and they shall deal with you in hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered. Your lewdness and your whoring
Ezekiel 23 pictures Samaria and Jerusalem as two sisters who chased foreign nations instead of trusting God. Now the nations Jerusalem courted turn on her, take all she worked for and leave her exposed — and God says this is His own judgment.
The Mind Already Turned Away
The hatred in this verse did not start with the invasion. Jerusalem had already turned against the very nation she once wanted.
William KellyNot content with Assyria, she desired the Chaldeans and their idolatrous worship. And the sons of Babylon defiled her; but though they defiled her, her mind turned away from them. That is always the way where God's favour and God's will are missing. Evil nearness soon breeds mutual disgust.
Judgment That God Explains
God does not judge without giving His reasons. He traces Jerusalem's ruin back to a nature that never changed.
J. N. DarbyIn Ezekiel 23 Jehovah shows that He is right to judge Jerusalem, because her way of life was sinful and unfaithful. Her whoring with the nations brought her early days to mind. The same conduct showed the same nature. She has ended as she began, because at heart she was the same.
The Old Attractions Become the Rod
The qualities that first won Jerusalem's heart — strength, style, capability — are listed again as her attackers march in. Nothing about the Chaldeans has changed; only which side they are on.
F. W. GrantThe same qualities are listed again. Before, they spoke of the energy and ability that won the hearts of the Israelites. Now those same words serve the opposite interest. How the things that once lured men face them on the day of reckoning that comes to each one! They do as they please without mercy, though they are only the instruments of God's judgment, as He declares.
Stripped of Everything Earned
Jerusalem is called Oholibah in this chapter. She loses everything she worked for — yet even this has a purpose beyond punishment.
F. W. GrantYet on God's part all this severity is not mere judgment. As He says here, the effect is to make the lewdness of Oholibah stop, and to make her turn away in disgust from the things that once attracted her. A person must come to their senses to come to God, and this is the process God was now bringing Israel through. What a terrible thing to face! To be left naked and with nothing, everything gone that once made you feel and look rich to others for a time, even while you were throwing it away.
Nakedness Means Being Seen for What You Are
The stripping is not only material. Removing the clothes removes the disguise, and this verse is read alongside the end of the great harlot in Revelation, where the same pattern of hatred and exposure appears.
Walter ScottThe punishment given to the harlot seems to come in stages. First, hated: her recent allies and supporters now look at her with loathing and disgust. Second, made desolate: robbed of her wealth and completely ruined. Third, naked: they strip off her purple and scarlet robes, and she stands before all in her true character, a shameless and abandoned woman (Ezek. 23:29; Rev. 3:18). Her moral nakedness and shame are plain to everyone.
The Warning That Reaches Us
The same danger reaches us. Friendship with the world ends in war with the world.
J. N. DarbyBut if we fail — if we fall into idolatry, if we commit fornication with the world by taking its bait, if in any way at all we make friends with the world in the desert — then we bring wars on ourselves. And this kind of fighting does not even gain us any spiritual ground. God then has to change our relations with the world completely. If we had not formed intimacies with them, we should not have had that trouble; but since they deceive us as our friends, we must become enemies.
Summary
- Courted. Jerusalem chased the Chaldeans for their energy and ability. The same qualities later describe the army sent against her.
- Alienated. Sin does not hold its partners together. "Evil nearness soon breeds mutual disgust," so the hatred here was brewing long before the armies came.
- Stripped. Her old lovers take everything she worked for. Nothing remains of what once made her "feel and look rich to others."
- Exposed. Naked, she stands before everyone in her true character. One writer traces the same stages — hated, ruined, stripped — forward to Revelation.
- Restored? Writers differ in emphasis. One reads even this severity as God's method: He brings a person to their senses, so they can come to Him.