Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 16.

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Today’s passage is a prophecy against the nation governed from Jerusalem.  It describes how God took a people who were outcasts among other nations and took care of them and established them.  Once they were established as a nation they turned away from God and embraced other gods.  The description of their sin is very metaphorical.  They served God when they were weak and defenseless, but once they gained wealth they turned from Him.  We tend to do the same thing.  I want to note that, while the imagery about prostitution is a metaphor for their idolatry, I believe that God used that imagery with Ezekiel because of the sexual immorality of the people of Jerusalem.  He writes about Jerusalem as a prostitute who killed her children from God as sacrifices to other gods.  We should take warning from this about how our society has descended into debauchery and has embraced the killing of unborn children.  Ezekiel calls Samaria and Sodom Jerusalem’s sisters and warns that her sins make her sisters look righteous.

I wrote all of the above and do believe that this passage calls out out society, but ultimately, societies do not sin.  The people who make up a society sin.  When we read the passage about the destruction of Sodom in Genesis, it reads as though Sodom’s in was a violation of the laws of hospitality.  In the Book of Jude it refers to Sodom’s sin as sexual immorality.  Here Ezekiel explicitly condemns Sodom for not aiding the poor and needy.  I think the context here connects sexual immorality, idolatry, and not helping the poor and needy together.  All of these sins lead to each other.  All of these sins, including violating the norms of hospitality, involve treating others as things to be used rather than as representations of God, as images of God.  If we truly worship God, and see our fellow humans as being made in His image, we will commit none of these sins.  Let us strive to treat our neighbors as we would treat God.  Let us forsake the idolatries which we have allowed into our hearts and worship only God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.