Introduction
7. Jerusalem’s history as a prostitute ch. 16
This chapter is by far the longest prophetic message in the Book of Ezekiel, the longest single oracle in the Old Testament, and the longest single allegory in the entire Bible. It carries forward the guilt of Jerusalem described in the preceding chapter. In form it is a rib (lawsuit) oracle. God’s chosen people were not only a vine that was good for nothing (ch. 15), but they had produced disgusting fruit (ch. 16). The Lord compared Jerusalem (a synecdoche for Israel) to a despised orphan who had become the beautiful wife of a king but had abandoned her privileges to become an insatiable prostitute (cf. Hosea 1-3). This chapter is also an elaborate personification.
"No one presses the margins of literary propriety as severely as Ezekiel. . . . But the semipornographic style is a deliberate rhetorical device designed to produce a strong emotional response." [Note: Block, The Book . . ., pp. 466-67. On the problem of Ezekiel’s portrayal of God’s actions in this oracle, see ibid., pp. 467-70.]
"A sad parallel to this narrative is the course of Christendom in its departure from the purity of God’s Word and the life of godliness." [Note: Feinberg, p. 85.]
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