Ezekiel 22:7-9

Judah’s leaders had undermined parental authority (cf. Exodus 20:12; Leviticus 19:3). When children stop respecting their parents, it is not long before citizens stop respecting their rulers. They had taken advantage of the helpless-aliens, orphans, and widows-people particularly in need of protection by those in positions of power (cf. Exodus 22:21-24; Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19:33; Deuteronomy 24:17).

"The real test of any society is . . . how it treats the people with no voice and no power." [Note: D. Lane, The Cloud and the Silver Lining, p. 88.]

The rulers had also despised what God considered holy and had failed to observe the Sabbath Days (cf. Exodus 20:8; Leviticus 19:3). Some of them had resorted to slander to get their way and to premeditated murder (cf. Leviticus 19:16). Jerusalem’s leaders had also worshipped idols at mountain shrines (cf. Deuteronomy 12:1-2; Deuteronomy 16:21-22) and practiced sexual sins in connection with their idolatry (cf. Leviticus 18:6-23; Leviticus 20:10-21).

"Ritual sex was another great attraction of idolatry. Most of the ancient Near Easterners believed that all things that came into being were born into being. This was a major tenet of their belief system. They believed that not only animals were born, but also plants. (This is the reason that they ’sowed their field with two kind of seed,’ i.e., male and female seed as they thought of it; see Leviticus 19:19.) What was born into being started, they believed, with sex on the part of the gods-specifically Baal and Asherah, the god and goddess of fertility according to the Canaanites. They also thought that if a person bringing an offering to Baal and/or Asherah would have ritual sex with a prostitute at the shrine as part of worship (!) this would help stimulate the divine powers of nature to have sex, and thus more animals and crops would be born, and the agriculture would flourish. Outlandish as this sounds to us, it was the pinnacle of theology among the Canaanites-and was what the Israelites readily accepted at Baal-Peor." [Note: Stuart, pp. 181-82.]