Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

Ezekiel 16 is known for being the most sexually explicit chapter in the Bible.

Some scholars even consider it pornographic.

The prophet casts the city of Jerusalem as a whore when articulating why God has condemned it and marked it for destruction.

This episode explores the portrayal of spiritual apostasy as wanton whoredom in all its ugliness— and God’s amazing ability to forgive in spite of it.

This will be a two part discussion.

Introduction

So Ezekiel 16 is a long chapter.

It's the longest (I think) in the whole book: 63 verses.

As our custom is, we're not going to go verse by verse through the whole thing, but we will go verse by verse through a good bit of it because every verse just seems to have something in it.

We'll try to group things here and there as we can, but just to give you a flavor for how scholars look at this, I want to open with a quotation from Dan Block's commentary.

He writes this:

. . .

The chapter is held together by its unique vocabulary and style.(That’s

a nice academic way of putting it, Dan.] Distinctive forms of expression include shocking imagery . . .

This impression is further reinforced by the root znh, “to commit harlotry, to practice illicit sex,” . . .

The verb and other derivatives occur twenty-one times in this description of Jerusalem’s unrestrained nymphomaniacal adventures with her lovers. . . .

. . .

Given the covenantal basis for the marriage metaphor, one might have expected the verb nāʾap, “to commit adultery,” to be used to describe Israel’s infidelity to Yahweh.

The present preference for zānâ may be attributed to several factors: (1) the use of the participle zônâto describe a professional whore suggests that habitual, iterative activity is implied in the verb zānâ; (2) the motive of personal gain (cf.

16:33–34) places the offense in the realm of prostitution, rather than adultery; (3) the involvement of multiple partners (cf.

16:17, 25–29) is more appropriate to zānâ; (4) in contrast to nāʾap [ the typical adultery verb], which refers to illicit sex by both genders, the verb zānâis used exclusively of females.

Since Israel assumes the female role in the relationship with Yahweh, it is appropriate that the verb used in the metaphor should be strictly associated with female activity.

Consequently, although the root nāʾap is more fitting to describe Israel’s covenantal infidelity, znhoffers a more forceful rhetorical tool.

The innocent young woman, graciously elevated to the status of queen, has become a whore. . .

. . . the semi-pornographic style is a deliberate rhetorical device designed to produce a strong emotional response.

For the translator whose aim is equivalent impact, the line between appropriate shock and offensive lack of taste is extremely fine."

So I think that does a nice job of capturing in academese what in the world we're jumping into here.

I should say this is not an episode for the kids, so you might want to usher them out of the room or do whatever you think is appropriate, because there's a lot of stuff in here you probably won't want them hearing.

Let's jump into the passage.

Ezekiel 16 begins this way:

Those are the first two verses.

"Abominations" should be a familiar term to our listeners because it's the same word that you would get in Leviticus for things that are abominable.

Things that just are so offensive that God cannot tolerate those offenses.

And in many cases (if you remember back in the Leviticus series), it had to do with sexual transgression or some sort of idolatry or apostasy—something grotesque.

And so that's what we have here:

2 “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations…”

And boy—is he ever going to make them known!

God is, of course, going to give him the verbage here.

In verse 3, we continue:

We’ll stop there.

That might sound a little odd.

What's going on here is God is basically having Ezekiel tell them, or remind them, or disabuse them of a certain notion about their origins.

We tend to think (and many Israelites apparently thought) that their origins began with Abraham.

So, they viewed themselves as this sort of pristine people—detached from the world, detached from the horrible Canaanites.

Well, God had to call Abraham out of somewhere!

So Ezekiel is saying, "Your origins really aren't pristine.

Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite."

What does that mean?

Well, it counters the assumption of this sort of mythical purity—these pure beginnings that Israelites had for themselves.

For instance, in Deuteronomy 26:5, which reads:

This whole notion that the descendants of Israel were somehow detached, they were from an innocent place, they originated outside of Canaan where those awful

Canaanites and their horrible practices were so prevalent, and then they had to go into the land... these kinds of behaviors, this kind of apostasy, this kind of whoredom (both literally and spiritually)… "We don't have that background."

And Ezekiel is saying, "Well, you actually do because your ancestors came from somewhere.

The Israelites (the descendants of Abraham) aren't any holier than anybody else."

What about Abraham?

He wasn't a Canaanite proper, but the reference to Amorites and Hittites does make good sense in light of Abraham's Ur.

Now, a lot of you are thinking, "Well, isn't Abraham's Ur—Ur of the Chaldeans—isn't that like southern Mesopotamia near Babylon?"

The answer is no, it's not, even though that's probably what you've heard.

If you want a couple of good articles on this by Cyrus Gordon (a very famous scholar who is no longer living), I blogged this.

You can just go up to drmsh.com and put in Abraham and then "Ur" and you're going to get the blog entries and the articles that go with them.

Abraham's Ur is actually northwest Mesopotamia.

It's actually near Haran.

Remember with Isaac and Rebekah, Abraham has his servant go find a wife for Isaac?

This is where he goes—to this region in northwest Mesopotamia— Haran.

There's actually another Ur there.

Ura in the language of the day.

There are references to this place in other Ancient Near Eastern texts.

This makes much more sense out of the biblical storyline, especially where Abraham views his descendants as living than the traditional near-Babylon location for Ur.

Let me just read you a few things from the Anchor Bible Dictionary in regard to this whole Amorite and Hittite thing.

It will make sense as you get some of the context in your head.

The term amurru [ which is what gets translated “Amorite”] first occurs in Old Akkadian sources as the general designation of “the West,” referring to the W wind, and to the geographical area lying to the (N) W of Mesopotamia.

The most frequent usage of the term refers to the population of that W region as an ethnic designation.

Its semantic equivalent, Sumerian MAR.TU was used already in the mid-3d millennium B.C. even at Ebla in an ethnic or cultural sense, designating the

population of the “West” that was recognized to be foreign to the population of Mesopotamia proper by culture as well as by language.

Cyrus Gordon says this:

... the Biblical evidence is by itself conclusive in placing Ur of the Chaldees in the Urfa-Haran region of south central Turkey (NW Mesopotamia). . .

Genesis 11:31 relates that “Terah took Abram … and they went out … from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there.”

Then Terah died (Genesis 11:32) and Abram went on to Canaan (Genesis 12:15).

This means that Haran was en route from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan.

By no stretch of the imagination would anyone go from Sumerian Ur (in southern Mesopotamia) to Canaan via Haran. . . .

Sumerian Ur is never called “Ur of the Chaldees” in any of the numerous references to Ur in the cuneiform tablets. . . .

An Akkadian cuneiform tablet from Ugarit which is of special interest to this discussion mentions a city spelled Ura in Akkadian, but which would come into Hebrew as Ur without the final vowel.

This tablet, published by Professor Jean Nougayrol in his important collection of Akkadian tablets from the south palace of Ugarit, is a letter from a Hittite king (Hattusili III, c. 1282–1250 B.C.) to his Ugaritic counterpart.

The tablet mentions merchants of the Hittite king who have come from the city of Ura.

The Hittite kingdom was of course centered in Anatolia.

We learn that Ura was a city that specialized in foreign trade.

So the point is that if you locate Abraham's point of origin in northwest Mesopotamia where the Amorites are (which also happens to overlap with southcentral Turkey, which in antiquity was the territory of the Hittites), then this verse (Ezekiel 16:3) makes complete sense.

“Your origin and birth are of the land of the Canaanites.

Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.”

Again, those places are right on the border of Canaan.

They're literally right next door.

And so you have the right context for this now.

As far as the reference to Canaanites in the verse, in Hebrew (if you know a little bit of Hebrew this will make sense to you) the term used here for Canaanite has what's called a “gentilic ending.”

In other words, it refers to the people groups.

So Ezekiel 16:3 isn't really focusing on the geography of Canaan so much as it is focused on the people of Canaan, the culture of Canaan.

What God through Ezekiel is pointing out to them is, "Look, you are no more holy than anybody else here.

You're of the stock of the Canaanites, essentially.

Your mother was a Hittite, your father is an Amorite.

This is where you come from.

You come from the place, the region, that is no holier than any other place.

In fact, I brought your ancestor into this land.