Ezekiel 23:37

Adultery and blood are both in the count against them here. Their idolatries contained both features: unfaithfulness to God, and causing their sons to pass through the fire to their idols to be devoured. And all the while they shamelessly entered Jehovah's sanctuary, which their presence could only defile. Every one of their actions profaned His sabbaths, the sign of His covenant with them.

They were not simply the victims of others. Others had not merely invited them; they themselves did the inviting. They worked hard to bring in from far away those who could only pollute them with their abominations. They had decked themselves with the ornaments that God had given, to receive those who would corrupt them!

Adultery, or idolatry — "With their idols they have committed adultery" (Ezekiel 23:37) — is the special sin charged against Israel of old. She was the married wife of Jehovah. For this she was divorced. But in the purpose and grace of Jehovah, Israel will be restored to her former blessed relationship. She will never forfeit it again, as long as the sun and moon endure.

And let us never forget this. God has brought us, as believers, into such close and intimate relations with Himself. So if we play Him false and enter into guilty alliance with the world, only one sin among mankind can be compared with it — the very terrible sin of adultery.

Passing their children through the fire might seem to imply that they were dedicated to the idol by being passed quickly through a fire without being burnt. This may have been done. But some passages do not allow this interpretation. Of the Canaanites it is said, "they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods" (Deuteronomy 12:31).

Burning their children was the fullest, though not the only, profanation of the name of Israel's God. Jehovah accepted a sheep or an ox, or even a much smaller sacrifice; Satan under these names demanded their sons.

The secret of all the abominations in idolatry is that Satan is the grand mover of it. To Israel it was said that they were no longer to offer sacrifices to demons (Leviticus 17:7). They "sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons" (Psalm 106:37). They made their children pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings 23:10; Ezekiel 23:37, 39).

Those two women, Oholah and Oholibah, were utterly corrupt. Not God only, but righteous men should judge them with the judgment of adulteresses, and the judgment of those who shed blood, for that is what they truly were.

God and man are united together against them. But God still has His end in view: to get rid, by whatever severe measures, of the wickedness that would otherwise never end. And that wickedness shall at last make them recognise their covenant-God in the holiness that compels Him to afflict them in this way.