Ezekiel 16 - New Catholic Bible (NCB)

Chapter 16^[a]

The Unfaithful Wife. ¹ This word of the Lord was addressed to me: ² Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominable practices. ³ Say to her: Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: By origin and birth, you belong to Canaan. Your father was an Amorite and your mother was a Hittite.

⁴ As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut. You were neither bathed in water, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. ⁵ No one took pity on you or did any of these deeds out of compassion for you. Rather, you were thrown out into an open field, for you were regarded as something loathsome on the day you were born.

⁶ Then I passed by and saw you kicking helplessly in your blood. I said to you as you lay there in your blood, “Live, ⁷ and grow like a plant of the field.” You grew up and developed and reached the stage of full womanhood. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, but you were still naked and exposed.

⁸ I passed by you again and saw that you were old enough for love. I spread the edge of my cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I swore an oath to you and made a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine. ⁹ Then I bathed you in water, washed away the blood from your body, and anointed you with oil.

¹⁰ After this, I clothed you with embroidered gowns and sandals of fine leather, as well as with a linen headband and a silk cloak. ¹¹ I adorned you with jewels: bracelets for your arms, a chain around your neck, ¹² a ring in your nose, pendants for your ears, and a beautiful crown for your head.

¹³ Thus, you were adorned with gold and silver, and your garments were of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. Fine flour, honey, and oil were your food. You grew exceedingly beautiful, fit to be a queen. ¹⁴ You were renowned among the nations because of your beauty, since it was perfect because of the splendor I had bestowed upon you, says the Lord God.

¹⁵ But you became infatuated with your own beauty, and you exploited your renown as you freely offered to play the harlot to every passerby. ¹⁶ You used some of your garments to decorate colorful shrines for yourself where you played the harlot. ¹⁷ You also took the beautiful gold and silver jewelry that I had given you and made for yourself male images, with which you committed fornication.

¹⁸ Furthermore, you took your embroidered clothes to cover these images and set my oil and my incense before them. ¹⁹ You also took the food that I had given you—the fine flour, the oil, and the honey with which I fed you—and set it before them as a pleasant odor, says the Lord God.

²⁰ You took the sons and daughters you had borne to me and offered them as sacrifices. Was it not enough that you had become a harlot? ²¹ You slaughtered my children and immolated them as an offering to your idols. ²² And throughout all your abominations and your harlotries you never gave a thought to your youth when you were naked and bare and kicking helplessly in your own blood.

²³ Then, after all your wicked deeds—woe, woe to you! says the Lord God— ²⁴ you built for yourself a platform and erected for yourself a lofty place in every square. ²⁵ At the head of every street, you built your dais and degraded your beauty, offering your body to every passerby in countless acts of harlotry. ²⁶ You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and provoked me to anger with your repeated acts of fornication.

²⁷ Therefore, I stretched out my hand against you, reduced your supply of food, and delivered you into the hands of your enemies, the Philistine women, who were horrified by your lewd behavior. ²⁸ You also played the whore with the Assyrians in your insatiable lust, and even then you were not satisfied. ²⁹ Again and again you continued to play the harlot in Chaldea, the land of merchants, and still you remained unsatisfied.

³⁰ How truly sick you are, says the Lord God, for engaging in the deeds of a brazen prostitute, ³¹ building your platform at every street corner and erecting your lofty dais in every square. Yet you do not truly fulfill the role of a prostitute because you scorn any payment.

³² An adulterous wife welcomes strangers instead of her husband. ³³ All prostitutes receive gifts, but you gave gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come from everywhere to receive your favors. ³⁴ Thus in your harlotry, you were different from other such women. No one sought you out for prostitution, and you gave payment instead of receiving it. You are the complete opposite of all other whores.

³⁵ Therefore, you harlot, listen to the word of the Lord. ³⁶ Thus says the Lord God: Because you poured forth your lust and revealed your nakedness in your promiscuous dealings with your lovers, and because you surrendered to them the blood of your children, ³⁷ therefore, I will gather together all your lovers in whom you took pleasure, all those whom you loved and all those whom you disliked. I will gather them from all sides and expose you naked for them to see.

³⁸ I will inflict on you the sentence that is imposed on adulteresses and murderesses and bring down upon you the bloody vengeance of my wrath and jealousy. ³⁹ I will deliver you into their hands, and they will destroy your platforms and tear down your lofty places. They will strip off your clothes, take away your jewels, and leave you stark naked. ⁴⁰ They will assemble a mob to punish you, stoning you and cutting you to pieces with their swords. ⁴¹ They will burn down your houses and execute judgments against you while many women look on. Thus, I shall put an end to your harlotry, and never again will you make payments to your lovers.

⁴² Once my fury against you has been exhausted, then my jealousy will turn away from you. I will be calm and will no longer be provoked to anger. ⁴³ Because you have never called to mind the days of your youth but enraged me with all of your wicked deeds, I have brought your conduct down upon your head, says the Lord God. For did you not add lewd behavior to all of your other abominable deeds?

⁴⁴ Everyone who quotes proverbs will use this one in regard to you: “Like mother, like daughter.” ⁴⁵ You are a true daughter of your mother who loathed her husband and her children, and you are a true sister of your sisters who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite, and your father was an Amorite. ⁴⁶ Your elder sister is Samaria, who lives to the north of you with her daughters, and your younger sister is Sodom, who lives to the south of you with her daughters. ⁴⁷ You not only followed their ways and imitated their loathsome practices, but within a brief period of time you were more corrupt than they in all of your ways.

⁴⁸ As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. ⁴⁹ The crimes of your sister Sodom were pride, gluttony, and lack of concern for the poor and needy. ⁵⁰ They were haughty and committed abominable deeds in my presence. Therefore, I swept them from my sight, as you have seen.

⁵¹ Samaria did not commit half of the sins of which you have been guilty. You have done far more abominable crimes than they did, and you have made your sisters appear to be innocent because of all the abominations that you have committed. ⁵² Bear the shame of your disgrace, as a result of which you have made possible a more favorable judgment for your sisters. Because your conduct was far more abominable than theirs, they appear to be more upright in comparison with you. Therefore, blush for shame, and bear the disgrace of having made your sisters appear to be righteous.

⁵³ I intend to restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and your own fortunes along with theirs, ⁵⁴ so that you may bear your own disgrace and be ashamed of all you have done as you offer consolation to them.

⁵⁵ As for your sisters, when Sodom and her daughters will be restored to their former state and Samaria and her daughters will be restored to their former state, then you and your daughters will return to your former state. ⁵⁶ Did you not regard with contempt your sister Sodom in the days of your pride, ⁵⁷ before your wickedness was revealed? Now you are regarded with contempt by the daughters of Edom and all her neighbors and by the daughters of the Philistines—all these people despise you. ⁵⁸ You must suffer the consequences of your lewdness and your loathsome abominations, says the Lord.

⁵⁹ For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have deserved, you who despised your oath and broke the covenant. ⁶⁰ However, I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I shall establish with you an everlasting covenant. ⁶¹ Then you will recall your former conduct and be ashamed when I take your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger, and give them to you as daughters, even though I am not bound to do so by my covenant with you.

⁶² Thus I will reestablish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord, ⁶³ and thus remember and be ashamed and be reduced to silence when I forgive you for everything that you have done, says the Lord God.

Footnotes

1. Ezekiel 16:1 The great depictions of the history of Israel are stories of infidelity; we need only read the Books of Kings to sense the full tragedy. In three pictures, Ezekiel paints a great fresco of the history of his people: verses 1, 20, 23.