Ezekiel 16:47, commentary and pictures

Jerusalem did not merely follow the ways and abominations of Samaria and Sodom, but treated their wickedness as a very little thing and became more corrupt than they in all her ways. Jerusalem here stands for God's chosen covenant people, who broke faith with the Lord and delighted in others, with their unfaithfulness pictured as a wife's adultery. The saying belongs to a searching parable of Judah's apostasy that rebukes sin and pleads with God's people to turn back to Him. A woman is the symbol of a church, and a lewd woman or harlot is the symbol of a corrupt, apostate church. Thus the Jewish church, though espoused to the Lord as a wife, became a harlot by unlawful union with the world and following after Babylon, and her rejection after alienation from God illustrates Babylon's moral fall.

Words and Setting

Jerusalem did not merely follow the ways and abominations of Samaria and Sodom but treated their wickedness as a very little thing and became more corrupt than they in all her ways and in all her conduct. Though favored by God, she adopted heathen practices and surpassed the nations around her, including Sodom, in corruption through backsliding, idolatry, and departure from God. Her attempt to mix the worship of God with the ways of the world was spiritual adultery, a departure from the God who was her husband.

The verse belongs to a strong parable about the apostasy of Judah and Israel that rebukes sin and forms part of God's earnest appeal for His people to turn back to Him. That chapter portrays Judah's awful sins through the figure of a lewd woman and gives searching moral instruction.

Jerusalem stands for God's chosen people, who became more corrupt in all their ways than the surrounding peoples by apostatizing, joining themselves to them, and worshiping their gods, with unfaithfulness pictured as a woman's adultery. They broke their covenant with the Lord, departed from Him and delighted in others, relying on another instead of Him.

Apostate Church and Babylon

In Ezekiel 16 a lewd and immoral woman stands for a corrupt and apostate church, and verse 47 belongs to that picture of corruption. A woman is the symbol of a church, and the woman of Revelation 17 likewise represents a church, which supports understanding apocalyptic Babylon as an ecclesiastical power. The chapter's image of the lewd woman therefore identifies religious apostasy in the language later applied to Babylon.

As the woman of Revelation 12 represents the true church, the harlot of Revelation 17 with her daughters represents the entire corrupt church. A harlot is the symbol of a corrupt church just as a woman is the symbol of a church. Babylon pictured as a harlot is therefore not abstract earthly power or the civil power of human government but a corrupt professedly religious body, distinct from the kings of the earth though unlawfully united with them. Nor is Babylon limited to a single ecclesiastical body, but by its very name is composed of many corrupt bodies united to the world.

The Jewish church was espoused to the Lord as a wife and yet became a harlot through apostasy and unfaithfulness to God and to His covenant. That unfaithfulness lay especially in unlawful friendship, bond, union and joining with the world, in turning from Him to follow Babylon, in rejecting His precepts, and in seeking the support of worldly powers instead of seeking the Lord. God calls such union of His church with the world fornication and adultery, and friendship with the world with rejection of God's precepts makes her life like Babylon's. Jerusalem as an adulterous wife who turned from God and followed Babylon thus serves as a prototype for a church that rejects God's message by becoming unfaithful through union with the world.

The fall of the Jewish church as an unfaithful harlot illustrates Babylon's moral fall. She was rejected and given up by God because of alienation from God and union with the world. Her destruction was at the same time deferred for a time.