Yahweh's Marriage Pt 4: Ezekiel

What hope was there for ancient Judah after abandoning God?

This is the fourth installment in a 5-part series on the Old Testament prophets’ use of marriage and divorce laws. Part one on ancient marriage laws can be found here, part two on Hosea can be found here, and part three on Jeremiah can be found here.

Ezekiel used the same marriage and divorce metaphors as the other prophets, and added an additional image: Yahweh as a parent who rescued an exposed infant, and then raised her before marrying her.

When I passed by you again and looked upon you, behold, you were at the age for love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness: yea, I plighted my troth to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine. (Ezekiel 16:8, RSV)

Just as Ruth asked Boaz to spread his cloak over her in a betrothal ceremony, so Yahweh spread his garment over the young Judah, establishing a betrothal.

Like Hosea, Ezekiel described the food, clothing (or jewelry), and oil that God gave her in fulfillment of his marriage vows:

Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you, and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with leather, I swathed you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I decked you with ornaments, and put bracelets on your arms, and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose, and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head. Thus you were decked with gold and silver; and your raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and embroidered cloth; you ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful, and came to regal estate. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor which I had bestowed upon you, says the Lord God. (Ezekiel 16:9, RSV)

Yahweh did not just provide the bare minimum requirements of a husband for a wife; he lavished great wealth on his bride: the most beautiful and elaborate clothing, fine food, beautiful jewelry. This was not just a bride, but a queen. Yet in her pride, Yahweh’s queen, Judah, soon followed in Israel’s footsteps, running after foreign gods until her marriage with Yahweh was finally destroyed.

Ezekiel painted from a full emotional palate to reach the hearts of his hearers. God had rescued his people from Egypt and made a covenant with them at Sinai. The former event revealed Yahweh-as-father and the latter revealed Yahweh-as-husband. Ezekiel gathered up the emotional freight of these two cornerstones of their history with Yahweh, and then heavily brought down all that weight to convey the shocking nature of his people’s abandonment.

Like we saw in Hosea and Jeremiah, Judah had taken the wealth given her by Yahweh and given those gifts to her lovers:

You took some of your garments, and made for yourself gaily decked shrines, and on them played the harlot; the like has never been, nor ever shall be. You also took your fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the harlot; and you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. Also my bread which I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing odor, says the Lord God. (Ezekiel 16:-10, RSV)

If that had not been enough, Judah also sacrificed some of the children she had born to Yahweh to idols. (Ez. 16:20-21)

Judah had broken her marriage vows on a number of grounds: 1) she committed adultery 2) instead of taking the fine clothing, food, and oil from Yahweh to bless her husband, she gave his gifts to foreign gods and 2) instead of nurturing and raising the children she bore to Yahweh, she sacrificed them.

Ezekiel used shocking language to startle the people into repentance. A footnote in David Instone Brewer’s Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible reads, “These chapters contain sexually explicit language that would have been shocking to the original readers and that cannot be translated faithfully in any Bible that will be used in worship.”¹ Ezekiel was not being scandalous for its own sake. His desire was, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to provoke a dull-hearted people into remembering their God.

How then did Yahweh say he would deal with Judah? Despite her grievous and graphically portrayed sins, despite deserving divorce, Ezekiel declared that God did not desire a separation. Rather, Yahweh promised to remember and renew his covenant with his people, and to establish an everlasting covenant with her. (Ez. 16:59)

God’s people were punished for all the sins that Ezekiel enumerated. God said, “The Gentiles shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity; because they were unfaithful to me, therefore I hid my face from them. I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword.” (Ezk. 39:23) But the story does not end in hopelessness: "‘Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for my holy name. . .” (39:25) and “‘And I will not hide my face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out my spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord God.” (Ez. 39:29)

Despite the punishment and break between them, God showed Ezekiel a glimpse of beauty and restoration to come. Ezekiel received an extended vision of the new Temple: perfectly proportionate, perfectly constructed, perfectly inhabited by God’s people (made holy) and the presence of God’s glory. (Ez. 40-44) We shouldn’t be too quick to assume that this temple referred to something in the Church age of history, or in the end times. As God’s Old Covenant people meditated on this prophetic temple’s particularities, they would be convicted of sin and reminded of God’s holiness. They would be gradually turned into the very city-temple-bride that Ezekiel saw. This was no return of a disgraced and defiled divorcee; this would be an entirely new bride, one who would be faithful to her God in an entirely new covenant.

1. David Instone Brewer’s Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible, 44, footnote 34.