Ezekiel 16 Footnotes

16:1-63 The fourth reason for Judah’s fall was the nation’s history of unfaithfulness (see note on 12:1-7). This sixty-three verse chapter is the longest continuous prophetic message in Ezekiel. It presents Judah as a prostitute (Hs 4:12-15; 6:10) lacking any sense of gratitude for the Lord’s gracious choice of his people, or for his blessing and provision.

16:5 The prophet pictured Judah as an abandoned female upon whom the Lord had pity. In the ancient Near East, females often were abandoned at birth because of family poverty or fear of disgrace because of the low social position afforded women. It was also common to abandon ill, deformed, weak, and unwanted children. Although such barbaric practices were not supposed to be the custom in Israel, Ezekiel was comparing the Lord’s compassion with the cruelty that characterized the pagan world. He found Judah in a helpless estate, unloved and unwanted, and rescued and adopted her as his own (Dt 7:6-7).

16:17-25 The “male images” (v. 17) could have been phallic-shaped stones used in fertility cults. Children were sacrificed to Molech, a molten hot image into whose arms a live baby was placed (v. 20). Devotees of these cults practiced sacred prostitution—male and female—at the shrines among groves of trees on the side of hills called “high places” (bamoth); in the city streets they might even build an artificial “elevated place” for this purpose (vv. 24-25). God’s response of “woe, woe” (v. 23), was a common expression of horror uttered at the arrival of some disaster (1Sm 4:8; Pr 23:29; Is 3:9).

16:48-50 Judah was called the “sister” of Sodom since both Israel and Judah had followed the same course as Sodom in pride and perversion (v. 49). “Daughters” often referred to villages that were the suburbs of the larger cities. Judah’s reprimand was more excessive than either Sodom or Samaria; she deserved a more severe judgment (vv. 50-54).