QUESTION:
Of the many precious promises found in the Bible that I claim on a daily basis, one of the most special for me as a 75 year old prodigal son, I found recorded in Ezekiel 16:59-63
I feel that to a large degree I understand it as it applies to me, except for this statement, “and you will be overcome by my favor when I take your sisters, Samaria and Sodom, and make them your daughters, for you to rule over.”
I have said that I am sure there was a meaning here for the Israelites of that day…but is there something there for me today?
What do you think?
ANSWER:
The following article from Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, may help you understand the flow of the words of Ezekiel. We must remember that these words were said and later read to a group of Hebrews and we cannot always make a one-to-one correlation and apply them directly to us today thousands of years later. The meaning of any one text of Scripture is wrapped up in the meaning the author of the text meant and what the hearers of the text could understand. It cannot have any other meaning. We often get meaning and application mixed up. It is my firm conviction that we can not have true application until we actually understand what God meant by any passage of Scripture to those who first heard it. Then, what ever it mean to them, it will still mean to us today.
Few chapters in the Bible, and certainly none in the Old Testament, provide a more forceful illustration of the love of God than does this one. The Lord finds a female child abandoned by her parents, who are described in verse 3 as an Amorite and a Hittite. This may be understood literally on the basis of Genesis 10:15, which connects Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites ethnographically; or it may be understood morally. This child the Lord rescues, raises, and eventually pledges his troth to in marriage. He lavishes upon her great riches.
Instead of appreciating and loving her Lord, she squanders her dowry on fornication, engages in ritual filicide with her offspring, seeks other lovers (foreign alliances), and in the process becomes worse than all other harlots.
For these sins the Lord sentences her (Jerusalem) to a bloody death. The punishment will be twofold. First, she will be stripped naked before her lovers (v. 37b). Stripping designates public exposure and degradation. Second, God will deliver her to her paramours (vv. 37–41) who will stone her and finally burn her. Foreign nations will ravage Jerusalem. As in the Book of Judges, God’s form of punishment on his own is to remove his protective hedge around them and hand them over to an alien. Only then will God’s wrath be assuaged.
What makes Jerusalem’s promiscuity so abominable is that she is more depraved than her sisters Sodom (to the south) and Samaria (to the north). Both of these analogies would touch a raw nerve, but the one referring to “sister Sodom” would be particularly upsetting. Not only is Jerusalem the worst of the three sisters, but also she has done things that make Samaria and Sodom blush! How interesting and debilitating it is when Sodomites, the epitome of iniquity, turn red when they gaze on the behavior of the citizens of the city of God!
To shame Jerusalem even further, the Lord promises the restoration of her two sinful sisters, and Jerusalem as well. God’s love is not restricted to one citizenry and to one city. Jerusalem, who once could not even bring herself to say “Sodom,” will now have to share the Lord’s love with Sodom. After all, if Jerusalem can spread her love around in the wrong way, why cannot the Lord spread? [Elwell, Walter A. ed., Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company) 1989]
