousness of a creature such as that, as far as how abhorrent and monstrously evil someone is who has no limits on their sexual appetites, we will then have at least the possibility of understanding just how far Judah has fallen in God’s moral scale. I reiterate this truth because I truly believe that few of us really understand just how unclean and unacceptable are mankind’s sexual practices outside of God’s stated boundaries. Our modern culture has destroyed our inner sensitivity to the awfulness of most sexual sin. I hope that when we are through with this chapter, that inner revulsion that God created within us on this topic will be restored.

Eze 16:16 And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst (bestowed) thy high places (bamah – heights) with divers colours, and playedst the harlot (zaw-naw) thereupon: the like things shall not come (or have not come), neither shall it be so.

The last phrase carries the idea that these idolatrous practices have never been seen before, nor shall they ever be seen in the future. In other words, they are unique. Sort of like the internet addiction craze of our generation. Never have we seen so many people with something glued to the palms of their hands, and neither shall it be seen so in the future, as it would not shock me, should the Lord tarry, that a future generation casts these infernal devices away from their bodies, after experiencing the utter ruination of their societies via this experiment in living in a virtual world rather than the real.

Yahweh has just finished reminding Judah that he was the one who saved them, and gave them everything that they now have. But they have turned around and taken God’s provision, and spent it on God’s enemies! They have taken their garments, and given them over to decorate their idols. The fact that divers colours are mentioned indicates the gaudiness and proud ostentatiousness of their actions. Drawing much attention to themselves, and their deeds. Sort of like those gaudy women who wave enormous flags at the ‘worship’ service, or the choreographed dancers who steal the attention of the people from turning their eyes to heaven, but rather are irresistibly drawn to the spectacle in front of them.

This was spiritual adultery. Not only were their hearts turned towards a different god, but they were taking the provisions that the one true God had given them and were worshipping these false gods with those resources!

Perhaps we see a similar action taken by Adam and Eve. They took the dominion of the planet that God gave them, and turned around and handed it over to satan. But God says that what Judah has done is unique. Apparently the level of idolatry had reached a level never seen before in Jerusalem. The lesson here is that we are never to take the gifts and provisions of God and in our pride use them for any other purpose but to glorify him.

Eze 16:17 Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images (tseh-lem – resemblances, representations) of men, and didst commit whoredom (zaw-naw) with them,

These people of Yahweh took the money that God said he gave them (as represented by gold and silver), and melted it down to make images of male gods. Male gods are mentioned here, since Judah is portrayed as a female harlot and adulteress. One commentator thinks the Hebrew supports the idea of making phalluses to worship, which would not be out of the question, as many phallic idols have been unearthed in various digs around the world. The phallic image was a very common pagan fetish, and would certainly not be surprising to find something like that amongst the shrines and the objects found in these high places that the bible so frequently mentions.

Whatever these people made, it was an act of whoredom. God is repeatedly calling this behavior an act of whoredom. The Hebrew word zaw-naw does not simply imply giving sex for money. It was a much more all encompassing activity, one that involved the idea of committing adultery, idolatry and playing the harlot all at once. Because Israel was Yehovah’s bride, adultery was a given when she departed from the faith and embraced other gods. Not serving your spiritual husband and giving your heart to another was also committing idolatry and falling into whoredom. Every time you see the word zaw-naw or taz-nooth, Yehovah is calling his own people adulterous, idolatrous whores.

Eze 16:18 And tookest thy broidered (rik-maw) garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set (given) mine oil and mine incense before them.

Yahweh continues to list all the things that he had given Israel, who now in turn is giving it to worthless beings. To gods which are no gods at all. This behavior reminds me of Esau, who thought his birthright was so worthless that he was willing to trade it for a single meal.

Eze 16:19 My meat (food) also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set (given) it before them for a sweet savour: and thus it was, saith the Lord GOD.

Your daily sustenance you also have given away, as if it was worthless. You set food before these blocks of stone and wood, that cannot eat. You would rather let your daily food go to waste, rotting before these statues, rather than use them to at least feed the poor. Yahweh ends up saying ‘thus it was’, ie, the facts of this absurdity are undeniable, as you have openly done this for all the world to see, so there is no disputing the issue.

Are we guilty of taking our daily bread, and basically throwing it out the window to rot and spoil? And how do we do that? Well, if you don’t even start your day by asking God for his instructions, you are throwing out the will of God before the day has even started! If God quickens some command in scripture, but you pretend that this was not really for you, are you in danger of throwing out your daily bread to the idol of self will? If God has given you revelation and instruction in his word, do you implement it in your life, or do you place it at the shrine of your cell phone? Does that latest notification bell go off, or that latest text arrive, which causes you to forget what God was trying to say to you? Do you drop everything for your shrine that you hold in your hand? Are you giving the best of your day, your energy, and your resources to feed that hand held shrine, that fetish that has become such a part of you?

Which god does your heart belong to? Yahweh, or facebook? The will of God, or the incessant demands of unanswered texts? The prayer closet, or the inbox on your email? Bible study, or the study of how to grow your subscriber base?

Eze 16:20 Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed (zaw-bakh – slaughtered as in a sacrifice) unto them to be devoured (aw-kal – burnt up, consumed). Is this of thy whoredoms (taz-nooth) a small matter,
Eze 16:21 That thou hast slain (shaw-khat – slaughtered, massacred) my children (sons), and delivered (given) them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?

We will take these 2 verses together, since they speak of the same thing. Judah now has reached the end of the moral road. Once you are willing to sacrifice your children, you can’t go any lower. First, God calls them their children. Then he calls them his children. In the first verse, the phrase ‘whom thou has borne unto me’, the ‘unto me’ is sort of implied. The Hebrew merely states that these children have been given birth by you. Because God clarifies in verse 21 that they are actually his children, I think that is why the ‘unto me’ was added by the translators. Regardless, taking the 2 verses together, it is very clear that God considers their children as his children.

This should put an end to the demonic nonsense of ‘my body, my choice’. There is no such thing. What about the child’s choice? How come they don’t count? But all that does not matter. These are God’s children. In Judah’s day, they gave birth, but then threw many into the fire, to placate and seek the blessing of the god Moloch. Today, we’re a bit more discreet, in that we rip them limb from limb while still in the mother’s womb, behind closed doors. Not so public, but I guarantee you a much greater percentage of children are being slaughtered today than ever were in those days. And now, we jab them dozens of times with every sort of toxin that big pharma can make a dollar on. And to top it all off, we’ve created something called a covid vaccine, which is the mother of all poisons. And still, at least here in Canada, in every province, the health authorities are still recommending jabbing babies 6 months old, and boosting them at regular intervals as well. As if we haven’t murdered enough babies in the womb. If there was an all-star nation in hell, Canada would certainly be in the running for the gold medal. The evil that is now being practiced in this country is off the charts. Just as an aside, do you know that it is believed that we have just surpassed the 100,000 mark in MAiD deaths in Canada? MAiD is government sanctioned and encouraged medically assisted suicide. In other words, legalized murder. And no, that is not a typo. In just 10 short years, we’ve managed to murder an additional 100,000 people, mostly the old, whom we’ve convinced that it is selfish of them to continue to drain precious health care resources by lingering on.

Only in Canada.

Yahweh asks them if this thing is a small matter. In other words, do you think that this is no big deal? Do we think that the murder of the unborn is a small matter? Do we think that murdering the elderly is a small matter? Do we think that jabbing people to death with deadly mRNA injections is a small matter?

So, we see here that this first degree murder that these people practice is also called an act of whoredom. That is because they are defying the known will of God, like a whore who defies all laws and societal norms, selfishly and rebelliously doing her own thing, just because she wants to. These repulsive sinners, who cannot find it in their hearts to obey any of the statutes of their creator, seem to find it no burden to actually throw their living babies into the fire! Letting your little child burn to death, screaming until they’re actually dead, is not too big a burden when you are serving demons. But repenting of your selfishness, your lust, your greed and your rebellions to the commandments of God, well, that is something that no one seems interested in doing. Somehow these people find it easier to throw their babies in the fire than it is to obey God.

Are we starting to get the picture of how wicked these people are? And again and again, I must remind you that we are speaking of God’s own people, his own children. Children who have completely turned their backs on him, but his children nonetheless. He still speaks of them as his chosen tribe. But they have now gone as far off the reservation as one could possibly go, it seems.

Well, it seems so, does it not? But wait. Yahweh will show us even greater sins, if that is possible.

As I write this, the Supreme Court of Canada has given the go ahead for the government to slaughter hundreds of healthy ostriches. Never mind that they are not sick. Never mind that America was willing to take them, because they were being used as valuable research in the fight against covid and other toxins. Never mind that they were tested with a fraudulent PCR test in the first place. Never mind that all government officials are camping out at the farm without any protective equipment, because they know this has nothing to do with disease, but about absolute compliance to whatever the government decrees. And we’ve also watched this week, the first budget tabled by Mark Carney, that is even far worse in out of control spending and money laundering than his predecessor Trudeau. I feel as if Yahweh is saying to me: ‘Do you see the atrocities that Canadians are committing? Come and look some more, for you shall see even greater abominations than these’.

Sigh. I can hardly wait.

Eze 16:22 And in all thine abominations (to-ay-baw) and thy whoredoms (taz-nooth) thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted (boos) in thy blood.

When you are given over to certain sins, you will forget what you were delivered out of. How soon the backslider in heart forgets how helpless and hopeless his life was before Christ came and redeemed him! How quickly we forget what it was like to be drowning in our addictions, our depression, our misery and our despair. Whatever was our condition, Jesus reached down and dragged us out of the pit.

And maybe we served him for awhile. Maybe for many years. But somewhere down the line, things may have gotten a bit boring. Or perhaps you were seriously mistreated by someone in church. Maybe it even was your pastor. In shock, pain, and bitterness, you left the church. Maybe you wallowed in self pity, and found several ‘friends’ who helped you to stay away from those hypocritical Christians. Then you might have started dabbling in alcohol. Maybe even drugs. Or pornography. Or all of the above. Before you knew it, you found yourself entangled in addiction and a destructive lifestyle. But in your filthiness, in your morally disgusting behavior, you just can’t seem to remember the goodness of the Lord anymore. All you can think of is your hurt. Maybe you lost a child, or a spouse. Maybe you’ve suffered a serious medical issue, or a devastating financial reversal. Whatever it was, there is nothing left inside you that reminds you of the goodness of the Lord. You are wallowing once again in the mire, and in the midst of your apostasy, thoughts of God are nowhere to be found.

2Pe 2:22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

The terrifying part about the backslider, especially the mature believer who subsequently turns away from the faith, is that you may end up at a place where there is no turning back.

Heb 6:4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
Heb 6:5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
Heb 6:6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

Paul says it is impossible for the man above to repent a second time. He lists several characteristics of this man. All of them point to someone with a certain level of maturity and understanding. I will briefly summarize these characteristics:

1. once enlightened – were convicted of their sin
2. tasted of the heavenly gift – received Christ as savior
3. made partakers of the Holy Ghost – were baptised in the Holy Ghost
4. have tasted the good word of God – have a mature understanding of the word
5. and the powers of the world to come – walked in the gifts of the Spirit

The last two points (especially the 4th one), point to a certain maturity. A young believer who slips back into an old lifestyle can certainly repent. Someone battling addiction who slips can repent, though one should repent as quickly as they can, as the longer you wait, the harder it becomes. This passage does not speak to those who are forced to recant via torture. Only God knows the heart. But the passage makes it clear that if you really know the Lord, and understand his word, and have been serving him for some time, being empowered by the precious Holy Spirit, then if you wilfully choose to walk away and reject Jesus, you are in danger of being turned over to your sin, and not ever having grace extended to you that would enable you to come back into a right relationship with Jesus.

What a wretched situation to find yourself in! These Judeans seemed to have mostly crossed this line, as we read of their testimony in Jeremiah. Even after their total destruction, the survivors by and large refused to repent. Almost as if they didn’t know how to anymore.

It is good to regularly remember our salvation. It will act as the best deterrent against falling away. Why would you want to go back to the place where there was nothing but death?

Eze 16:23 And it came to pass after all thy wickedness (rah – evil, misery, wretchedness), (woe, woe unto thee! saith the Lord GOD;)

Up until now God has been describing the gross sins by the Israelites as being inspired mostly by the Canaanites whom they had mingled with. Yahweh has warned them that if they did not exterminate all those permanently corrupted people out of the land, then they would eventually be their moral downfall.

Num_33:55 But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.

Jos_23:13 Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.

Jdg_2:3 Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.

We shall see that God will continue the indictment by saying that the insatiable harlot Judah would not be satisfied merely with the abomination of Canaan. No, she will look elsewhere and everywhere else for what other outrages that she could immerse herself into.

By God interrupting himself with an exclamatory outburst of ‘woe, woe’, we see that even Yehovah himself is affected by what he is relating. The story is so outrageous, the tale is so outlandish, that even God himself is caught up in the emotion of it.

Eze 16:24 That thou hast also built unto thee an eminent place, and hast made thee an high place (ramah – a height) in every street.

The key here is the pride behind their idolatry. Not content to worship false gods in secret, no, they wanted the whole world to see what they were doing. Every eminent place, even on every street corner, the rulers ensured that every passerby would see that this was a place where idols reigned supreme. You did not have to go and search for a temple of Baal or Ashtoreth. Just look at every street corner or prominent place, and chances are you would find a shrine, a memorial, an altar, or something that indicated that this was a place that belonged to the devil and his angels.

Does all this ring a bell? How about pride month? Have we not seen every street corner, every lamp post, even the streets themselves painted with the rainbow flag, or the BLM flag, or whatever flag of perversion that is currently in vogue? I remember seeing Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, just a few months after the peaceful trucker protest was brutally suppressed. Every single lamppost for blocks around parliament hill was festooned with pride flags.

How is that any different than what Yehovah describes here?

Eze 16:25 Thou hast built thy high place (ramah) at every head of the way (deh-rek – a road or path of life travelled), and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred (taw-ab – lothed, detested), and hast opened (paw-sak – to dispart, or separate in order to act licentiously) thy feet (in other words, to spread the legs) to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms (taz-nooth).

As if the detestable practices of the Canaanites were not enough for you to indulge in, you first and foremost boldly, and proudly, and defiantly, displayed your rebelliousness at every important roadway in your entire country. Because of your insistence in proudly broadcasting your repulsive behavior to all, you have made yourself detestable to everyone who passes you by.

Similar to what the reputation of Canada is to the rest of the world today. Not only are we a laughingstock, but we are used more than any other nation as to what not to do. Our love of death has reached the level of the absurd. This insistence on slaughtering those innocent ostriches displays a devotion to death that only the serious muslims can surpass. We are bringing in more of the adherents to the islamic death cult, proportionately speaking, than any other nation in the world. It seems our leaders just can’t murder us fast enough, so they have called for the professionals to help them finish the job.

As of late 2025, there is nothing left to admire in Canada.

Yahweh chose Israel to be a light and a beacon to the Gentiles. He gave them a law that was unique in all of history. The righteousness found in it was second to none. His people were to be the standard of morality that all nations were supposed to aspire to.

And what happened instead? Judah had now become worse than any Gentile nation around them. Not satisfied with worshipping the demon gods of Canaan, like an insatiable whore, who was addicted to every sort of sexual act imaginable, Judah spread her legs wide open to every nation and culture that she came into contact with. There was no abominable practice these nations practiced that Judah was not willing to embrace. In fact, the more perverse and dirty, the better. If they saw something that some culture was practicing, regardless of how wicked and morally disgusting the practice was, Judah jumped in with both feet, just like an insatiable whore who couldn’t spread her legs wide enough to accompany her depraved lusts and bottomless addictions. The result was a multiplication of sin such as Judah had never committed previously.

Eze 16:26 Thou hast also committed fornication (zaw-naw) with the Egyptians (bane mits-rah-yim – sons of Egypt) thy neighbours, great (gaw-dole – large) of flesh (baw-sawr – can mean the genitilia of a man); and hast increased thy whoredoms (taz-nooth), to provoke me to anger (kaw-as – to trouble me, grieve me, to provoke me to rage, wrath, indignation).

Now we see that Yahweh wants to bring up Egypt as an example of going after strange flesh. The idols of Canaan were not enough. Their eyes greedily lusted after the gods of their neighbors.

The literal translation means that Judah has had adulterous sexual concourse with the sons of Egypt, who had large penises. This served to provoke Yehovah to rage and wrath. Of course all of this is symbolic. It is pornography at its most vivid, in order to try and break though the unbelievably hard and wicked hearts of God’s people. Yehovah is resorting to the most foul, disgusting and base language possible, in order to evoke such a revolting imagery to try and paint a picture of what Judah’s true spiritual condition looks like in heaven.

You can scream. You can regurgitate. You can throw your laptop across the room. You can call me vile, or a pornographer, or a sick man for even daring to speak like this in a bible commentary. But that is the point. This is a bible commentary. We are examining exactly what Yehovah is saying to his people at this point in time. The King James translators, while doing an admirable job, felt that they could only go so far concerning the graphic and obscene nature of the narrative. I can only imagine what the limp wristed, feminized, politically correct and cowardly translators of more modern versions of the bible have done to hide the real meaning of verses such as these.

But no matter. You either have the guts to face the truth, or you do not. You can choose to let the actual truth sink into your sheltered soul, or you can go back to your Joyce Meyers and your Joel Osteens who will shield you from the ugly realities of your idolatrous souls.

Why does Yehovah use the words that mention at how hung these sons of Egypt really are? Isn’t that in very bad taste? Exactly what does this add to the conversation? God is showing how the wicked man thinks. A man given over to pornography and fornication often fantasizes about the size of their members. They dream and constantly seek out images of the private female anatomy. God is speaking their language. He is not afraid to use what we would consider really bad swear words!

We also must understand that to a typical ancient middle eastern mindset, nothing depicts filth and uncleanness more than a sleazy, shameless, sexually depraved whore who could never seem to spread her legs enough to satisfy her craving for lust. This imagery would be considered as the ultimate in depicting something foul and disgusting. Yahweh could have chosen something different to get the same point across. He could have chosen pigs wallowing in mire and dung. But he knew that a really immoral woman was the dirtiest thing that one could speak about, in that culture.

In our modern western culture, I don’t think the same thing holds true anymore. We have become so compromised and desensitized over casual sex, that the dirtiness and filthiness of the sexual act outside of marriage has lost its ability to disgust us as it should. So comparing America to a really sleazy whore, while still odious, would not have quite the same deep, dramatic effect as when it is used here. What this tells us is that we have lost the truth about how foul and disgusting unrestrained sex should be in the Christian’s mind. As a result, sexual sin does not repulse us as it should. It manifests in the ridiculous repetitiousness of hearing things like: ‘Homosexuality is no worse than any sort of fornication’, or ‘I have a lot of friends who are gay. I just love on them, and not preach at them, as that is how to win them to the Lord. The Lord will clean them up, but he accepts them just as they are’.

In effect, sexual sin does not really bug us anymore. We’ve gotten used to it. I think Paul faced the same thing when he was dealing with problems in the Corinthian church. Even taking your mother in law to wife was viewed as no big deal. Paul had to clearly state that those who practice sexual sin are going to hell:

1Co_6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
1Co_6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Let us strive with all our might to recapture the truth of the awfulness of sin, especially the truly abominable ones such as sexual sin. How else shall we stand out as lights in the darkness, unless one can distinguish our lights from everyone else in our culture?

Eze 16:27 Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished (gaw-rah – scraped off, lessened, witheld, restrained, keep back) thine ordinary (khoke – customary, set portion) food, and delivered thee unto the will (nephesh – soul) of them that hate (saw-nay – enemy, foe) thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed (kaw-lawm – insulted by, to blush) of thy lewd (zim-maw – bad plan, heinous crime, wicked device) way (deh-rek).

Ellicott’s commentary has this to say:

According to the figurative language of the chapter, and indeed the common figurative language of Scripture, Philistia was but a small power in the south-west corner of Palestine, yet from the time of the Judges down through the whole period of the monarchy, they were the persistent foes of Israel. During the time immediately before Samuel, they held nearly the entire land in subjection, and although subdued by David, they became troublesome again in the times of the later kings (see 2Chr 26:7; 2Chr 28:18), and are often spoken of not only by the earlier prophets, Isaiah and Amos, but also by Jeremiah (Jer 25:20; Jer 47:1; Jer 47:4), Ezekiel (Ez 25:15-16), and Zechariah (Zech 9:6). [end]

When God is not on your side, it does not matter how powerful you think you are. Even America, with its power and might, is breaking apart as we speak, due to the cup of iniquity that it has accumulated over the years.

2Ch_24:24 For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men, and the LORD delivered a very great host into their hand, because they had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers. So they executed judgment against Joash.

God can enlarge, and God can contract. He withheld not only their luxuries, but their bare necessities. This certainly came true during the final siege of Jerusalem. Why God specifically singles out the dominance of Philistia is probably due to their proximity, and to the seemingly never ending part that they would play in the history of Israel, both then, and even until now. Philistia is in the area of Gaza. Sound familiar? All I know is that whatever spirits were assigned by satan to that area, they have endured everything, and they blind whatever inhabitants who are there with an implacable hatred of the Jew. Think of Hamas and the Palestinians today. That is one dark spiritual area that I do not envy Israel having to try and conquer!

These Philistines, these idolaters par excellence, were taken aback by the depravity that they saw in Judah. Perhaps the idea is that while they themselves engaged in many similar immoral practices in their worship of their gods, at least they remained faithful to their gods, but Judah abandoned her own god utterly and wholeheartedly, and prostituted herself to every other god imaginable. Such behavior would cause even the wicked Philistines to blush in shame, as they would see that behavior as a heinous crime.

Eze 16:28 Thou hast played the whore (zaw-naw) also with the Assyrians (bane ash-sjoor – sons of Assyria), because thou wast unsatiable (bil-tee sob-aw – not satisfied); yea, thou hast played the harlot (zaw-naw) with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied (saw-bah – have enough, filled to satisfaction).

As if Canaan, Egypt and Philistia were not enough, as soon as you encountered the Assyrian culture, you could not wait to immerse yourself in their pagan practices. No demon was to be left behind, as far as worship went. That seemed to be the motto of the Judeans of Ezekiel’s time. Sure sounds like Canada, or any blue state in America. If the idea is perverse, if it is despicable, if it is in any way immoral or blasphemous or idolatrous, then bring it on! Men who fantasize about having sex with 5 year olds who like to wear women’s clothing, let them teach our kindergarten class! Sodomites who dream about having sex with as many teenage boys as possible, let them teach in our elementary schools! They can teach our boys to wear women’s underwear, and to fantasize about wanting an older man to penetrate them. Heck, they can even convince them to cut their penis off and make a vagina someway, somehow.

Did I go too far? Well, someone has to say these things. Just as no one wants to talk about the ugliness of the abortion process, so no one wants to talk about the sheer depravity that is behind all this sexualization of our children. We just don’t want to hear it. We don’t want to deal with it. It’s beyond sick, I understand that. But do you see why the rest of the world looks on the west and is utterly revolted? This is one area where the muslims are right. The west is corrupt and depraved, when it comes to our sexual norms. Russia is appalled at the west’s obsession with normalizing all forms of sexual perversion. We truly have become objects of loathing and contempt to our enemies, just as Judah had done at this point in time.

Eze 16:29 Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication (taz-nooth) in the land of Canaan (trafficker) unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied (saw-bah) herewith.

In the sense and context of what we are reading, I think this verse is continuing along the same lines. Just as Judah multiplied her idols in the land of Canaan, which God had given to her, borrowing and embracing the idols of many surrounding nations, so too when they came in contact with Chaldea, which is Babylon, did they eagerly embrace what they found there. But even adding the pantheon of gods from this wicked land, Judah, just as in the case of the mythical slut that she is compared to, was still not satisfied.

Eze 16:30 How weak (aw-mal – sick, feeble) is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work (action, business, transaction) of an imperious (shah-leh-teth – a vixen, from a root meaning a dominatrix (dominator), only time in OT) whorish (zaw-naw) woman;

Finally, God has had enough. He has listed the embracing of so many false gods and all their despicable religious practices. Here God finally calls them sick. That is, their inner man, whom they really are, is truly sickening.

Look at our mainline churches today. Rainbow flags everywhere, women and homosexuals in the pulpit, a refusal to call sin sin, embracing demonic and retarded ‘climate change’, the list goes on and on. All that is sick. Sick actions coming out of a sick heart.

Judah, you are like a vixen, or a dominatrix, a woman that dominates men. But this dominatrix is a whore at heart. She is faithful to no one. All she cares about is lust and power. Sex and violence. Blasphemy and uncleanness. That is what her heart is set upon. Filthy things. Horrible things. Things of death. She is one sick puppy, and so are the men of Judah.

Eze 16:31 In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way (deh-rek), and makest thine high place (ramah) in every street; and hast not been as an harlot (zaw-naw), in that thou scornest (kaw-las – ridicule, mock, disparage) hire (eth-nan – gift, reward, wage);

While you gaudily advertise just how sick in the head you are, spreading your legs to everyone that passes by, yet you are unique in the annals of history. Whores get paid to be unfaithful. But you, you evil bitch, mock the mere fact that you should get a wage or a gift for what you do. No, you enjoy your lust filled perversions so much that it does not even cross your mind to get something in return! In other words, you’re not even asking these demons that you consort with to give you anything special. Just the mere fact that you can obtain some sadistic pleasure in rebelling against Yehovah himself seems to be all the payment that you need.

Eze 16:32 But as a wife (woman) that committeth adultery (naw-af – to commit apostasy by breaking wedlock), which taketh strangers (zoor – foreigners, profane ones) instead of her husband (man)!

Adultery is a form of apostasy. You are wilfully breaking a most sacred covenant. You are a traitor. You have chosen to defy the natural order of things that God has ordained. You have chosen to embrace anyone, as long as they are profane enough. You have nothing left in your heart that even gives you the slightest twinge of conscience over what you are doing.

Eze 16:33 They give gifts to all whores (zaw-naw): but thou givest thy gifts (naw-dawn – present, only time in OT) to all thy lovers (aw-hab – friend, or those who you have sexual affection for), and hirest (shaw-khad – bribe, give a reward) them, that they may come unto thee on every side (encircle thee) for thy whoredom (taz-nooth).

Every other whore who has ever lived does what she does in order to get something in return. She wants to be paid every time she spreads her legs. But you, Judah, actually pay each and every one whom you lust after, to come and screw you in every possible way. No matter now painful, no matter how perverse, no matter now unnatural is the act that they perform on you, you actually pay them for the ‘privilege’! Can you get any lower than that? Can Yahweh come up with any more vile and ugly of an illustration, as to what Judah is doing, and how God views it from a spiritual standpoint?

Judah is paying for the opportunity to debase and defile themselves in the worst possible way. Are we not paying a terrible price for the blasphemy that we do? Have we not funnelled literally billions of dollars into organizations whose sole purpose is to destroy Christianity out of our lands? Look at the USAID revelations. Canada is even worse, if you can imagine it. Our latest budget this week is still funnelling billions into every woke cause you can think of. And the dollars are increasing to record amounts. Whatever Trump and his team are trying to reverse, Canada is doubling down on, just like every Democrat state is doing. So why would Trump want to accept Canada as the 51st state? I can guarantee you that normal Americans would want absolutely nothing to do with us, with the possible exception of the 2 western provinces that are contemplating separation. While I wholeheartedly support the notion, in reality the chances are near zero that the Liberals would ever allow that to happen. They would call in Chinese troops before allowing it. Only the sovereign hand of God could cause that forlorn hope to come true.

We must also remember that Yahweh is indicting Judah not solely for their embrace of pagan gods, but for making military alliances with all these nations, which God never commanded or permitted them to do. Some were never to be allies. There were commands to never return to Egypt. Being unequally yoked, or the making of illicit mixtures, is something that was forbidden again and again. Indeed, some of the most confusing Torah laws were primarily a symbolic way of reminding God’s people not to mix the good with the evil:

Deu 22:9 Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be defiled.
Deu 22:10 Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.
Deu 22:11 Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together.

Good and evil never mix. Being half good is really being totally evil in God’s eyes.

Eze 16:34 And the contrary (heh-fek – reverse) is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms (taz-nooth), whereas none followeth thee to commit whoredoms (zaw-naw): and in that thou givest a reward (eth-nan), and no reward (eth-nan) is given unto thee, therefore thou art contrary (heh-fek – only 2 times in OT in this verse).

God now tells us that no other nation has ever sunk to this level of depravity. We will see later that this also includes Samaria and Sodom.

We need to let this truth sink deep into our souls. We think of Sodom as the poster child for sexual depravity. God says Judah is worse. He says they are worse than those calf worshipping brethren of the northern kingdom, who disappeared long ago. How can this be? What are we missing here? Did their idolatrous behaviours actually surpass whatever had been done in Sodom? We will deal with that question at the appropriate place.

Right here, the main point is that this particular whore, whose name is Judah, is unlike any whore ever seen in the history of the world. All whores expect to get paid. Not only does Judah not expect payment, but she actually pays to get screwed. And she pays again and again and again. Her hunger is insatiable. No matter the consequence, no matter what happens to her, she continues to lay on her bed, with her legs spread wide apart, and gives more and more of her resources, just so she can have another stranger slip between her legs.

Disgusted yet? How about nauseated? Had enough? If you have a soul, I should think so!

But remember, I am only going where the text takes me. God himself is speaking. He chose to put this in the eternal word of God. It’s not in there to ignore. He didn’t write this so we’d skip over it, or translate it incorrectly, or soften it, or obscure the ugliness of it. He wants us to study it, meditate on it, as much as any portion of the bible. It is about as ugly as it gets. But life is ugly. Life sometimes is very vile. Canada and the west today are very vile. I don’t know how much more sin and madness that I can take, sometimes. But here we are. God has created us and placed us here and now. Running to your fake world in your cell phone is not the answer. God does not want us to live in a fantasy world. But he certainly wants us to understand what it means to betray him, when we let something else steal our heart away from him.

Eze 16:35 Wherefore, O harlot (zaw-naw), hear (shama – to hear intelligently, with the idea of obeying) the word of the LORD:

God has come to the end of the first round of attempting to describe Judah’s moral filthiness. He is about to start pronouncing his judgments. He is not yet finished enunciating the depth of Judah’s depravity, but it’s as if he is drawing another breath by interjecting a particularly severe judgment, which is in complete proportion regarding the depth and seriousness of the trespasses that they have so brazenly committed.

Eze 16:36 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness (nekh-o-sheth – copper, a base metal that figuratively is filthy as dross, brass, a cheap coin) was poured out, and thy nakedness (er-vaw – disgrace, blemish, specifically the exposed genitals of a woman) discovered (gaw-law – revealed, denuded, published, exposed) through thy whoredoms (taz-nooth) with thy lovers (aw-hab – friend, one to have sexual affection for), and with all the idols (ghil-lool – a log that is made into an idol) of thy abominations (to-ay-baw), and by the blood of thy children (bane – sons), which thou didst give unto them;

God is attempting to describe the filthiness of Judah’s conduct. He continues to use the metaphor of the woman who has cast off every restraint in regards to sexual indulgence. The word nekh-o-sheth is something that has various meanings. Commentators have all sorts of theories as to what is really meant here. Some say it represents a base metal. Some say it represents copper coins, though that was not used as money at this time. One says that it represents the bottom, or base. Because it is poured out, this filthy woman would vomit forth some sort of sexual disease on all her clients. I see a reference to the useless dross that is skimmed off when one refines metal. Good for nothing except to be poured out as worthless, taken away.

This woman loved to expose her vagina for all to see. She could not stop pouring out her lust on everyone who passed by. Not only that, she would willingly hand her living children over to these who were ravishing her, so they could shed their blood. This describes Judah embracing the worship of every demonic entity that she was made aware of. Not only was she apostatizing from Yahweh, but she also murdered her own children to appease these bloodthirsty creatures. As God said, Judah seemed to have entered into some sort of state of lustful insanity, whereas she wasn’t even concerned about receiving any benefits when she rebelled against her Maker. All she wanted to do was to spread her legs all day long, and keep paying for the privilege by killing her children for these demonic entities. It seems her lust for rebellion was of such an intense need, that murdering helpless children was willingly embraced, just as long as they could defy and oppose and blaspheme against Yehovah.

Think I’m overstating it? Think that no one would devote their life to something as obscene as this? Then how do you explain the behavior that we see all around us? Why would someone like Soros devote his life and his billions to wipe out all traces of Christianity from off the face of the earth? Why would Canada’s government go so out of their way to ensure that every single law passed since 2015 is meant to do only one thing – to erase all trace of our Christian past. If we are really honest with ourselves, that is what is driving everything that the truly wicked people of today are doing. Forget about the reasons they state. All of those are lies.

The truth is that this sort of open satanism has been percolating in our nation’s hearts for a long time. But it is only when God removed his restraints upon it, that it is now manifesting out in the open. I believe we are entering into the next level of global darkness here at the end of 2025. Something seems to be happening, as far as the sort of evil that is being unleashed. Civilization is disappearing before our very eyes.

All this is to return to the church our lost understanding of just how evil fallen man truly is. Too much Hollywood and compromised pulpits have told us for far too long that man is basically good. Yet it was solely the restraining hand of the Lord that kept the lid on the raw evil that was just waiting to be set free. Even as the lid will be taken off hell in the book of Revelation, so the lid is being taken off the true wicked desires of men’s hearts in this season. We are now going to find out exactly what man is truly capable of, when no restraints are left to dampen the dark impulses that are found in every man’s unredeemed heart.

Sex and blood. Rape and murder. Filthiness and blasphemy. Apostasy and rebellion. We could go on and on. One gets the sense that Yehovah is running out of ways to try to get across to us exactly how awful his people really are.

Eze 16:37 Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers (aw-hab), with whom thou hast taken pleasure (aw-rabe – be in close association, from a root to braid or intermix), and all them that thou hast loved (aw-hab), with all them that thou hast hated (saw-nay – enemy, foe); I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover (gaw-law – denude, strip, reveal, uncover) thy nakedness (er-vaw – nudity, uncleanness, shame, especially the female genitalia) unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness (er-vaw).

It’s become clear that Judah has not had enough perverted sex, as she has already spread her legs to seemingly everyone that has passed by. She has fornicated with the gods of Canaan, Philistia, Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea. All of these people groups really hated her, but she deluded herself into thinking that they were her friends, because she has prostituted herself by not only embracing their gods, but by making unholy military alliances with one or another over her history. Stripping the temple of the Lord, in order to buy temporary favor.

Therefore, God himself will now not only bring all those whom she thought were her friends, but also everyone else who were her enemies. Since Judah was so eager to expose her pudenda, or her female genitalia, so God now will also strip Judah naked, in order that everyone in the known world will get a good look at what’s between her legs. God will expose her shame to every human being possible.

Perhaps the enemies would refer to Israel’s traditional enemies – Edom, Moab and Ammon. When God says he will strip you naked, he means that no protection from heaven will be afforded you. So, you will be at the mercy of whatever evil spirit comes your way. This will mean that no angels will fight on your behalf. Any deceiving spirit will whisper some lie to you and your family, and you will have no ability to tell truth from error, right from wrong, good from evil, lies from reality. That is exactly what God has done to us today. The nonsensical things that so many people believe today are, well, unbelievable! 40 years ago, no one would have believed such things. Things such as you can choose your gender. There are an infinite amount of genders. You can choose to be an animal. Carbon dioxide is a toxin. Diversity is our strength. Islam is a religion of peace. That the majority of American youth would actually prefer communism to capitalism. One’s skin color should determine what job you get. Sexual perversion should be worshipped, celebrated, and given special privileges by the law. Chopping off a child’s sexual organs should be the decision of the child.

We in the west have been stripped completely naked of all divine protection and grace. God has torn all our clothes off, that is, our coverings. He has spread our legs wide open, so the shame of our private parts is exposed to all. All the world can see our most intimate things, what should be our hidden parts. We have been exposed for the hypocrites, apostates, rebellious, blasphemous people that we are. And in the vast majority of our churches, the pastors still cannot help but continually lie to their congregants about how wonderful that they are!

What the hell is wrong with us?

Eze 16:38 And I will judge (shaw-fat – pronounce sentence, condemn, punish) thee, as women that break wedlock (naw-af – commit adultery, to apostasize) and shed blood are judged (mish-pat – verdict, sentence, formal decree); and I will give thee blood in fury (khay-maw – furious poisonous hot displeasure, wrath and rage) and jealousy (kin-aw – zeal).

So this is what it has boiled down to. Warning upon warning, punishment upon punishment, curse upon curse. But nothing worked. Nothing helped. Judah refused to repent. Today, America, Canada, and the west are generally refusing to repent. So what is left? Total judgment.

Yehovah is ready to pronounce sentence and read the verdict. Guilty on all counts. The crimes have been listed, the evidence heard, and now the time has come to pay the price. Judah is just like a woman that cheats on her husband, and murders the innocent at the same time. God says Judah will pay the same price as any woman would pay under the law. There is only one sentence for such a creature. And that is death. Not just physical death. Judah’s crimes are far more spiritual in nature than physical. She has committed adultery against Yehovah. She will die not only physically, but eternally as well. Death and hell is the verdict.

Note that Yehovah is not satisfied to simply pronounce the sentence and execute the punishment. No, there is extreme emotion involved here. Yahweh, the most self controlled being in existence, has seemingly lost it when it comes to him describing what he is going to do to his very own children, who have gone so far and so deep into sin. He is in a froth, a poisonous white hot rage. He is extremely jealous. Jealous that his reputation has been so besmirched by these vile reprobates. How does it look to the rest of creation that Yehovah’s very own favorite children have so rebelled against him? This is not some little departure from the will of God. This is an utter and total rejection of everything that Yehovah stands for. In fact, they have become his active enemy. They now are engaged in fighting against his will. Slaughtering his prophets, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, burning the bible (see Jer 36:21-25).

Blood shall be what they will be repaid in. So much blood will be given that they shall drown in it. When the Babylonians break through the city’s defenses, the slaughter will be unimaginable. If they think they know how to shed blood, because they have thrown so many screaming babies into the fire, wait til Yehovah pays them back at the end of the siege of Jerusalem in a few short years.

We have failed. Failed to embrace the just judgments of the Lord. Because we judged ourselves more compassionate than Yehovah, we kept removing the punishments for sin that the law demanded. That was for the ancient, savage, primitive Jews. We westerners are of the enlightenment. We’re civilized. We’re sophisticated. In truth, we really didn’t believe that Yehovah wrote these laws. They were written by cruel men. We are not so cruel. We are evolved.

So laws such as these were thrown out:

Lev 20:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Lev 20:2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
Lev 20:3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
Lev 20:4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not:
Lev 20:5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.

Lev 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Exo 21:12 He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.

Not just individuals, but entire cities were to be dealt with as well:

Deu 13:12 If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,
Deu 13:13 Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;
Deu 13:14 Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;
Deu 13:15 Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
Deu 13:16 And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.
Deu 13:17 And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers;
Deu 13:18 When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the LORD thy God.

I can think of a few cities today that should be dealt with in this fashion.

Because we know better than God, we change his laws. At the outset, things are not so bad. In fact, it seems as if all is going well. We continue to be blessed, we continue to prosper. But our cup of iniquity is slowly but surely, invisibly behind the scenes, being filled. Eventually cracks begin to appear. Things don’t seem right. But as we depart more and more from God’s commandments, loudly bleating from the pulpits that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, therefore we don’t need to follow it, so our society begins to crumble. Until we have what we have in late 2025. A society on the verge of total breakdown. A culture of total lawlessness. No longer able to distinguish between good and evil. Not wanting to anymore.

Eze 16:39 And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places (ramah): they shall strip (paw-shat – plunder, invade, unclothe, flay) thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels, and leave thee naked and bare.

All that wealth that you lavished on your idols, all that will disappear. All those billions and billions of dollars of wealth that God has blessed our nations with, that is being stolen and money laundered in so many different ways that no one is able to get a handle on it or keep track.

God is going to turn us over to the wicked. Our high places shall be torn down. Whatever we have relied upon to cover us shall be torn away. Maybe its our Constitution, or our Bill of Rights or Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Maybe it’s our pension plans, or the silver and gold coins that we have stockpiled. Maybe it’s our 3-year supply of food and toilet paper. Maybe it’s our bug out location. Maybe it’s our electricity and water.

The invaders shall take all our fair jewels. Besides the reference to money, maybe this references our spouses and children. Those who are the loves of our lives shall be plundered. When it is all over, we shall be left naked and bare. That will also mean spiritually. We will be bereft of God. There will be no revelation, no word from the Lord. There will be no presence of God, nor any anointing. The word will be a dead book in our hands. Our prayers won’t even reach the ceiling of our home, if we even have a home anymore. Because we were dead to the will of God when he was yet speaking to us, so God will be dead to us when we finally cry out to him in our distress. But by then, it will be too late.

Eze 16:40 They shall also bring up a company (multitude) against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through (baw-thak – to cut in pieces, only time in OT) with their swords.

Stoning was a punishment proscribed for various serious sins:

Lev_20:2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.

Lev_20:27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.

Lev_24:14 Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.

Lev_24:16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death.

Lev_24:23 And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the LORD commanded Moses.

We may decide to throw out the commandments of God, but God has a way of ensuring that his word is fulfilled. Now we can understand how the enemy would cut these apostates in pieces with their swords. Perhaps the stoning would be accomplished by the besiegers battering down the walls of Jerusalem with stones.

Eze 16:41 And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments (sheh-fet – infliction, sentences) upon thee in the sight of many women (ish-shaw – can also mean adulteresses): and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot (zaw-naw), and thou also shalt give no hire (eth-nan) any more.

More particulars of the upcoming siege are related. Your homes are going up in flames. Perhaps echoes of the DEW weapons that have been unleashed against us. I find it interesting that shortly after President Trump took office and placed righteous leadership in charge of the military, that the DEW attacks have stopped. What a coincidence!

Yahweh said he is going to execute judgments in the sight of many women. The word can also mean adulteresses. The commentators think women mean the surrounding nations, but that doesn’t seem to make much sense. Maybe it’s the wives of the invading soldiers. Maybe the term is meant to label the women of Jerusalem as adulteresses, though we have the words zaw-naw and taz-nooth to clearly indicate harlots. Perhaps the idea is that God is going to destroy you in the sight of your women, which will be a very great shame for you, as nothing was more humbling than a man who was helpless to defend his women.

The purpose of this total destruction is that this is the only remedy left to stop the harlotry of Judah. In the end, sin must stop. If you refuse to stop it, then God will.

Eze 16:42 So will I make my fury (khay-maw) toward thee to rest, and my jealousy (kin-aw) shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry (kaw-as – grieved, indignant, provoked to wrath).

After Yahweh has totally destroyed these morally repugnant apostates, then will his fury and jealousy be satiated. God also has needs. His holiness needs to see an end of sin. Occasional sin is one thing, unending, wilful, and unrepentant sin is another. Slip up and repent, and grace may be found. Turn your back permanently as an individual, or as a nation, and you are guaranteeing your eventual total destruction.

Only when God has seen the rebellion completely crushed, only when these perverts breathe no more, will his anger be appeased. This puts a lie to the idea that God’s patience is infinite. That in all cases and in all circumstances, his mercy endureth forever. While the bible does say that, it also says that he does punish sin. If his mercy endured forever in all situations, then no one would end up in hell, would they? No, it is a general principle, but man’s free will can always thwart God’s will in any one’s life, and even in an entire nation’s life. This is something that perhaps we don’t really understand. While we acknowledge that people can choose to go to hell, so also can nations. Your nation can be wiped out if the leadership of that nation persists in rebelling against God and embracing God’s enemy. Practice implementing the laws that satan approves of as the law of the land, and see what happens to your country. Canada will be a great case study in the future. For a nation that had everything going for it, including being one of the very few nations that was founded as a Christian nation, to then throw it all away and make satanism the law of the land, is a guarantee of annihilation at the hand of a holy God.

Eze 16:43 Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast fretted (raw-gaz – quiver with violent emotion, provoke, rage) me in all these things; behold, therefore I also will recompense thy way (deh-rek) upon thine head, saith the Lord GOD: and thou shalt not commit this lewdness (zim-maw – heinous crime, wicked device, bad plan) above all thine abominations (to-ay-baw).

Eventually, sin can reach a level where God simply will not tolerate it anymore. Judah had reached such a place. Judah had provoked God so badly that he ended up quivering in rage. They were on that very broad road to destruction, and God accommodated them. The road to hell was their path of life, and God ensured that they would never get off that road until they reached the destination at the end of it.

Evil men are filled with nothing but evil imaginations. They are constantly cooking up wicked devices. I mean, who thinks about implementing retarded climate change laws in order to tax carbon, and to get us to give up travel? Who in their right mind would willingly volunteer to go and live in a 15-minute city? For those of us who could afford our own home, did not the crowding and the awful noise of apartment living spur on all of us to get into our own homes as soon as we could? And these satanists all want us to live in total misery, while they decide how best to kill us.

We are given a glimpse into the reasoning of God. That is, why he has chosen to destroy Judah. It is because their sin is of such a grievous magnitude that he cannot allow it to go on. Something about a certain level of sin that God draws the line on. Think of the flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah. A line was crossed, and God’s true character compelled him to act. Sin will never be allowed to continue forever. The longer we persist in unrepentant sin, the greater the risk we take of destruction, whether temporal or eternal or both.

Eze 16:44 Behold, every one that useth proverbs (maw-shal – to liken, allegory) shall use this proverb (maw-shal) against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.

This verse needs to be read in context with the following verses. These people loved to use proverbs. God gives them permission to use this one, as it is fully applicable in their case. As the moral behavior of their predecessors in this land were, so is Judah’s. In other words, instead of becoming the opposite in moral behavior from the Canaanites as God intended, they have now become just like them. They had not overcome the world, the world had overcome them.

Eze 16:45 Thou art thy mother’s daughter, that lotheth (gaw-al – detest, reject, abhor, vilely cast away) her husband (eesh – man) and her children (bane – sons); and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed (gaw-al) their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

This comparison is to represent Judah’s spiritual descent, not their physical. This talk of sisterhood will be more clearly defined in the next verse. The next verse deals with a very significant nation, and a very significant city. This current verse deals more in generalities. It deals with their spiritual parentage. Their heart condition came from the Hittites and the Amorites, two representative tribes of the Canaanite people that they were supposed to displace. But as we already know, while Joshua gave it a valiant beginning, ultimately they were unsuccessful. That is, while they may have managed to displace the Canaanites physically, at least in a good portion of the physical land, they never did displace the spiritual atmosphere of Canaan. That proved too much for them. The demons that pervaded that land were never cast out. Instead, Israel kept embracing them again and again, culminating in the 55 year reign of Manasseh, who did more to cement Judah’s doom than any other human being. He embraced demon worship so thoroughly that the original spirits of Canaan were given complete victory over the spiritual climate of Judah. Josiah valiantly tried to reverse it, but it was too late. As soon as he was gone, those spirits ensured that Judah would be utterly destroyed. I see such a strong parallel to Trump. Once he is gone, those wicked spirits that America invited and worshipped, that are so entrenched in the land, will be unleashed to finally push America over the ledge to their final end.

Yahweh says that Judah is just like her spiritual mother, which is Canaan, represented by the Hittites. The lothing of her husband reference would signify the Canaanites who would reject the knowledge of the one true God, which was handed down through Noah. She rejected any of her kin that remained faithful to Yehovah. So too Judah rejected the one true God, and despised God’s faithful prophets.

Here is a great example of needing to understand the scripture to some depth in order to not be confused. God is not suddenly having an Alzheimer’s moment, as if he is getting the Hebrew’s physical lineage mixed up. No, he is allegorizing. He calls his people various disparaging names at different times. He calls them Sodom and Egypt. Here he says they’re the offspring of Hittites and Amorites. Spiritual offspring, not physical.

Eze 16:46 And thine elder (gaw-dole – greater, mighty) sister is Samaria (watch station), she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger (smaller in age or importance) sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom (to scorch) and her daughters.

Elder and younger also mean greater and smaller. Chronologically, Sodom was not younger than Judah, nor was Samaria (the northern kingdom) older than Judah. If one faced eastward, as was the common direction that people of the east faced when speaking of direction, Samaria would be to the north (left) and Sodom to the south (right). One could also surmise that God called Samaria an elder sister because their culture was much more closely related to Judah than Sodom, who was given the designation of the younger.

Eze 16:47 Yet hast thou not walked after their ways (deh-rek), nor done after their abominations (to-ay-baw): but, as if that were a very (kat – merely, only time in OT) little thing (small matter), thou wast corrupted (shaw-khath) more than they in all thy ways (deh-rek).

As if we have not been numbed speechless by the depth of God’s feeling towards these Judeans, God takes it to yet another level of outrage in his attempt to most accurately convey exactly what he sees.

This is a crucial point. What we see and what God sees rarely match. We may see sin, God sees abomination. We see a missing of the mark, God sees blasphemy. We see a personal struggle when we cannot achieve victory over some bad habit, God may see rebellion and hypocrisy. Now I don’t want all of you to think that I am claiming that we all minimize sin. No, far from it. What I am saying is that in this case, some Judeans may have recognized their backsliding. Some of the prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were given special revelation as to the seriousness of their spiritual situation. But I would bet that no one in their wildest dreams would think that God sees Judah’s behavior as far worse than either Samaria, her northern breakaway neighbor, or Sodom!

How could Judah be seen as worse than Sodom? Wasn’t Sodom the eternal poster child of sexual sin? And yet God chose to use the imagery of sexual sin to describe the behavior of Judah. And now we are going to see that God considered Judah’s behavior as worse than Sodom’s. How is this possible?

We will see in the following verses that certain sins of Sodom will be described as the reason for God’s wrath upon them. They will not be the sins that we would expect or assume. Samaria’s sins will not be discussed. Scholars think this is because they would be well known, as their demise was still of somewhat recent vintage, having occurred just over 100 years ago in 722 BC, whereas Sodom’s destruction occurred over 1000 years ago.

This verse is saying that you, Judah, have not walked in Samaria’s or Sodom’s ways. If the verse stopped there, then so far, so good. But the verse is really all one thought. God says that you have not behaved as they behaved, no, you were worse! As if the sins of Samaria and Sodom were of such a trivial matter, you decided to show them what true sinning is really all about.

We are going to see Yahweh really tear into Judah here. It kind of reminds me of Jesus’ words, when we was comparing his audience with some famous historical precedents:

Mat 11:20 Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:
Mat 11:21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Mat 11:22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
Mat 11:23 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
Mat 11:24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

Seems as if Jesus is saying that if Sodom was exposed to the reality of the miracle power of God, they would have repented, just like Tyre and Sidon would have done. But they never had that privilege. Not everyone is given the same chance. Not everyone is shown the same things. The idea is very clear. The more God has revealed of himself to you, the more he expects you to respond in a positive manner.

Keeping that in mind, I could wax and wane endlessly to try and explain the concept that God is trying to get across. But why not let a great scholar of the past, such as Gill, speak to us, since he has a command of the English language in far greater measure than I ever could:

Yet hast thou not walked after their ways,…. But in ways more evil; were not content to keep pace with them, and do as they did; but outwent them, outstripped them in wickedness: nor done after their abominations; but committed greater abominations than they did; sins of a more heinous nature, and attended with more aggravated circumstances; having more power and wealth, more Wisdom and understanding; the means of grace, the word and ordinances of God: but, as if that were a very little thing; to commit the sins that Samaria and Sodom did: or, “it was loathing to thee as a little thing” (a); they despised and loathed their sins as too mean and little, and not flagitious and enormous, or bold and daring enough to be committed; and looked upon them, with contempt, as sneaking sinners, that had no soul nor spirit in them, or taste for sinful pleasures, in comparison of them: or the sense is, it would have been a little thing, comparatively speaking, had they only walked after the ways and abominations of Samaria and Sodom, and stopped there; but they had greatly exceeded them; and so the Targum, “if thou hadst walked in their ways, and done according to their abominations, thy sin had been small.” Kimchi interprets it of a small time that the Jews continued in the ways and worship of God, after the captivity of the ten tribes, which were carried away in the sixth year of Hezekiah; so that there were but three and twenty years left of his reign, when his son Manasseh succeeded him, and was more wicked than all before him; and these three and twenty years are the little time here spoken of and within a very little time, and thou wast corrupted more than they in all their ways; this explains what is meant by not walking after their ways and abominations; they were greater sinners than they; more corrupt in their principles and practices; more hardened in them, and more difficult to be reclaimed from them; see Matthew 11:23. [end]

I think the key in the verbose reasoning above is that the sins of Judah had much greater aggravated circumstances. It was not like the Sodomites and Samaritans did not commit sodomy and idol worship and child sacrifice. But no people had more revelation of the word of God than Judah, at least up until this time. Sodom had no bible. Samaria may have had some people who retained some knowledge of the bible, and some who may have continued to visit the temple in Judah, but they soon would have been lost in their own man made religion of calf worship and diverse occultic practices. Judah, on the other hand, retained the temple, and the priesthood, and had several righteous kings who directed the people in the law of the Lord. No one on earth had more truth than they did. Up to that point in time. And yet, God said that in light of the sins that they committed, it was as if they had momentarily considered the sins of Sodom and Samaria, and concluded that those sins were too mild. They were going to show God and the world what sin really was!

Now, in our minds, did their individual acts of sin outpace the other 2? Did their burning of children to Moloch outstrip what was done in Sodom and Samaria? Did not Sodom want to rape angels, as Jude alluded to:

Jud_1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

Perhaps they knew about the fallen ones who had sex with women and created the Nephilim. Perhaps they eagerly desired to fornicate with those angels in the hopes of creating a new line of superhuman wicked beings.

Samaria produced the world famous Jezebel. Sodom and Jezebel. Perhaps the 2 most notorious examples of sin in world history. And yet God accuses Judah of outstripping these 2 places by a wide margin. What gives?

The only conclusion that I can come up with is that God judges not so much primarily by the act, but by his expectations for the person. In other words, the more you know, the stricter the judgment. Several scriptures seem to speak of this:

Rom_5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Luk_12:47 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
Luk_12:48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

Jer 5:3 O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.
Jer 5:4 Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for they know not the way of the LORD, nor the judgment of their God.
Jer 5:5 I will get me unto the great men, and will speak unto them; for they have known the way of the LORD, and the judgment of their God: but these have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds.

Jas 3:1 My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.

Mat_7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Mat_10:15 Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Mat_11:22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.

Mat_11:24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

1Pe 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
1Pe 4:18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

So the obvious conclusion is that the more you know, the scarier things get! If Judah was held to be greater sinners than Sodom, then what shall be the standard that God will use for the west? If any of the righteous shall scarcely be saved, what will become of the 2 nations that had more gospel light than any other – Canada and America? At least America has leadership that is now openly acknowledging the supremacy of the God of the bible. I heard something recently, in that the proclaiming of the gospel by the highest officials in the land at Charlie Kirk’s memorial was only the second time in American history that this had occurred. The first time was in 1792, when the top leaders of the land paid for the printing of the bible, and testified to its crucial importance for America.

But then there is Canada. Wicked, apostate Canada. As I write this today, the government has just finished slaughtering hundreds of completely healthy ostriches. While the Lord remarked to me in my prayer time today that while people are more torn up about some birds, in comparison to the 100,000 abortions done every year, this was still a deeply troubling event. The whole thing is about property rights. The province of British Columbia has been chosen by the globalists to lead the way to strip Canadians of any property rights. They have recently ruled that certain private property that has been owned by people for generations is actually stolen Native land. What the repercussions of that will be, God only knows. The point is that God is destroying our nation step by step, and if any nation on the face of the planet deserves to be annihilated, it is Canada. We are evil. We are sick. If Yehovah was speaking of Canada today, he would say that if the sins of Judah were as a light thing, then you Canadians have done far worse than the Judeans ever did, who did far worse than the Sodomites ever managed to do!

Can you begin to see in how much of a precarious situation we are in? Do we really want to take a chance and reject this teaching, and continue to believe in the opinions expressed by those in the pulpit who often do not have our best interests at heart?

Do you really want the truth, or not?

Eze 16:48 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

This is so crazy. Certain scriptures should make us halt in our tracks, and this is one of them. God decided to compare Sodom to Judah, rather than Samaria to Judah, probably because everyone would generally agree that Sodom was the poster child for evil. Especially since it was a non Jewish city! Jews really hated Gentiles, as a general rule. While they immersed themselves in every vile Gentile practice, yet their false prophets and their hypocritical priests would still pride themselves as being God’s chosen people. An attitude that would result in a stench in the nostrils of God, for sure.

Eze 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity (aw-vone) of thy sister Sodom, pride (gaw-ohn – arrogancy, pomp, swelling), fulness (sib-aw – satiety, only time in OT) of bread, and abundance (shal-vaw – security, prosperity, quietness) of idleness (shaw-kat – repose, stillness, be at rest) was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen (help, mend) the hand of the poor (afflicted) and needy (destitute).

So much to unpack here. First of all, as in verse 46, God speaks of Sodom and her daughters. This is a hint of something deeper. One could make the case of her daughters being her sister cities of Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim:

Deu_29:23 And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

As we plunge further into this comparison, we shall see that it makes sense to see Sodom as representative of a certain type of people and their world system. Thus Sodom’s sisters can also be looked upon as any nation that shows marked similarities in their ethics and their lifestyles. For example, the church at Laodicea sounds a bit like the description of this verse, does it not?

Rev 3:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

Zephaniah speaks of the inhabitants of Jerusalem during his time of ministry, as those who were settled on their lees:

Zep_1:12 And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.

To be settled on one’s lees is like the gritty dregs of new wine that has settled to the bottom. It is a proverb used to describe idleness, laziness, and an ignorance of the times. In other words, one who is oblivious of the danger around them.

Second, God chooses to describe Sodom’s iniquity, not Samaria’s. I believe we have covered the reason for that already above.

Third, and most startling, is the list of sins that God chooses to name. No one would have guessed that these were the sins that were at the bottom of all their actions that they became infamous for. Mankind always judges on the surface, while God searches the heart. We have always preached that Sodom was destroyed because of their gross sexual immorality. But God says that the real aw-vone, or perversity, that doomed them were 4 specific sins.

1. Pride – always manifested in arrogancy, pomp and swelling. A prideful man is arrogant in attitude and in speech. He thinks he’s better than everyone else, and is not afraid to let them know it. When he speaks, his swelled head clearly manifests in everything that he says. He loves pomp. That is, he bathes in all the accolades an adoring crowd throws at him. He lives for self glorification. He loves the limelight.

2. Fulness of bread – this man is absolutely glutted and satiated with all the indulgences of the flesh in which he imbibes. When the scripture says fulness of bread, it is not just speaking of food. Besides eating to excess, every urge of the flesh is indulged in. Nothing is held back. Every altered state of consciousness that drugs and alcohol may bring is satisfied. More importantly (in his eyes), every sexual urge is indulged in. This is one of the bedrock characteristics of the elite. I have heard that it is a rite of passage if one desires to join the cabal that governs the world. All must indulge themselves in unlawful sexual congress. Whether it’s with children, beasts, accompanied by torture, murder, or some occultic ritual (or a combination of everything), satan wants you to prove your loyalty by scarring your soul to such an extent that there remains no doubt as to whose side you are on. The cabal has one overriding objective, and it’s not money. No, it’s their hatred of God, and their commitment to overthrow his rulership over mankind.

3. Abundance of idleness – due to the accumulation of obscene wealth, there is enough to guarantee all the security and insulation from the world’s problems that they could ever want. As as result, this man does not have to spend any time earning a living. In fact, he doesn’t have to spend his time doing any thing because he has to. He has all the free time in the world. As a result, he bores easily. He needs greater and greater stimulation in order to amuse and placate him. Since he can buy any man or any government, consequences are not part of his reality. He believes he is above any and all laws. Especially the laws of Yehovah. That is what really irks him, that Yehovah thinks that he can tell him what to do. As a result, these become some of the most devoted satanists on the planet. They revel in trying to outdo each other in abominations, blasphemy, and general all round wickedness.

4. Ignore the poor – not a penny of their obscene wealth is ever used to help anyone in need. Although many publicly engage with several charitable organizations, if you dig beyond the surface, you find in virtually every case that they are just a front for some nefarious goal. Free vaccines are a front for sterilization and depopulation agendas. Anti poverty initiatives are a front for child sex trafficking. Humanitarian aid is a front to finance terrorism and Jew hatred. Climate activism is a front for Marxism. And on and on it goes. The scandals at USAID prove this beyond any shadow of a doubt.

So what causes one to end up in sexual perversion? Were they ‘born’ that way? Did their abusive environment guarantee that they could do nothing but be abusers themselves? While that may have contributed, at least in Sodom’s case, their eventual throwing off of all restraint and indulging their passions was due to far more common and basic sins. Pride, prosperity, too much free time, and turning a blind eye to those who need help.

At the root of all of it is prosperity. Paul knew this:

1Ti 6:9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

If you set your will on accumulating riches, you will fall into temptations and snares. Not might. Not maybe. The word says you will. Once you are snared, you will indulge in many lusts. Not a few. Not some. Many. And all lusts are foolish and hurtful, unless you lust after righteousness, and not the things of the flesh. The end result is destruction and perdition. Hell and damnation. Agony and the flame. Torment and the fire.

No wonder God chose to destroy Sodom with fire. Is there a more obvious type in the bible than the fire of Sodom representing hell? Nothing of Sodom was left. That meaning, there is no coming back from hell. All that you are, all that you have, is burned up. Forever. Without end.

At one time in our history, idleness was the sole luxury of the rich. Now, with our socialistic and communistic governments in the west, many choose not to work, but to collect welfare, unemployment insurance, and other forms of charity which they have not worked for. Sitting around in their mother’s basement, doing as little work as possible, living off the charity of their parents and the state, they become not only accustomed to this indolent lifestyle, but also eventually believe that they are somehow entitled to it!

I have an acquaintance who, in every respect, seems to be an upstanding citizen. When he was younger, he inherited a few successful businesses from his parents. He worked extremely hard, and made them even more successful, by all accounts. But sometime after age 40, he decided to sell them all, and take the money and invest in the stock market. He then became obsessed with the markets. It has become his life. He checks his stocks literally every day, and trades often. As far as his day to day life goes, he works just enough in the summer so that he can collect unemployment insurance all winter. And this guy is a multi millionaire! But somehow his conscience has no problem gaming the system, working just enough so that he can collect free money on top of it all.

Now I know that he would rationalize it by saying that he has paid into the system all his life, and that he has paid his share of exorbitant and unfair taxes. While that may be true, it applies to all of us. Technically, he is not breaking the law, so it’s not like he’s running a scam of some sort, like so many do nowadays. But the point is that he has found a way to increase his idle time. While he spends half his day with his stocks, often the rest of his time is spent drinking. Too much free time leads to more temptation, and more temptation leads to more sinful choices.

Have you noticed how often it is those with the most money who complain the most about all the ‘lazy bums’ out there? They reckon that they had to work very hard to get to where they got, and they resent having to share any of it with anyone who didn’t work as hard as they did. While I certainly do not agree with any of the socialistic aspects of our left wing government policies, there is a certain stinginess that develops with the rich who allow greed to rule their soul. While the church should have been taking care of the poor, the rich pretended not to see the need, so the poor were left to suffer. As a result, we now have the state acting in the place of the church when it comes to charity, and we can see the results of that, can’t we?

It seems as if excessive wealth goes hand in hand with the ignoring of the needs of the poor, does it not? The filthier rich the elite become, the more the poor suffer.

Having studied verses such as this one and so many others, why does any so called prosperity preacher ever think that they are so special that this inevitable slide into Sodom-like sin won’ t happen to them, if they end up with the same set of circumstances? Give a man a lot of money, and pride will creep in, along with an abundance of idleness. That free time will allow the devil to whisper temptations into his ear night and day. Ultimately, they will give in. The result will be someone who becomes addicted to pleasure and gratification. Someone who is focused solely on self will have no time to care for the cry and the needs of the poor. Thus the fires of hell gain a new occupant.

Why does the church meddle in such dangerous waters? Why would we ever endanger our flocks by telling them that God wants to make them rich? Instead, we should be terrifying them with the stories of the rich man. Tell them about the fate of the Rockefellers and the Rothchilds and the Soros and the Gates. Frighten them with stories of the judgment of God. Don’t you want to keep your sheep out of hell? Why would you want to lead them into temptation, when the Lord’s prayer commands us to pray that we will be led out of it?

Flee the pursuit of money. Quit believing the damnable lies. Stop listening to those who even say that yes, maybe God doesn’t want all of us to be rich, but he does want some of us to make a lot of money, in order to further the kingdom work.

I’ve got news for you. God does not need the rich man’s money. Jesus did just fine without starting a mega church, or a Christian TV network. Stop all that nonsense. Do we not see what rich men do? Have we not seen the apocalypse the rich desire to unleash on this planet? Why will we not heed the warning of the bible?

Jas 2:5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
Jas 2:6 But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?
Jas 2:7 Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?

Look at the text. God has chosen the poor of this world. Did not Paul say the same thing?

1Co 1:26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
1Co 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
1Co 1:28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
1Co 1:29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.

The rich despise the poor. Their pride looks down on the poor man, thinking why don’t you make something of yourself, like I did? The rich use their lawyers to destroy those that get in their way. We have hundreds of examples of this occurring right before our eyes. Few rich people make it. Weak and foolish, that is God’s way. The rich should be the most pitied, not the most envied:

Mat 19:23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 19:24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Mar 10:23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
Mar 10:24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!
Mar 10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Luk_6:24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.

Exactly how many more scriptures do the prosperity preachers need to see before they fall on their faces before God and repent of the grievous abominations with which they have been deceiving the multitudes? What will it take for the greedy man to turn back to the truth?

I am afraid that just as with Sodom, just as with Judah, these covetous men shall not find a way home, even as their forerunners in spirit did not either.

2Pe 2:15 Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
2Pe 2:16 But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet.

It is madness indeed to desire to be rich. Let us rather be rich in faith, as James 2:5 exhorts us to do.

Remember, God is indicting Sodom and her sisters. Would not all of western civilization claim a kindred spirit with one such as this? Does not the American dream speak of health, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness? Instead of happiness, let us pursue obedience. Obedience to Jesus and his holy word, so we do not share the same fate as these Judeans.

Eze 16:50 And they were haughty (gaw-bah – mounted up, to soar), and committed abomination (to-ay-baw) before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

It always comes back to pride, does it not? Sodom had wealth. They had idleness. They had no fear of God. That allowed them to experiment with every sort of sexual sin. And the final nail in the coffin from God’s perspective is that they stopped feeling any shame for their sin. They became haughty and extremely proud of their perversions. They thought that they had finally broken free of all restraint, and were reaching their potential. But all that they were doing was hastening the day when God would get rid of them from off the face of the earth once and for all.

Eze 16:51 Neither hath Samaria committed (khaw-taw – to miss the mark, trespass) half of thy sins (khat-taw-aw – offence, also the sin offering itself); but thou hast multiplied thine abominations (to-ay-baw) more than they, and hast justified (tsaw-dak – make right, cleanse, cleared) thy sisters in all thine abominations (to-ay-baw) which thou hast done.

Not only is Judah worse than Sodom, but is much worse than Samaria. Samaria, that apostate cousin of yours. Samaria, the ones whom you despise without measure. Samaria, those rebellious ones, who broke away from the one true God. But now, your sins make you more than twice as guilty as they ever were.

This is another confirmation that God judges according to the light given you. Samaria hardly had a single king worth speaking positively about. There were maybe two that did even one thing good, such as Jehu, who slaughtered the house of Ahab. But Judah had the temple, the kingship of the Davidic line, and the Levitical priests. And what did they do? Worse than the golden calves of Jeroboam. They took all their knowledge, all that favor of God, and turned their backs on it. They knowingly and wilfully spit in God’s face, saying that they wanted nothing to do with his grace, his favor, and especially his restricting laws. These other gods of the heathen promised us fun! They promised us all the indulgence of our sinful nature that we could ever desire! We’re tired of having to exercise restraint and self control. Let the party begin!

The word khat-taw-aw is also the word used for sin offering. The idea is that God is indicting them of the specific sins that required the sin offering to atone for them. These were not trivial sins. These sort of sins required a blood sacrifice to atone for.

The multiplication of sin in Judah could refer to the comparison of the 2 golden calves in Dan and Bethel, versus the idols in Judah that were set up on every street corner, and even in the temple (Jer 2:28, Ez 8:5).

And once again, Yehovah continues to stun us in what he says. He says that in comparison to the sins of Judah, the sins of Samaria and Sodom are as if they are of no account. In other words, Judah’s exceeding sinfulness made Sodom and Samaria seem righteous in comparison. Sort of like Russia seems righteous in comparison to the west, when it comes to their rejection of the homosexual and wokeness agenda.

Who would have ever thought that there was a possible scenario in heaven and earth when Yahweh himself would declare Sodom righteous. But he did. He just had to wait for his own people to rebel against his will to such an extent that their sins would make the sins of Sodom seem of no effect.

I believe that if the Father were speaking to North America and the west today, he would say that Canada (and all other nations of the west), you make Judah during the time of Ezekiel seem righteous in comparison to you.

Eze 16:52 Thou also, which hast judged (paw-lal) thy sisters, bear thine own shame (kel-im-maw – disagrace, confusion, dishonor, reproach) for thy sins (khat-taw-aw) that thou hast committed more abominable (taw-ab – detestable, abhorrent) than they: they are more righteous (tsaw-dak) than thou: yea, be thou confounded (ashamed) also, and bear thy shame (kel-im-maw), in that thou hast justified (tsaw-dak) thy sisters.

God wants to continue to use the idea of sisterhood. Judah was a sister to these infamous women in conduct rather than in physical lineage per se. In other words, they were sisters in gross sin.

There was only one thing in all of heaven and earth that could ever justify Sodom and Samaria, and that was the exceeding wickedness of Judah. Now let’s not go overboard and try and claim that since God had now declared these two ‘sisters’ righteous, that somehow God was going to retroactively pardon all of their sin, and everyone currently in hell gets a free pass to heaven! That’s not how things work. God is using hyperbole and a bit of an outrageous argument to make his point. The point is not some new obscure theological revelation, that bad people can get out of hell if God can find ‘badder’ ones. No, God is simply saying that if one lined up Judah, Samaria, and Sodom, and had to pick the worst of the bunch, Judah gets picked.

That is a horrible place to be, don’t you think? It does not matter how we would judge the three. It is utterly irrelevant as to how the most learned theologians would see the matter. All that matters is what God says about it, and God says that Judah is the worst of the worst.

Not a happy place to be.

Yahweh accuses Judah of passing their warped judgment on the 2 sisters in crime, so to speak. While they self righteously agreed whole heartedly with Yahweh destroying those miserable sinners, they could not see their own wickedness. So Yahweh says that now it is your turn to bear your shame for the sins you have so freely committed, sins that all require a blood sacrifice as atonement. Your sins are more detestable than Samaria’s or Sodom’s. Those 2 are more righteous in my eyes than you are. Be confounded, be ashamed beyond measure. You have made these 2 hall of famers of sin seem like the minor leagues, when it comes to transgressing the commandments of the Lord.

Eze 16:53 When I shall bring again (shoob – turn back, return to the starting point, turn around, repent) their captivity (sheb-ooth – exile, a former state of prosperity), the captivity (sheb-ooth) of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity (sheb-ooth) of Samaria and her daughters, then will I bring again the captivity (sheb-ooth) of thy captives in the midst of them:

There is no agreement as to whether or not this is a word of promise or menace. To speak on the menace side, let us hear what Ellicott’s commentary has to say:

This is not a promise of restoration to Israel; but, on the contrary, is an expression of the utter hopelessness of their punishment in the strongest possible form. The “bringing again of captivity “does not, indeed, necessarily mean a return from exile (into which Sodom had not been carried); but, as explained in Ezekiel 16:55, a return to the former estate, that is, a state of happiness and prosperity. In the case of Sodom this was manifestly impossible; and even in the case of Samaria it would, if accomplished, lack any historical identification. Sodom and her daughters (the surrounding cities) had perished with all their inhabitants many ages ago, leaving no descendants behind. Restoration was, therefore, obviously impossible; and by conditioning the restoration of Jerusalem on an impossible thing, it is meant to be most strongly denied. [end]

The point is that it is physically impossible to restore Sodom, so therefore it will be impossible to restore Judah, at least to its former glorious state. Yes, they would return to the land, but in a very weakened state. Yes, they would even return a second time in 1948, but again, not approaching the level of greatness as was found under David and Solomon.

If we wish to allegorize this promise, in order to take the restoration of Sodom literally, perhaps Sodom represents those pagan nations who have absolutely no knowledge of God, whereas Samaria represents those nations which have some knowledge of God, but are utterly intermixed and defiled with the world. Other commentators want to make nations such as Moab and Ammon as the spiritual descendants of Sodom, which did receive a partial restoration, but I see no biblical basis for making such a claim.

This is a verse that, taken literally, will provide grist for the skeptic. How could Sodom be restored when it was totally obliterated, they would say? Well, I believe God puts verses such as this in the bible, (that for obvious reasons must be discerned with a more spiritual, perhaps allegorical meaning), in order to provide a loophole for wicked men, who want to find an excuse to reject the bible. If you are basing your rejection of the word of God on something as extremely flimsy as your inability to understand exactly what God means by referring to a possible restoration of Sodom in this one and only passage of scripture, then you are a sad sack indeed.

If we look at this verse from a purely spiritual point of view, the spiritual descendants of spiritual Sodom (sexual perverts) and spiritual Samaria (idol worshippers) shall one day put off their rebellion, and be reunited with their Lord and creator. When we shall see the immoral and the idolater repent, then Judah (the Jew) will also repent. Perhaps this is a reference of the Gentiles being saved, in order to make Israel jealous:

Rom_10:19 But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you.

Rom_11:11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.

We know that God is using some outrageous language in this chapter. In that same vein, let us see this verse in that same sort of light.

I see this as more sarcasm. If ever Sodom and Samaria were restored to the height of their former glory, so then you Judah, could expect to be likewise restored. Since that is never going to happen, don’t hold your breath. Only when Jesus comes back to restore the kingdom will the kingdom that is in Israel shine as the sun. This verse teaches us that sin has eternal consequences. You may sin a certain sin, and with repentance be forgiven, but you may never return to the high place that you once found yourself in. You may have to pay a permanent consequence. Judah had to pay a permanent price – a diminishment within any future restored kingdom. You may never be placed back in the ministry that you fell from. Are we not tired of seeing over and over, ministers who step away from the pulpit, not because of true repentance, but only because they were caught, rush back into ministry, only to never regain their anointing? They may have a core of devoted followers who will still back them up, but Yahweh has left their tent permanently a long time ago, and has moved on to someone more faithful.

Eze 16:54 That thou mayest bear thine own shame (kel-im-maw), and mayest be confounded (kaw-lawm – wounded, taunted, insulted, be hurt) in all that thou hast done, in that thou art a comfort (consolation) unto them.

Since Judah’s 2 sisters in sin shall never be restored, Judah must learn to bear her shame. While Judah has been partially restored twice now, yet has any nation borne more shame and dishonor than the wandering Jew? Has any tribe borne more slander, malice, and oppression than poor Israel? What a burden, what a terrible price the Hebrew has had to pay throughout history. Relentlessly hunted, universally loathed, stolen from and oppressed continually, not having a place to call home for almost 2000 years, and yet the world never seems to stop hating the Jew.

The Jew has certainly been confounded, taunted, insulted and hurt. God says that this is a direct result of their behavior. What a terrible price the Jew has paid for the sins of their forefathers! Perhaps we now better understand why God has allowed the Jewish people to be treated so horribly for so long. In part, it is the judgment of God. But as Christians, that does not give us any right to join the Jew haters out there who say that the Jews deserve everything that happens them, and that it is God’s will that we persecute them. Christians are never to persecute anyone, must less the original people of God. What sick logic some people use to justify their malice, jealousy, and hatreds.

In the tone and tenor of this entire chapter, God says that the punishment he is meting out to Judah serves as a sort of comfort to other great sinners of the past, who sinned like the Sodomites and Samaritans have done. They now see that God does not play favorites. Even though Yehovah had singled out Israel, and especially Judah, for special favor, when they turned their backs on him, he punished them even worse than how he punished those other 2. One could say that at least Sodom’s punishment was instant, while Judah’s consequences linger over millennia. Samaria at least had many people survive, and being intermixed with other nations, would not be so singled out for special persecution in the future as the Jews would.

Eze 16:55 When thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return (shoob) to their former estate (kad-maw – priority in time, old estate), and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate (kad-maw), then thou and thy daughters shall return (shoob) to your former estate (kad-maw).

One more time God uses repetition to try and drive home his reasoning. While some rabbis tried to interpret this as meaning that God intended to restore Sodom and Samaria, nowhere in the bible is that ever inferred. God is simply saying that as those 2 reprobates will never return to their former glory, so Judah should not expect to be restored to their once glorious high estate. Basically God is saying to forget about ever returning to the good old days. The days where David sat on his throne, and Yehovah was with you wherever you went. Favor and mercy dwelt with you, and the angel of the Lord fought your battles for you. Now, this verse does not say that Judah will forever disappear, only that it will never return to the height it once attained. However if we study all of scripture concerning this topic, we would add the caveat that this only applies until Messiah returns to set up his everlasting kingdom. Then, all these prophecies will have run their course.

Eze 16:56 For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned (reported on) by thy mouth in the day of thy pride (gaw-ohn – arrogancy, pomp, swelling),

Those in the throes of deep sin never stop and consider what God has done in the past to those who engaged in similar behavior. When you were strong and rich, you immersed yourself in pride, not in wisdom. You did not even pause to stop and consider what happens to those who abandon God and his word, like Sodom did? While Sodom had no scripture, they had a conscience. They were not that far removed from the flood. But what did they do? They totally forgot the judgments of the Lord. In the same way, so did Judah. They never stopped to remember what God did to the wicked. If they had, maybe they would have repented.

This is why God wants us to preach on the judgments of Yahweh. While most of the church will insult you by calling you a doom and gloom preacher, let them laugh. Let them mock. Let us choose to speak of judgment. Let us choose to guard our hearts, and not let satan gain a foothold in our lives. The surest way to accomplish that is to meditate on what happens to the unrepentant sinner.

Eze 16:57 Before thy wickedness (rah) was discovered (gaw-law – revealed, stripped as an exile), as at the time of thy reproach (kher-paw – the exposure of your genitals) of (by) the daughters of Syria, and all that are round about her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise (shawt – contemn) thee round about.

God continues the thought of the previous verse, and they really should be read together. God is saying that you never considered the fate of the wicked, when there was still time to do so (ie, before thy wickedness was discovered). When your time was up, your sin found you out and you were laid naked by those of Syria and Philistia.

If this is the correct interpretation, then God may be referring to the time going back even to king Ahaz onward, when she was hard pressed by both Syria and Philistia:

2Ki 15:37 In those days the LORD began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah.

2Ch 28:18 The Philistines also had invaded the cities of the low country, and of the south of Judah, and had taken Bethshemesh, and Ajalon, and Gederoth, and Shocho with the villages thereof, and Timnah with the villages thereof, Gimzo also and the villages thereof: and they dwelt there.
2Ch 28:19 For the LORD brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel; for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the LORD.

We see the reference to God stripping Judah naked in the above text, confirming the words here in Ezekiel.

Another important truth here is that you can sin to such an extent that you are even an embarrassment to the pagan nations all around you. Not only are you not being a good witness for the god of the bible, but you are actually an embarrassment as his supposed representative. That is not a good place to be, when you find yourself in front of the judgment seat of God.

Some others like to think this verse is the start of a new sentence. So one could look at it as saying: ‘But when it was the time of you becoming a reproach in the eyes of Syria and the Philistines, etc’.

I favor the former reading. I think the next verse begins a new sentence.

Eze 16:58 Thou hast borne (suffered) thy lewdness (zim-maw – bad plan, heinous crime, wicked device) and thine abominations (to-ay-baw), saith the LORD.

This is a statement of fact. Judah, you will most certainly bear the suffering of the punishment for your heinous crimes, your wicked devices, your morally disgusting behavior. You are not going to get away with this. Your special status as God’s chosen people will not get you off the hook. In fact, it makes you even more accountable.

Unlike the world, where those with money and power are able to escape justice, depending on who they know, with God it is the opposite. If his friends turn on him and betray him, they receive worse punishment than those who are ignorant. You do not get a free pass with God. Now some would say why did God refuse to forgive king Saul, but forgave king David more than once? Well, that relates to an entirely different truth. All men will fall at one time or another. What God wants to know is if you will quickly repent, or will you first off try and make excuses for your sin? Saul was always making excuses. God would not work with such a man.

I have never seen so much of this same evil attitude as when watching the latest crop of ministers that are being exposed for their sins. We have a pastor here in Canada who has been exposed as a violent, unstable heretic, who was once the darling of the charismatic movement in this country. When confronted with his wicked doings, his loyal board of brainwashed cult members held several zoom meetings that one could tune into. They did all that they could to cover up and excuse his behaviour, and tried to come up with ways to silence the truth tellers. Their judgments were tepid, their whitewash was thorough, their attacks on those who exposed the sin were relentless. They threatened legal action, when they should have been weeping with shame. They condemned the oppressed, while justifying the wicked.

God was nowhere to be found in their deliberations and in their actions. If you are a part of God’s children, and you choose to turn away, bringing shame to the body of Christ, God will expose your nakedness to the heavens. Your coverings will be ripped off for all the world to see.

Eze 16:59 For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even deal with thee as thou hast done, which hast despised (baw-zaw – disesteem, scorned as a vile person) the oath (aw-law – imprecation, curse, swearing) in breaking (disannulling) the covenant (ber-eeth).

There used to be a very common saying in our lands: ‘My word is my bond’. It was taught to our children, especially to the boys. Nothing was more shameful, nothing displayed a greater lack of character, than breaking your word without an extremely good reason. But today, liars rule the planet. Liars rule the airwaves. Truth is not valued.

But for Yehovah, keeping your word is a big deal. When he entered into a covenant with Abraham, then with Moses, it was a very big deal. Look at what it says:

Deu 29:10 Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,
Deu 29:11 Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water:
Deu 29:12 That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this day:
Deu 29:13 That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Deu 29:14 Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;
Deu 29:15 But with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

Each and every Israelite was to swear an oath to be forever faithful to this mighty God Yehovah, the great I AM. This was not some trivial thing. This was to be the most solemn declaration that these people would ever undertake.

This is exactly the way Jesus sees it when we say we accept him as our personal lord and savior. It has nothing to do with merely ‘trying Jesus’ and see how that works out, or taking Jesus for a test drive, to see if that is something that will fit into our lifestyle. No, if we were taught properly, we would be told that the only kind of commitment that is acceptable with Messiah is one where we swear an oath to enter into covenant with him, to love and serve and obey him forever. No turning back. No second thoughts. No more hesitation ever again. If you have made that sort of commitment, well and good. If not, then you need to get into that prayer closet until you come to the place where the cost has been counted, the doubts have been dealt with, and the decision is made. Then, and only then, will you have that perfect assurance of where you shall spend eternity.

These Jews, by their actions, by their unrelenting refusal to repent, by their plunging ever deeply into more detestable forms of idolatry, despised the sacred oath. They thought it of no importance that they had chosen to disannul the covenant. They had given their word. They had made an oath. But all for nought. The protection and responsibility of being united with Yahweh was cast aside as a useless thing.

Eze 16:60 Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish (decree) unto thee an everlasting covenant.

This verse is almost as shocking by now as everything that has gone before it, in that we finally see at least a glimpse of something positive! The way that Yahweh has piled on insult after insult, imprecation upon imprecation, judgment upon judgment, anger added to wrath which was added to rage, it seemed as if he would never calm down ever again!

But here is the mercy and the love of God. He never stays mad forever. His true, abiding nature of love always manages to find a way to the surface. His mercy may be hidden, his grace elusive, but eventually his wrath and rage run its course, and he is always looking ahead to the promise of restoration.

There is something about God keeping his word, though all of creation does not:

Lev 26:40 If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
Lev 26:41 And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
Lev 26:42 Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
Lev 26:43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
Lev 26:44 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
Lev 26:45 But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.

All the great I AM wants is an acknowledgement of our sinful ways! He does not want us to do some great penance, as the old time Catholics teach. You cannot hope to pay God back for all the ways that you have offended him. He knows this. He wants you to know this. No, all he wants is a heartfelt ‘shoob’. A turning back to him. A complete turn back to the narrow ‘deh-rek’, or path of life.

The wording of the verse could be more clearly stated as:

But even though you have done all this, I choose to remember my covenant that I made with thee when you as a nation were still young. In addition, I will make an eternal covenant with you.

Jeremiah speaks of this new covenant:

Jer 32:39 And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them:
Jer 32:40 And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.

Notice that the purpose of this new covenant is to enable Judah (and us) to fear God forever, because to fear God forever is for our eternal good, and for our children’s eternal good. God says only if he puts the fear of him in our hearts, will be even be capable of not departing from him.

Wow! What an amazing and fundamental truth! God did not say that he will make an eternal covenant with us, so he could put his love in our hearts. At least not first and foremost. What good is it to love God, but do not have the one ingredient that is crucial to make you stay faithful to him until your very last breath?

The fear of God is what will keep you on the straight and narrow path. Brethren, let us seek this fear! The words in Ezekiel is one of the best places to cultivate this holy fear. Let us strive to let the judgments of the Lord, so vividly and richly described in this book, sink deep, deep down into our soul, so that this wonderful fear of the Lord shall be ours, now and forevermore!

Do not fear to fear!

Eze 16:61 Then thou shalt remember thy ways (deh-rek), and be ashamed (kah-lawm), when thou shalt receive (law-kakh – send for, accept, take in) thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant.

When this eternal covenant has truly taken root in our hearts, then the perfect fear of the Lord will be ours. Once we attain this fear, it will lead us to a more perfect understanding of our true nature. And that nature is one of corruption and wretchedness. Gone is the pride. Gone is the arrogance. You being able to see your fallen state the way God sees it. Then shall you be ashamed, which shall cause your eyes to be opened. And what shall they be opened to? To the fact that all mankind are sinners. Up until now, you Jews thought that you were special. You despised all Gentiles. Thinking that they were accursed of God, you looked down upon them. You genuinely believed that you were better than they.

It has taken this extreme punishment that I am handing out to you for you to realize that you are no better than any other human being out there, Jew or Gentile. In the end, you will call for and embrace those spiritual sisters of sin, the Gentiles that are represented by the types of Sodom and Samaria, the immoral and the idolater. In other words, I will raise up messengers from among you to go forth and preach the gospel to all creation. Many Gentiles shall be ‘grafted in’ to the family of God, but not under the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant was strictly for you. I’ve got something better in mind for them!

Eze 16:62 And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD:

But to let you in on a little secret, that better covenant is also going to be your covenant going forward. Jew and Gentile, the one lost in immorality along with the one deluded by idols, I am going to call many to the wedding feast. When your eyes are finally opened, you shall come to know me like you’ve never known me before.

Eze 16:63 That thou mayest remember, and be confounded (boosh – to pale, be ashamed), and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame (kel-im-maw), when I am pacified (kaw-far – placated, an atonement is made, reconciled) toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord GOD.

And when I open up salvation to all the world, you will one day realize that it is because you rejected me, so I went out into the highways and the byways in order to fill up the hall with wedding guests. You will reflect on your own rebellion and your own apostasy, and one day it will finally dawn on you just how guilty you truly were. No more shall you ever think that you were somehow superior to the rest of mankind. No more will pride and arrogance come out of your mouth. When you finally are made to understand just how far you have fallen, but also how I’ve used your great sin for my own plans and purposes of salvation for all, you will then be brought to the place that I have always intended to bring you.

We have finally reached the end of this epic chapter. To be perfectly honest, when I began to write, I had no idea that God would have me write so much for just one chapter! But here we are. I pray that every reader found something that has forever changed the way that we look at this great book.

Solitary Man
https://solitaryman.substack.com/