and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses.
Ezekiel 23 sets out the history of God's people as the story of two sisters — Samaria and Jerusalem . Verse 20 records the moment Jerusalem's desire runs back to Egypt — the land God rescued her from. The language is shocking. It forces three questions: why God speaks this way, what Egypt stood for, and where such craving ends.
Two sisters, one guilt
Ezekiel does not treat Jerusalem's sin as her own invention. He puts her in a family.
William KellyThe holy city is compared here with Samaria. They are two sisters from one parent — the Jewish people — and sisters too in their idol-worship. The evil is traced back to where it first appeared. The idols which beguiled them in Egypt exposed them at last to Assyria and to Babylon. In Egypt they showed their lewdness, and their old age matched the sins of their youth.
Not a national failing but a human one
The picture is ugly, yet one writer refuses to let the reader treat these women as a special case.
F. W. GrantThe children of Adam in every generation are just like these women. And if we ask, as we look at their history, How could God take up people like these? the answer is found in another question: Where could He find any better? … lust, in whatever form it shows itself, is the mark that identifies fallen man everywhere.
Egypt, the school she misread
Israel's time in Egypt was meant to teach them something. The same writer explains what it should have shown, and what they took from it instead.
F. W. GrantGod had appointed them in Egypt a school that should have been profitable for them. No land could show more clearly how foolish and degrading idol-worship is. God also let them feel the teacher's rod through what the Egyptians made them suffer. … Yet they took Egypt as their school in a way God never meant. Egypt was the land of independence from God, and in that way it pictures the world.
Flesh, and nothing more
The verse measures her lovers by animal strength. Another passage warns the people who leaned on Egypt's horses.
J. N. Darby"Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong … The Egyptians are man, and not God, and their horses are flesh, and not spirit."
What made this leaning so offensive was not the weakness of Egypt alone, but who had brought them out of it.
F. B. HoleThis reliance on Egypt was an offence to God. He had rescued them from that very people by His judgments at the start of their national history. It offends Him just as much when a Christian goes back to the world-system. God has rescued him from it, and from the judgment coming on it. Yet he leans on its power or its wisdom, instead of turning to God as needs arise.
Warned by her sister, and worse than her
The chapter gives the two sisters names: Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem. Kelly traces what the younger one did with the warning in front of her.
William KellyDid the sight of Oholah do Oholibah any good? On the contrary, "she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust." The younger and more favoured sister followed the elder and went further still in her idolatry. … But they defiled her, and then her mind turned away from them. That is always the way where God's favour and will are absent. Closeness in evil soon turns to disgust on both sides.
From lovers to whips
What she chased did not stay harmless. Grant sees a rule running underneath it.
F. W. GrantMen's own vices hatch the crowds that prey on them. … God would wake man up by this constant connection of sin with its judgment. Man's pleasant vices are the whips that scourge him.
Severity with an aim
Even the stripping and shame described later in the chapter are not the end in themselves.
F. W. GrantYet all this severity is not, on God's part, mere judgment. The effect, as He puts it here, is to stop Oholibah's lewdness, and to make her loathe the things she once found attractive. A person must come to his senses before he can come to God. That is the process God was bringing Israel through.
Summary
- Egypt begins it. This craving is not new. It started in the land where the nation was born. The sins of her youth shaped her old age.
- Egypt is the world. Egypt stands for independence from God. It was a school meant to teach them how foolish idol-worship is. They took it as an invitation instead.
- Egypt is flesh. The strength she wanted was only human and animal. Horses are flesh, not spirit. The people God rescued from Egypt had the least excuse for going back.
- Egypt turns on her. The lovers she wanted turn into the ones who prey on her. Pleasant vices become the whip.
- Egypt must be loathed. God's aim in the judgment is not punishment alone. He works to make the craving itself stop.