Ezekiel 23:5

23:5 “Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was mine. ¹  She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians ²  – warriors ³ 

Ezekiel 23:9

23:9 Therefore I handed her over to her lovers, the Assyrians ⁴  for whom she lusted.

Ezekiel 23:16

23:16 When she saw them, ⁵  she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. ⁶ 

Ezekiel 23:12

23:12 She lusted after the Assyrians – governors and officials, warriors in full armor, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men.

Ezekiel 23:20

23:20 She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys, ⁷  and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions.

Ezekiel 6:9

6:9 Then your survivors will remember me among the nations where they are exiled. They will realize ⁸  how I was crushed by their unfaithful ⁹  heart which turned from me and by their eyes which lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves ¹⁰  because of the evil they have done and because of all their abominable practices.

---

¹ tn Heb “while she was under me.” The expression indicates that Oholah is viewed as the Lord’s wife. See Num 5:19-20, 29.

sn Played the harlot refers to alliances with pagan nations in this context. In Ezek 16 harlotry described the sin of idolatry.

² tn Heb “Assyria.”

³ tn The term apparently refers to Assyrian military officers; it is better construed with the description that follows. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:738.

⁴ tn Heb “I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the sons of Assyria.”

⁵ tn Heb “at the appearance of her eyes.”

⁶ sn The Chaldeans were prominent tribal groups of Babylonia. The imagery is reminiscent of events in the reigns of Hezekiah (2 Kgs 20:12-15) and Jehoiakim (2 Kgs 23:34-24:1).

⁷ tn Heb “She lusted after their concubines (?) whose flesh was the flesh of donkeys.” The phrase “their concubines” is extremely problematic here. The pronoun is masculine plural, suggesting that the Egyptian men are in view, but how concubines would fit into the picture envisioned here is not clear. Some suggest that Ezekiel uses the term in an idiomatic sense of “paramour,” but this still fails to explain how the pronoun relates to the noun. It is more likely that the term refers here to the Egyptians’ genitals. The relative pronoun that follows introduces a more specific description of their genitals.

⁸ tn The words “they will realize” are not in the Hebrew text; they are added here for stylistic reasons since this clause assumes the previous verb “to remember” or “to take into account.”

⁹ tn Heb “how I was broken by their adulterous heart.” The image of God being “broken” is startling, but perfectly natural within the metaphorical framework of God as offended husband. The idiom must refer to the intense grief that Israel’s unfaithfulness caused God. For a discussion of the syntax and semantics of the Hebrew text, see M. Greenberg, Ezekiel (AB), 1:134.

¹⁰ tn Heb adds “in their faces.”