When I was a new Christian, one of the more juvenile things we did with friends from my youth group was look for passages of the Bible that were a little more blunt or a little more crass, especially if they were not taken with the seriousness of the context in which they were given. There is the obvious example of the King James rendition of the word “donkey,” and the entire Song of Solomon, but there was one section that was far beyond them all.
Ezekiel 23
11 And when her sister Oholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms.
12 She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbors, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men.
13 Then I saw that she was defiled, that they both took one way.
14 And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion,
15 Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity:
16 And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea.
17 And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them.
18 So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister.
19 Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.
20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.
In my own devotions, I have been reading through Ezekiel, and it has been a fantastic time seeing all of the connections to the ministry of Jesus, the book of Revelation, and the promised hope of God in Christ. Yet Ezekiel is quite an odd book among all the prophets. God calls him to do some of the strangest things to get people’s attention: eating some nasty bread cooked over cow dung, laying on his side for days at a time, building and playing with items and pretending they are the city of Jerusalem. If you wonder how a man could do these things and speak the way he spoke, you have to understand the opening of the book. This is a man who, like Isaiah, has seen the glory of God in such a soul-shattering way that his response to the Lord can be nothing but yes when he is called to speak.
In Ezekiel 23, he is speaking of the rebellious cities of Jerusalem and Samaria and illustrating their actions by portraying them as prostitutes who, from a very young age, have given themselves over to other men. Ezekiel makes it clear that this is a parable for Jerusalem and Samaria, with Oholibah representing Jerusalem.
Oholah, the sister representing Samaria, has a name that means “her tent.” But in contrast, “Oholibah” means “my tent is in her.” Tents here represented two things: places of worship and, ultimately, for Oholibah, the presence of God with His people. The temple was the place where God dwelled among His people, and in Ezekiel’s day, Ezekiel had been given a vision showing all of the foul worship being done in the Lord’s name. Idols were being worshiped in the temple, children were being offered as sacrifices, false prophets and prophetesses abounded, and this slander to the glory of God had been going on in waves for generation after generation.
Because of this, chapter 23 is proclaiming that the place where God dwells will face the wrath of God poured out upon it. The people who had the presence of God would feel the cup of wrath poured out upon them. The story does not end there, though. God does pour out His wrath and eventually allows the people to return, but they return half-heartedly, and the temple that is rebuilt is not to its former glory. And the glory of God that left the temple in earlier passages in Ezekiel is not to return to that temple.
Yet the story does not end there with the end of the Old Covenant. There is a clear longing and desire for an ending baked into the story. The temple falls short of its former glory, and the people for years have served under the burden of pagan nations. They have continued their idol worship, and those who did not hardened their hearts to the poor and the helpless, giving them an air of religiosity without any of the actual holiness of God in their lives.
John then proclaims that “the Word was God” and that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).
The Word became flesh and dwelt among His people. God came down and was the revelation of God with His people, like the tabernacle and temple of old. Yet this tabernacle and temple was not made with human hands but was the person of Jesus Christ.
They despised and rejected Him, a man of sorrows, and He, like the city of God and the temple of God before Him, endured the ridicule. Yet unlike the temple of old, made with human hands, this temple went willingly and drank the wrath of God for us on the cross of Christ.
Christ rose from the grave, defeating sin and death, so that we could have a new covenant where our hearts of stone could be taken out and we could be given hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).
He saw us as the dried bones in the valley and spoke over us in His death and resurrection and brought us life (Ezekiel 37).
After He ascended to the heavens, He sent the Spirit of God down at Pentecost, where now the dwelling place of God, or the tabernacle, was not a tent or temple made with hands but the people of God that form the church of God. Paul reminds us that “you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16).
We hold this treasure in our jars of clay, as Paul says, and we are tents in the wilderness longing for the eternal temple of God where He will dwell with His people. Paul describes our present bodies as this “tabernacle” in which we groan, longing for what is to come (2 Corinthians 5:4).
As believers who read this passage and find the holiness of God laid out in plain language, we see that God cares for the holiness of His people immensely. All of our defiling works cause the wrath of God to be poured out. For believers, we know that the wrath of God was poured out on Jesus, who made propitiation for all of our sins (1 John 4:10).
We were the prostitutes who turned aside, looking for the lusts, delights, and treasures of this world to fill what is broken within us, and it was only by the judgment that Jesus took upon Himself that we were purified. So now we long and we fight for our holiness.
As believers, we must lay aside any idols that keep us from enjoying the fullness of the presence of God within us. We must persevere, knowing that though this tabernacle that is our human body is fading, we are to be of good courage, knowing that we have a treasure, which is the glory of God revealed in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. As Paul says, God has shone in our hearts “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” and we have this treasure in jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:6–7).
Let us therefore, for the joy set before us, lay aside every sin and weight and pursue this joy found in the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 12:1–2).