The City That Forgot How It Began

Sixty-three verses long, this is the longest chapter in the Book of Ezekiel, and it is one continuous oracle. The King James “Again” renders a plain Hebrew “and”, linking it to the vine of chapter 15: there Jerusalem was burnt wood, and here she becomes a woman with a life history.

“Cause to know” is causative: Ezekiel is to make the city face its record, not simply inform it. The Mishnah (Megillah 4:10) records Rabbi Eliezer ruling that this chapter must not be read aloud as a prophetic lesson in the synagogue, so raw did its language sound.

Jerusalem really was Canaanite before it was Israelite: David took it from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:6–9). The Amarna letters of the fourteenth century BC preserve notes from its king Abdi-Heba, whose name honours the Hurrian goddess Hebat, so a mixed Amorite and northern pedigree for the old city is not pure invective.

Four acts of birth care are listed and each is denied. The cord was cut, the baby washed, rubbed with salt and bound tight in cloths; salting newborns is attested in the ancient world and survived in parts of the Near East into modern times. “To supple thee” guesses at a rare Hebrew word, probably meaning to cleanse.

“None eye pitied thee” uses the phrase Ezekiel has so far kept for God’s refusal to spare (5:11; 7:4; 8:18; 9:10). Here it is human eyes that looked and felt nothing. Exposure of unwanted infants in the open was practised across the ancient world, and “to the lothing of thy person” means she was treated as something abhorrent.

The line is doubled in the Hebrew; the Greek translation drops the repetition. “In thy blood, live” is recited to this day at the Jewish rite of circumcision, and the Passover Haggadah quotes this verse, reading the blood as Israel’s blood in Egypt. The command is given while the child is still unwashed.

“Multiply as the bud of the field” is literally “I made thee a myriad, like the growth of the field”. “Excellent ornaments” translates “the ornament of ornaments”, most likely the full beauty of womanhood that the next clauses describe. The pair “naked and bare” returns in verses 22 and 39 and in 23:29.

A man spreading the corner of his garment over a woman claimed her in marriage: Ruth asks Boaz, “spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid” (Ruth 3:9), and the Hebrew kanaf is the same. “The time of love” means she was of age to marry. Oath and covenant make it a wedding, and “thou becamest mine” is its vow.

“Throughly” is simply the 1611 spelling of thoroughly. The blood is still there from verse 6, and only now is it washed. Bathing and anointing were bridal preparation: Esther’s year of oils and spices before she went to the king (Esther 2:12) is the same custom on a royal scale.

Embroidered work (riqmah) and the leather called tachash are both tabernacle materials (Exodus 26:36; 26:14), and fine linen, shesh, dressed the priests. The bride is clothed in the fabrics of the sanctuary. “Silk”, meshi, occurs only here and in verse 13, and its exact meaning is uncertain.

The Hebrew for “chain” is ravid, the gold necklace Pharaoh put on Joseph (Genesis 41:42). Bracelets were among the first gifts Abraham’s servant gave Rebekah at the well (Genesis 24:22). The jewellery is the jewellery of a bride brought into a great house.

“A jewel on thy forehead” is in Hebrew a nezem on the nose, a nose ring; the King James moved it upward. It is the same ornament the servant put on Rebekah’s face (Genesis 24:47). The crown, ‘ateret tif’arah, a crown of splendour, lifts her from bride to queen.

Fine flour and oil are grain offering ingredients (Leviticus 2:1), but honey was barred from the altar (Leviticus 2:11), so this is a royal table, not a sacrifice. “Prosper into a kingdom” is the one clause where the allegory openly names the monarchy of David and his house.

“Perfect” is kalil, complete, the word Ezekiel will use of Tyre, “perfect in beauty” (27:3; 28:12). Lamentations 2:15 reports passers-by mocking the ruined Jerusalem: “Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty?” “Renown” is shem, name: her name spread because of what was put on her.

“Every one that passed by” turns the verb of verses 6 and 8 around: God passed by and rescued her; now she offers herself to every passer-by. “His it was” renders two obscure Hebrew words, lo yehi, perhaps “let it be his”, and many scholars suspect the text has been damaged.

The word for “divers colours” means patched or spotted, the root Laban’s speckled sheep bear in Genesis 30:32. Josiah’s purge found women in the temple weaving hangings for the Asherah (2 Kings 23:7), which may be the practice meant. The closing clause is obscure in the Hebrew; the King James reads it as “this must never be”.

“My gold and my silver” insists on ownership. Hosea 2:8 had already charged Israel with spending on Baal the silver and gold God gave her. “Images of men” is literally images of a male, whether male gods or, as some think, phallic figures; the Hebrew does not settle which.

Idols were dressed: Jeremiah 10:9 describes gods clothed in blue and purple by craftsmen. The embroidered garments of verse 10 now cover wooden and metal figures. “Mine incense” is qetoret, the word used for the sanctuary’s own blended incense in Exodus 30.

“Meat” in 1611 meant food of any kind. The phrase “sweet savour”, reach nichoach, is the language of accepted sacrifice from Noah onward (Genesis 8:21), and Ezekiel has already used it of offerings made under every green tree (6:13). The closing “thus it was” is flat record: it happened.

“Borne unto me” names the children as God’s before they were ever the city’s. “To be devoured” is literally “to eat”, the idols pictured as feeding. The valley of Hinnom’s Topheth, where children were burned (Jeremiah 7:31; 2 Kings 23:10), lay just below the city walls.

“Pass through the fire” is the technical phrase of Deuteronomy 18:10 and of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). By adding “slain”, shachat, the verb for slaughtering sacrificial animals, Ezekiel closes any argument that the rite stopped short of death.

Memory is the chapter’s hinge: “remembered” returns in verses 43, 60, 61 and 63. The last words repeat verse 6 and verse 7, “naked and bare” and “polluted in thy blood”, so the city’s forgotten beginning is quoted back to her in her own original terms.

The sentence breaks off for the parenthesis, and the King James keeps the break with brackets. “Woe” is rare in Ezekiel, a handful of uses in forty-eight chapters, and this is the only place he doubles it. It comes after the charge of child sacrifice, which is where the cry belongs.

“Eminent place” is gav, a mound or vaulted platform, and “high place” here is ramah, a raised shrine, not the usual bamah. Both were built in the streets and squares of the city itself, not on distant hilltops, which is the new element: idolatry had moved into public thoroughfares.

“Made thy beauty to be abhorred” uses the verb behind to‘evah, abomination: her beauty became an abomination. “The head of the way” is where a road begins or forks, the busiest point of traffic. “Opened thy feet” is a blunt euphemism the King James translates without softening.

“Great of flesh” is a coarse sexual image, and the allegory names the political fact beneath it. Judah repeatedly looked to Egypt for rescue from Mesopotamian powers: Isaiah 30 and 31 condemn it under Hezekiah, and Ezekiel 17:15 will condemn Zedekiah for sending to Pharaoh.

“Ordinary food” is choq, a fixed allowance, the same idea as the food a husband owed a wife in Exodus 21:10. Sennacherib’s annals record that in 701 BC he cut away Judean towns and gave them to the Philistine kings of Ashdod, Ekron and Gaza, a literal handing over of her portion to the Philistines.

Ahaz bought Assyrian help from Tiglath-pileser with temple silver and then copied the altar he saw at Damascus into the temple (2 Kings 16:7–16). “Unsatiable” is the chapter’s charge in one word: each alliance led to another without bringing the security it promised.

“Canaan” was also the Hebrew word for trader, and the King James translates the same phrase in 17:4 as “a land of traffick”. Here it may mean the trading land of Chaldea. Hezekiah welcomed the Babylonian envoys of Merodach-baladan and showed them his treasury (2 Kings 20:12–19).

The word for “heart”, libbah, is unusual, and a cognate in Akkadian meaning rage has led some scholars to translate “How furious I am with you”. “Imperious whorish woman” renders a phrase using shallatet, domineering, from the root that later gave the word sultan.

The shrine language of verses 24 and 25 is repeated almost exactly. The twist is at the end: a prostitute works for payment, and Jerusalem “scornest hire”. What made her different from the women of the trade is that she refused the fee, which the next verses explain.

“Instead of her husband” is literally “under her husband”, the phrase for a wife still bound to him; it is the wording of the jealousy ordeal law in Numbers 5:19 and 29. The verse is an exclamation rather than a charge, one line of disbelief in the middle of the list.

The two Hebrew words for a prostitute’s fee here, neden and nedeh, occur nowhere else. The history behind it is expensive: Ahaz sent temple silver and gold to Assyria (2 Kings 16:8), and Hezekiah stripped the gold from the temple doors to pay Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:14–16).

“Contrary” is hefekh, an overturning, and it frames the verse at both ends. The usual order of the trade is reversed: no one pursues her, and she pays rather than being paid. Judah bought allies who never came to her side when she was attacked.

The address changes from narration to summons. “O harlot, hear” is the call to a defendant to stand for sentence, and the next verses follow the court pattern of the prophets: “because” for the charge in verse 36, then “therefore” for the sentence from verse 37.

“Filthiness” is nechoshet, which elsewhere means bronze or copper. Many take it here as “your money was poured out”, the payments of verses 33 and 34; others as a bodily discharge. Either way, the charge sheet ends with the children, whose blood makes the case more than adultery.

Public stripping was an ancient penalty for an adulterous wife, echoed in Hosea 2:3, 10, and Nahum 3:5 turns the same threat on Nineveh. Here God gathers not only the lovers but “them that thou hast hated”, so friends and enemies both watch. Babylon was once courted (verse 29) and is now the executioner.

Two capital crimes stand together: adultery (Leviticus 20:10) and bloodshed (Genesis 9:6), matching the two counts of verse 36, whoredom and the children’s blood. “Jealousy” is qin’ah, the zeal of the “jealous God” of Exodus 20:5, the anger of a partner betrayed.

Every gift is reversed in order: the shrines of verses 24 and 25 are thrown down, the clothes of verse 10 and jewels of verses 11 and 12 are stripped, and she ends “naked and bare”, exactly as in verse 7 before the covenant. The sentence returns her to the field.

“Company” is qahal, an assembly, the body that carried out a stoning. Deuteronomy 22:21–24 prescribes stoning for adultery. The swords belong to siege warfare, not to a court, so the verse blends a legal execution with the storming of a city; “thrust thee through” means hacked to pieces.

In 586 BC Nebuzaradan “burnt the house of the LORD, and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem” (2 Kings 25:9). “Many women” are the nations as onlookers. “Thou also shalt give no hire any more” ends the paying of verse 33: there will be nothing left to pay with.

“Make my fury to rest” is a verb Ezekiel uses for anger reaching its end point (5:13; 21:17; 24:13). The verse is striking for promising that the fury will stop, the jealousy go, and God “be quiet”. Judgment in this chapter has a limit set by its own completion.

“Fretted me” means made me tremble with anger. The last clause is difficult: the King James reads a prohibition, but many modern translations take it as a question, “Did you not commit lewdness on top of all your abominations?” “Recompense thy way upon thine head” is Ezekiel’s idiom for conduct returning on the one who did it (9:10; 11:21).

The proverb is two Hebrew words, ke’immah bittah, “like mother, her daughter”. Ezekiel takes a lively interest in popular sayings and quotes others at 12:22 and 18:2, usually to overturn them. This one he turns into a charge sheet that everyone can repeat.

The pedigree of verse 3 comes back reversed, mother Hittite first, and “your” is now plural: the sisters share the same parents. Loathing husband and children names both halves of the case: abandoning God and giving the children to the fire, a pattern the chapter lays at the door of all three sisters.

Facing east, as Hebrew orientation did, the left hand is north and the right hand south. Samaria lay north of Jerusalem and Sodom to the south-east by the Dead Sea. “Elder” and “younger” are literally greater and smaller: Samaria had been the larger kingdom. The “daughters” are each city’s dependent towns.

“As if that were a very little thing” renders a rare phrase that can also mean “within a little while”: it took Jerusalem no time to outdo them. Either way the verse denies that Jerusalem merely copied her sisters. She did not follow their ways; she went beyond them.

“As I live” is God swearing by his own life. The Book of Ezekiel uses that oath sixteen times, more than any other book. Placing Sodom on the more innocent side of a comparison was about the most offensive thing a prophet could say in Jerusalem.

Genesis 13:10 had described Sodom’s plain as “well watered every where... even as the garden of the LORD”, the source of its fulness of bread. “Strengthen the hand” is the gesture of support Leviticus 25:35 commands toward a brother who has become poor. Idleness here is careless, untroubled ease.

“As I saw good” is literally “when I saw”, an echo of Genesis 18:21, where the LORD says he will go down to Sodom “and see”. “Abomination” here is singular, to‘evah, and the verse does not spell it out. “Haughty” is the same pride of verse 49 now shown in conduct.

Samaria had fallen more than a century earlier, in 722 BC, and Judah had read that as a verdict on the north. Jeremiah 3:11 had already said something similar: “backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.” “Justified” means made them look righteous by comparison.

“Which hast judged” uses the verb palal, to arbitrate or intervene, the root of the Hebrew word for prayer. Jerusalem sat as judge over her sisters, and her own conduct became their best defence. “Bear thy shame” appears twice, bracketing the verdict “they are more righteous than thou”.

“Bring again their captivity” is shuv shevut, the idiom of restoring fortunes (Deuteronomy 30:3). Sodom’s daughters would be the other cities of the plain named in Genesis 14:2, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Jerusalem is named last, and her restoration comes “in the midst of them”, not ahead of them.

“A comfort unto them” is sharp irony: Jerusalem consoles her sisters simply by being worse than they were. The verb is nacham, to comfort, the word of Isaiah 40:1, here in a bitter sense. Her shame and their consolation arrive together.

“Former estate” is said three times, once for each sister, in the same order as verse 53: Sodom, Samaria, Jerusalem. The repetition is deliberate, and it gives Jerusalem no separate clause of her own; she returns on the same terms as the cities she despised.

Literally, Sodom was “not a report in thy mouth”. The phrase can mean Jerusalem never spoke of her at all, or spoke of her only as a byword, a name to shudder at. Either way it describes the complacency of a city sure that it was nothing like Sodom.

Where the King James has “Syria”, many Hebrew manuscripts and the Syriac read Edom. The two names differ by one letter, since daleth and resh look alike in Hebrew script. Edom’s gloating over Jerusalem’s fall is remembered in Psalm 137:7 and Obadiah 11–14, which suits the reading.

The verb is perfect tense, “thou hast borne”, speaking of the punishment as already carried. The King James prints “saith the LORD”, the shorter form of the formula, where Ezekiel almost always says “saith the Lord GOD”. It closes the sisters section before the covenant turn.

The oath, ‘alah, is the sworn curse attached to a covenant, joined to it in Deuteronomy 29:12–14. Ezekiel pairs the same two words in 17:16–19 of Zedekiah breaking his oath to Nebuchadnezzar. God’s “deal with thee as thou hast done” is the principle of verse 43 once more.

“The days of thy youth” are the covenant of verse 8, most naturally Sinai. An everlasting covenant, berit ‘olam, is what God made with Noah (Genesis 9:16) and Abraham (Genesis 17:7), and Ezekiel returns to it in 37:26 as a covenant of peace. Jerusalem’s forgetting (verse 22) is met by God’s remembering.

The sisters change rank: Samaria, the elder, and Sodom are given to Jerusalem as daughters, the word verse 46 used for dependent towns. The honour is real, but it arrives with shame attached, and it comes on God’s initiative, not as the reward of her own covenant keeping.

“Establish my covenant” is heqim berit, the phrase used for the covenants with Noah (Genesis 9:9–11) and Abraham (Genesis 17:7). Throughout the book, “ye shall know that I am the LORD” has come through judgment. Here the knowing comes through the covenant renewed.

“When I am pacified” is kapper, the verb of atonement in Leviticus, with God as subject: “when I make atonement for thee”. “Open thy mouth” uses a noun, pitchon peh, found again only in 29:21, where it is Ezekiel whose mouth is opened. Here the mouth that boasted stays shut.