The Two Sisters

Introduction

When I was at university, there was a student from Kuwait on our corridor. A guy called Mustaffa. Both of us, as an optional extra, had picked religious studies to study in our first year. Part way through the year, he said to me that the Muslim who was teaching us Islam was not teaching us the truth. “That’s ok,” I said, “the former monk who’s teaching us Christianity isn’t teaching us the truth either.” So we arranged to have a chat about faith. We met in his room, and almost the first thing he did was quote part of the passage we’ve got in front of us this morning. “Do you believe that a Holy God put this in his Scriptures?” Well, how do you answer that? Thankfully, I’d read it before—a big plug there for reading through the whole of the Bible at some point! But it’s not an easy question to go about answering. Parts of this passage sound so crude, so crass, so unlike other parts of scripture. I did answer him, and I’ll tell you at the end what I said. But how would you go about it? Why is this passage there?

Three points I’d like to make before we dig into the passage itself. Firstly, I’m not going to use explicit language if I can help it. The passage uses a lot of euphemisms that I might have to explain, but I’ll try and be sensitive to younger ears. Secondly, I’m also conscious that this passage deals with a broken sexual history. We may not find ourselves in the exact shoes of the women in this allegory, but I’m aware that many of us have a past, some of us might even have a present! This is an area where we all fall down—no one is as pure as they should be—none of us! But the goal of this passage is not to condemn certain sexual activities—though the Bible does indeed do that. The goal of this passage is to show the Israelites and us our spiritual adultery, the way we’ve treated God. Thirdly, I want to make it clear this passage is not just having a go at women. This is having a go at everyone! Some people have tried to say this passage paints women in a bad light. But in fact, this paints everybody in a bad light, since the women are allegorical for men and women. If you think it’s just having a go at women, you’ve missed the point of the story.

So let’s dig in. First of all, we get…

The Warning of the Older Sister (v1-10)

We’re introduced in the story to two sisters. Two sisters who, verse 3, play the whore. A whore in the Bible is someone who is either paid for sex or sort of offers it up for free. The grammar of the verse doesn’t make it clear whether this is consensual or not. But it could be translated, they let their breasts be pressed and their bosoms, literally nipples, handled. In other words, they’re exchanging sexual favours for something. Or even just the pleasure in itself. These two are plying their trade in Egypt. And then, unlike many other visions, Ezekiel tells you what’s happening up front. One sister is Samaria—the Capital of the Northern Kingdom. The other sister is Jerusalem—the Capital of the Southern Kingdom.

If you’re not familiar with the history of the Israelites in the Bible, they started off in Egypt. Moved into the promised land around the time of Moses. And then, about 500 years later, they got themselves a king and became a united kingdom called Israel. There were only three kings of the whole country before the country split in two. The Northern Kingdom, centred around Samaria to the North. In the breakup, they got to keep the name Israel. And the Southern Kingdom, Judah, which was actually Judah and Benjamin. They got to keep the capital, Jerusalem. This was all roughly 1,000 BC. This is being written 400 years later. Much has happened, as we’ll see.

But the Northern Kingdom is pictured as the older, literally bigger sister, Oholah. Literally, "Her Own Tent". The Northern Kingdom set up their own idolatrous shrines with Golden calves. And the Southern Kingdom is pictured as the younger sister, Oholibah. Literally, "My Tent is in her". She had the genuine article in the form of the temple in Jerusalem. Both, we’re told, were God’s. God had entered into a covenant with them. He had married them, if you like, if you follow the analogy. But despite that, they continue to play the whore. This is not a new picture; Ezekiel has used it before, as had Jeremiah and Hosea!

And first, Ezekiel deals with the older sister, the Northern Kingdom, in this way. Even though they are now in the land, even though they are in a covenant with the Lord, they still want to play the field. They begin to lust after the Assyrians. The Assyrians were an empire to the Northeast of Israel. Their capital was Nineveh, the one Jonah went to visit. They were a particularly brutal empire. But the older sister here seems enamoured with them. It reminds me a bit of Lydia and Kitty in Pride and Prejudice who are desperate to marry “a man in uniform.” “All the officers!” So she gives herself to them, like Lydia to Mr. Wickham! An illicit love affair. Sorry, spoilers! Except this is not some gooey-eyed teenager—this is a married woman! This is adultery she’s committing. But she’s not bothered; she’s reminiscing back to days when she was back in Egypt, a young woman giving herself to her exotic lovers.

So God, her husband, we’re told, gives her over to new lovers. She wants them, well, he’ll hand her over to them. But they are not kind and tender-hearted like He is. They are not patient and longsuffering with her. No, they strip her naked. They kill her sons and daughters. And eventually, they put her to death by the sword. A tragic end to a tragic story.

But of course, this is what happened in real history, not just the story. Israel made a treaty with Assyria in 840 BC in the name of their gods. You can read about it in secular history books. We have the remains of statues commemorating it. But by 722 BC, they had been utterly destroyed by the Assyrians. Exiled, never to return. Replaced in the land by Assyrians from elsewhere in the empire. The ancestors of what, in New Testament times, they called the Samaritans. The original inhabitants are gone from the pages of history. They chased the Assyrians, and they got the Assyrians. They courted the bullies, and they got the bullies. We’re told she became a byword for women. Like when people refer to a woman as a Jezebel. Her name carries a warning with it. So her younger sister will heed the warning, yeah? No!

And so our second point…

The Warning Ignored (v11-21, 36-45)

Her sister sees the example of her older sister, how her wayward ways led to her downfall. And she decided to copy her, and then some! She misbehaves worse than her sister! She too goes after Assyria, enamoured by the soldiers just like her older sister. The husband realises, v13, that she’s just another chip off the old block. She’s just like her sister. But this younger sister goes further. While she’s with the Assyrians, she sees pictures of Babylonian soldiers. The picture she sees is in the Babylonian style. She’s even taken by their art! So she invites the Babylonian generals over! This could be a reference to the visit of the Babylonians during the time of Hezekiah. We’re not told there that they were invited, but it’s possible. Hezekiah shows them everything. 2 Kings 20:13 ESV: “And Hezekiah welcomed them, and he showed them all his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his armoury, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.” He leaves nothing to the imagination! But lays the nation bare before them! And their love affair with the Babylonians continues. They make treaties, covenants with one another. But Judah is already covenanted to someone else—the Lord.

Soon after, Judah is ashamed of itself. It’s the morning after, and she turns away from them—disgusted by what she’s done. But instead of doing the walk of shame back to her husband, she goes instead back to the Egyptians. Her first lovers. But it’s not tender love she’s after. No, it’s something baser, raw, and animal. Her thoughts are about the size of their private parts and the amount of bodily fluids involved. But even sicker, she’s thinking about this in terms of relations with horses and donkeys. It sounds like the stuff that’s forbidden in Leviticus. Leviticus 18:23 ESV: “And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.” Remember, Ezekiel is an expert in the law—this just shows the perversity of her obsession. That’s what this woman is fantasising about. Men who are like animals. She’s longing for those young days when she was manhandled by Egyptians. And she’s going about this fantasy openly, on the lookout for lovers. Flaunting her nakedness, v18. Showing herself off to all who will gaze at her. Humiliating her husband, who seems to stand on passively. Except He isn’t. He’s already arranged the trial.

And Ezekiel, again in lawyer mode like last week, is asked to read the charges down in v36-42. They have committed adultery. They have shed blood. They have gone after idols. They have even offered up their children to these idols! And the shock of v38 is that they’re still going to temple on the Sabbath. They burn their children in the fire for an idol in the morning, and they turn up to temple in the afternoon! They have defiled my house, says God, coming in with blood on their hands. I think we so often read verses like this and think they’ve abandoned their religion. And in all the major ways, they have. But they still show up to temple. They still make a show of being believers in the Lord. It would be like in the picture that the woman spends her whole day on adultery and then comes back home in the evening to her husband like nothing’s happened. Thinking that he’s a pushover. Thinking that he won’t notice that the children have been sacrificed. That all his hard-earned money is being spent on wooing other men. Because that’s what they’re doing.

He goes back to the visit of the Babylonians: When they came, you put on makeup, you showered, you put your jewellery on. You made them a feast. You even used my incense and my oil at the feast—that was supposed to be for me! You laughed and joked and giggled. As they gave you bracelets and crowns! You tired yourself out for them. They used you like a prostitute, and you lapped it up! But you were supposed to be mine, says God. You were supposed to be my people, not theirs. You were supposed to be my bride, not their bit on the side.

They have committed spiritual adultery, just like their big sister. Only not just with Assyria, with Babylon too, and Egypt. And by the sounds of it, anyone who would have them. Now, of course, in reality, this was not a sexual union. It was a political matter, it was a security matter, it was a “where are you going to put your trust” matter. The only place they would not go to was their husband, God. Though they made a show of being his wife, his people, in reality, they found their security elsewhere. In the hands of foreign nations, in the care of foreign gods. These nations, these gods, became their idols. As much as any statues of bronze or wood. Because that’s where they went to for help. That’s where they truly believed their safety lay—in Egypt, in Babylon, in Assyria. All places that ultimately would not provide them safety, but destroy them. I wonder what our idols would be? I wonder where we truly think our safety lies? Where we get our protection and purpose? For them, they jilted God for other things.

And now, finally, at the end of the chapter, the jilted husband acts. He’s been patient. He’s been willing them to come back. But now it’s over. And so God declares a final judgment on his people before the destruction comes.

And so our final point…

The Judgment to Come (v21-35, 46-49)

The man turns away from his wife, disgusted. Just as he had her older sister. And just as was the case with her sister, the very people she pursued and lusted after are the very people who now come against her. Some of the tribes of the area around Babylon are listed. But they are twisted and misspelled to make them sound more sinister. It would be like saying during WWII we were at war with Japangry, Germourny, and Pit-aly! These ones end up sounding like: punish, cry for help, and shriek! They are the ones that are coming for you! As well as them, though, we have the Babylonians themselves, and the Assyrians. And we’re told again how attractive they all are. They’ll come from the North with chariots and wagons. And they will be brutal.

The picture and reality merge here, so it’s hard to be clear what’s picture and what’s reality. Will the Babylonians cut off their ears and noses, or is it symbolic with the woman? We have evidence the Assyrians did this kind of thing, so it’s possible the Babylonians did too. Leaving you disfigured for life. They’ll be seized, burned, stripped, plundered. Their jewels and fine clothes taken away. How will she play the whore then? Disfigured, scorched, in rags. They won’t be going to Egypt anymore. Nobody will want them! The Babylonians will leave them penniless, naked, and exposed as a prostitute for all the world to see. She will drink her sister’s cup. As happened to the Northern Kingdom, so will happen to Judah. She will be attacked, besieged, and exiled. She is pictured drinking down the cup to the very dregs, drunken, out of control. Tearing at her breasts. Either in anguish or to destroy the very things that brought her lovers to her in the first place. So great will her sorrow and torment be. But she brought it on her own head. She left her loving husband and chased after lovers who would ultimately destroy her. Her husband, v35, is cast behind her back, put out of her mind, forgotten.

And so a vast host will come against her, v46. She will be an object of terror and plunder. She will be stoned, cut down with swords. And then her lewdness will end. And she will too act as a warning to others, v48.

The question for us this morning is, will we heed that warning? Or will we cast God behind our back? Forget Him, put Him out of our mind? Will we chase after security and meaning in other places? Money. Family. Career. Success. These can all become idols. We can commit spiritual adultery with them. We say we are trusting God. We are saying God is the one we want. But really, in our heart of hearts, it’s money or success or respect or recognition or comfort or the quiet life. None of those are bad things in themselves, but we don’t belong to them, we belong to God. He deserves our every breath. He deserves our every effort. He is the one who is supposed to be first in our heart, not those other things. When we chase them instead of God, even if we go back to God in the evenings or on a Sunday, we’re doing the same as the Israelites in our passage. If that is what our life is about, then really we’re committing spiritual adultery. The shock of this passage is that we can be guilty of exactly the same thing they are. We can be Oholah. We can be Oholibah, if we don’t heed the lesson here.

We might think that two-timing God with something else is a small thing, but this passage won’t allow us to think that way. I think this is what James is getting at in the New Testament. He writes: James 4:4 ESV, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Yes, we can chase after what the world chases after, but in doing so, we commit spiritual adultery. We risk making God our enemy. This passage is here to shock us with the horror of our own sinfulness, that we might live for God alone. Paul talks in Corinthians about securing our undivided devotion to the Lord. That is what God deserves, and nothing less. And if we think differently, we’ve bought into the lie that sin is not all that sinful. Spiritual adultery is not all that serious. And that we can do what Israel did with no negative consequences. Sin is utterly sinful and disgusting.

And until we understand that, we will never understand the wonder and horror of the cross. The wonder: that the Christ, bridegroom who would lay down his life for his wayward bride, knowing what she’s like, knowing what she deserves. And yet doing it anyway. Christ laid down his life, not for lovely people who needed something to do on a Sunday. But spiritual adulterers who had spurned him, and cheated on him, spat in his face. Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be, as the old hymn says—that’s wondrous. But also the horror of the cross. When we say that Christ paid the penalty for sin. We mean Christ paid the penalty for sin as awful as this. It was not just a slap on the wrist that Christ endured on the cross. It was the penalty of millions of spiritual adulterers like this. It was literally hell on Earth. I’ve heard atheists mock that all Christ lost was a weekend. Well, you try enduring the wrath of God at this! And see if it seems small to you then! And that’s what I said to my Muslim friend on my corridor all those years ago. Well, not exactly that! But yes, I said, I do believe God wrote this, and the reason is that sin is so awful—we need passages like this to remind us. How horrible, crude, and crass and personal sin is. If you’re shocked by this passage—you should be more shocked by your own sin. Your own wanderings. Your own treatment of God. No wonder it took the death of Christ on the cross to set it right, when sin is so awful.

But the cross did set it right. Jesus did pay the price. Jesus did take the horror of the cross for you and me. And if you’re a believer in Jesus this morning, that should make you incredibly thankful to Jesus for what he endured on the cross. Why go back to sin and spiritual adultery when we have one who loves us so much! And if you’re not a believer or you’re not wholehearted for Jesus this morning, won’t you turn aside from your other loves? Loves that don’t truly satisfy. Loves that leave us wanting, and damage us, and take us away from God. Won’t you turn instead to Him who loves us so much? Don’t chase after things that will ultimately destroy you. Instead, turn to him for forgiveness and rescue. Turn to Him who will love you and care for you and stand alongside you for the rest of your life and even beyond.