Foreword to Ezekiel 23.
Two promiscuous women are the allegory in this chapter. In an analogy of Jerusalem (the kingdom of Judah), and Samaria (the rebel breakaway ten tribes of Israel), Aholah represents Jerusalem, and Aholibah Israel. They are either called whores, or prostitutes, because both the southern and northern kingdoms had fallen prey to the idolatry and devil worship of the cult of Baal. Instead of vanquishing all the Canaanites, in the original conquest by Joshua, those allowed to remain became a snare to both Jerusalem and Samaria.
In God’s eyes such idolatry was equated with the actions of an unfaithful wife. Thus Ezekiel’s prophecy uses the terms whore, and whoredom to describe how they had prostituted themselves to alien gods. Both kingdoms paid a terrible price for their infidelity: God provoked the nations of Egypt, Syria, Assyria and Chaldea to lay siege to Jerusalem and Samaria with disastrous consequences, ending finally in the destruction of both cities of Samaria first, and Jerusalem 120 years later. The Lord regarded the Jews as his own people and calls them his wife, and himself as husband many times in both Old and New Testaments.
When Isaiah uses the word RETURN he speaks of the future regathering of the scattered Jews (Diaspora) throughout the nations. It is clear that God has judged both the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah for their grievous apostasy in adopting the pagan worship of other nations. Despite God’s merciful pleas through His prophets to repent they resorted to the worship of sun, moon, stars and idols of the cult of Baal. Under the reign of King Manasseh Judah had passed the point of no return, that Samaria had reached four generations earlier.
The despicable decadence of God’s chosen people: the Jews infuriated the Lord. Though his judgments were harsh he promised never to totally abandon the Jews even in their respective bondage and captivity. Jerusalem would be destroyed, the cities would become ghost towns, and the once fruitful Land would become barren and unproductive, yet in His afflicting chastisement He would not and could not forget His covenant with David, (the perpetuity of the Kingdom of David), or Solomon (the eternal preservation of Jerusalem).
The King James Version was the last of the six Puritan printed Bibles of the Reformation in the 16th & 17th century based on the Greek Text of Erasmus and published in Britain, France, Germany, and Geneva when translators and publishers had to flee for their lives. Due to the Enlightenment of the 18th Century and its damning effects all subsequent modernizing translators have rejected the work of Erasmus and used instead the sub-standard 19th C Greek text of Westcott & Hort. Thus subtle Roman scholarship effectively muted the authoritative voice of the Puritan Reformation and Protestantism itself.
Bible Reference: King James Version 1611- Public Domain (ex biblegateway.com)
Foreword by John David.
