Ezekiel 16:24 - Exposition

An eminent place; lofty (Revised Version); but the word strictly points to the form of a vault, with the added meaning, as in the LXX ; οἵκημα πορνικόν , and the Vulgate, lupanar, of its being used for prostitution. It is, at hast, a curious fact that the Latin fornicari and its derivatives, take their start from the fornices, the vaults or cells which were the haunts of the harlots of Rome. Looking to the fact that all the worst forms of sensual evil came to Rome from the East, and specially from Syria—

"Jampridem in Tiberim Syrus defluxit Orontes"

(Juv; 'Sat.', 3.62)

—it seems probable that the practice was a survival of the custom to which Ezekiel refers. As in the Mylitta worship at Babylon (Herod; 1.262; Bar; 6:43), and that of Aphrodite at Corinth, prostitution assumed a quasi-religious character, and the harlot sat in a small cell, or chapel, inviting the passers by, and treating her hire as, in part, an offering to the goddess whom she served. Such chapels of prostitution were to be found naturally in the "high places" of Judah (the word, however, is not that commonly so translated), and in the crossways of intersecting roads. To such a harlot Ezekiel compares the daughter of Judah, and proceeds to paint her life with a terrible minuteness, even to the very attitude that invited to sin.