Ezekiel 16 is filled with language that will surely shock the first-time reader! The LORD recounts in metaphors how His people were like an abandoned child that He cared for. Eventually the child metaphor ultimately becomes a bride. Yet, this bride, despite all the love and care of the LORD trusts in her beauty and uses it to play the whore (16:15). The LORD declares, “How sick is your heart” and that they had done the things of a “brazen prostitute” (16:30). The people of Israel altogether, and especially those in Jerusalem were wholly unfaithful to the LORD. Despite His faithfulness to them, despite His choice of them that was solely based on His grace and mercy, they forsook Him. Marriage used as a metaphor should shock us with how much this mattered to God. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman before God. It’s to be a lifelong covenant whereby the two parties are faithful to one another. This is the picture God uses to describe the relationship He began with His people. Even in the New Testament, the marriage relationship is likened to Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:22-33).
God enters into covenant with His people. He declares that He will be faithful. Yet, throughout the Scripture, time and time again, His people have failed Him. All have at one point or another broken covenant, which is shown to us in Ezekiel’s prophecy so vividly with the language of prostitution. God clearly cares about our faithfulness to Him, He certainly has choice words for those who had turned from Him in Ezekiel’s day.
Thankfully, in the midst of a world stained with sin and amidst a people who fail regularly, there is a God who is faithful to His covenant. The end of the story in this chapter is that God promised to establish an everlasting covenant (16:60-62) a covenant that depends on His faithfulness. He has never proven to be faithless, and He won’t start now. While people fail God, He will never fail us. He is a faithful God. So then, let us strive, by His grace, to be faithful to Him today.
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