Days 208 & 209: Ezekiel 9-16

Over the years I have grown more and more to see our (my) relationship with God as being very much like a marriage. I think this is biblical (and Ezekiel 16 is filled with it), but I don't think most of us get it. So many of us think of religion as a list of rules handed down by the Supreme Authority and Judge and picture God keeping His eye on us to catch us in the act of some sin...then when He inevitably does we have to go through the motions of some sort of atonement or confession...say the right words, do the right things and we're good again. Until the next time.

What we don't get is that God is looking at the whole thing as a committed relationship. We're His wife...He's our husband. He loves us. He has taken the vows of marriage...and so have we. When we sin, it's not that we've broken some cold, impersonal, rule or law...we've broken the heart of our Lover.

In Ezekiel God is, over and over, telling the people about all the terrible things that are going to happen because they have sinned. But then when we hit chapter 16 we discover that it's not simply that the people are breaking the "rules". They have broken their marriage vows. God is a jealous Husband whose wife has been openly unfaithful.

Consider these passages in Ezekiel 16:

I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine. (16:8)

So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign LORD. (16:13-14)

 But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. (16:15)

At every street corner you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, spreading your legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. (16:25)

 You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! (16:32)

I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. (16:59)