Ezekiel 16:15-34 But you did trust in your own beauty, and played the harlot because of your renown… But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, etc. The prophet row passes from what God had done for his people Israel to set forth how they had requited him. He had shown how, under his fostering care, the outcast child had grown into a beautiful maiden, whom he had espoused and arrayed in robes and ornaments of beauty, until she had become renowned amongst the nations. Now he exhibits the apostasy of the people under the figure of the gross unfaithfulness of this wife to her husband, with whom she had entered into solemn covenant, and to whom she owed everything good and valuable that she possessed. Idolatry is frequently set forth in the Scriptures under the similitude of fornication or adultery (cf. Jeremiah 3:20). The chief point of the comparison is perhaps this, that, as the marriage covenant is an endearing and sacred one, and the violation of it is therefore a heinous sin, so the covenant between God and his people is intimate and holy, and to violate it is to incur the darkest guilt. The wife is under the most solemn obligations not to turn aside from her husband to another man, or to allow any one to rival him in her affections. And those who have entered into covenant with God ought not to allow any person or thing to compete with him for the supreme place in their hearts. We can only view this representation of the people's apostasy "generally," as Fairbairn observes, "and with respect to its leading features; as from the very nature of the image it is impossible to be minute, without at the same time falling into indelicacy." I. THE BASE BEGINNINGS OF THIS APOSTASY. 1. Forgetfulness of the past. "In all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polltuted in thy blood." The Israelites forgot the helpless and afflicted condition in which the Lord found them in Egypt, and how he had championed their cause, delivered them from their oppressors, and raised them into an independent, prosperous, and powerful nation. Had they remembered these things, the recollection would have bound them to him by the tender and tenacious ties of gratitude. "They remembered not the multitude of thy mercies. They soon forgot his works. They forgot God their Saviour, Which had done great things in Egypt." (Psalm 106:7, 13, 21.) A lively recollection of what God has done for us, and of how much we owe to him, will prove a powerful preventive to our departing from him. 2. Confidence in themselves and their possessions. "Thou didst trust in thine own beauty." The things which God had enabled them to acquire - position, prosperity, power - they had abused by making them occasions of sin. They reposed in them the trust which they should have reposed in God alone. How often have men abused their prosperity in a similar manner! A man by the blessing of God succeeds in his business undertakings, and then attributes all his success to his tact, perseverance, and energy, and places his supreme confidence in those powers or in himself. How vain is such confidence (cf. Proverbs 28:26; Jeremiah 9:23)! And another, who has prospered in his worldly affairs, places his trust in his riches. This also is vain (cf. Psalm 49:6, 7; Psalm 52:7; 1 Timothy 6:17). "He who has a high opinion of himself has no desire for grace; and the more he trusts in himself, the more quickly will he squander gifts and blessings. Self-exaltation leads from grace, just as self-knowledge leads to grace" (Schroder). 3. Perversion of the position which they had attained through the favour of God. "And playedst the harlot because of thy renown." The eminence which they had attained by means of his blessing they turned into an occasion of exalting themselves against him. "God made this people above all nations," says Greenhill, "in praise, in name, in honour, that they might be a holy people unto him (Deuteronomy 26:19); their renown should have encouraged them to holiness, and it was an incentive unto looseness. Solomon had great renown abroad in the nations (1 Kings 4:31); that drew the princes to bestow their daughters upon him (1 Kings 11:3); he had seven hundred wives, princesses; his name made way for unlawful marriages, and they made way for unlawful gods." Their prosperity and fame they thus perverted in saddest, sinfullest manner. II. THE DREAD PROGRESS OF THIS APOSTASY. The apostasy itself consisted of the worship of idols, or the giving unto idols the homage which was due to God alone, and the formation of forbidden political alliances, or reposing in nations the confidence which should have been placed alone in God. The beginning of the apostasy seems to have been in the latter part of the reign of Solomon, when his heathen "wives turned away his heart after other gods" (1 Kings 11:4-8). It entered upon another stage when the ten tribes under Jeroboam began to worship the true God by means of the images of the calves which were set up at Dan and Bethel. Afterwards the people began to adopt the vile idols of their heathen neighbours. But in the paragraph before us the chief stages of this apostasy are: 1. The manufacture and worship of idols. (Vers. 16-18.) 2. The building of chambers for their idolatrous practices. (Vers. 24, 25.) Not content with the high places, or natural heights, set apart for worship, they erected these vaulted chambers in the thoroughfares of the city. "The natural heights," says Hengstenberg, "are too far from the people hungering after idols. They wish to plant idolatry in the city thoroughfare, and so build for themselves artificial heights. We must distinguish between the thought end its clothing. The thought is that the objects of idolatry became the prime impulse of the popular life, by which is to be understood much less religious than political adultery, though both went hand in hand." 3. The sacrifice of their children to Moloch. (Vers. 20, 21.) From Ezekiel 20:26 it appears that they offered their firstborn to this revolting heathen deity. The god was supposed to be present in the fire, and the children who were made to pass Through it were devoured by it. Aben Ezra says that "to cause to pass through" is the same as "to burn." And the Jews did this notwithstanding the most solemn and stern warnings against it. "The offender who devoted his offspring to Moloch was to be put to death by stoning; and in case the people of the land refused to inflict upon him this judgment, Jehovah would himself execute it, and cut him off from among his people (Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2-5)." But they had become guilty even of this atrocity. The Lord calls these children whom they so cruelly sacrificed, his children. "Thou hast slain my children." They were his because he is "the Father of spirits." His also because they were born under the covenant, and bore in themselves the mark of the covenant. So these people had gone from bad to worse until their sins were now calling loudly for vengeance. There is no standing still in sin. When man has departed from God, unless means be used and efforts be made to return unto him, he will depart ever to a greater distance; the breach between them will grow wider until it becomes a great and awful gulf. Beware of the first faint alienation of the heart from him. Stop the very beginnings of departure from him. Keep dose to him in true and tender affection, and loyal and loving service. III. THE SORE AGGRAVATIONS OF THIS APOSTASY. 1. Their extreme readiness to depart from God. (Vers. 25-34.) The nations (lid not seek after them, but they after the nations. They were eager to adopt their idols, and to enter into political alliances with them. "The treacherous and wanton dealing was all on Israel's part," says Fairbairn; "she conceded everything to them, they yielded back nothing in return to her - her wickedness was gratuitous and unrequited folly. A solemn and pregnant truth, which the Church of God should never forget. She loses all, and the world gains all, when she foolishly stoops to impair the testimony of God, or adjust the claims and services of religion to the tastes and practices of the carnal mind. A nominal advance or apparent reconciliation may possibly be made by the manoeuvere; but it can be no more than nominal and apparent; the interests that really profit by such a policy are those of the flesh and the world. It is only when the Church is faithful to her testimony - when she stands in the truth of Christ, and in that truth shines forth 'bright as the sun, clear as the moon,' that she is found also, in her conflict with evil, ' terrible as an army with banners.'" 2. Their abuse of his gifts in departing from him. (Vers. 17-19.) "My gold and my silver... mine oil and mine incense... my meat also I gave thee," - these things he charges them with having applied to idolatrous uses. The 'Speaker's Commentary' points out an illustration of this in its notes on ver. 33: "The picture is heightened by the contrast between one who as a prostitute receives hire for her shame, and one who as a wife is so utterly abandoned as to bestow her husband's goods to purchase her own dishonour. The conduct of Ahaz in purchasing aid from the King of Assyria with the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord (2 Kings 16:8) is an excellent illustration, and may perhaps be referred to in this very passage." And very often still men abuse the gifts of God to his dishonour, as in the employment of their abilities for base or unworthy purposes, the use of riches for vain or sinful objects, etc. 3. Their resolute persistence in departing from him. Nothing stopped them in their apostasy; or, if checked for a time, it was speedily resumed again. The bestowment of many and precious favours upon them did not bind them to the Lord. They actually made these (as we have seen) an occasion of apostasy. Nor did the infliction of chastisement effectually restrain their great and persistent unfaithfulness. Such chastisement is spoken of in ver. 27. The blessings which God had promised to his people on condition of their fidelity to the covenant, and which in former times had been so abundantly bestowed (cf. vers. 9-14), he diminished as a punishment for their sins. By their religious and political unfaithfulnesses they had been great losers "in land, and people, and influence, and splendour;" but still they were bent upon backsliding from him. Neither mercies nor judgments, rewards nor punishments, availed to secure their fidelity to the Lord their God. "My people are bent to backsliding from me." Their hearts were "fully set in them to do evil." - W.J. Parallel Verses KJV: But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was. |
    |