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Ezekiel 16:1-63 - Exposition

The thought that underlies Ezekiel's parable, that Israel was the bride of Jehovah, and that her sin was that of the adulterous wife, was sufficiently familiar. Isaiah ( Isaiah 1:21 ) had spoken of the "faithful city that had become a harlot." Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 2:2 ) had represented Jehovah as remembering "the kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals." What is characteristic of Ezekiel's treatment of that image is that he does not recognize any period in which Israel had been as a faithful wife. But even here he had a forerunner in Hosea, who, in order that his own life might be itself a parable, was ordered to take to himself "a wife of whoredom," one, i.e; whose character was tainted before her marriage ( Hosea 1:2 ). Ezekiel would seem to have dwelt upon that thought, and to have expanded it into the terrible history that follows.

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