Page 77 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XVI. 71
thou hast even set it before them for a sweet savour:
and thus it was, saith the Lord Jehovah. Moreover
thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou
hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto
them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a
small matter, that thou hast slain my children, and
delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire
for them?” (Yer. 17—21.) There was this added to
His aggrieved heart, that with all her abominations and
her lewdness Jerusalem remembered not the days of her
youth when she was naked and bare, polluted with her
blood. (Ver. 22.)
Jehovah then details the excessive impurity to which
Jerusalem turned with unbridled lust, not only in ad­
mitting every uncleanness of idolatry that passed by,
but in going and courting idolatrous intercourse with
the strangers on every side and to the most distant
Gentiles, to the shame even of their Philistine neigh­
bours who were content with their own gods.
(Yer. 23—29.)
It is a solemn yet certain truth that, when God’s
people depart from Him, they are apt to go farther
astray than all others. Without the guardianship of
Him whom they have slighted, they become the special
sport of Satan and the most desired victim of his wiles,
in order to compass by them the more effectually the
dishonour of the living God, and if possible make a
hopeless estrangement on His part. What a riddle is
the moral history of the world and of man to all who
see not the conflict between God and His enemy! Then
Jerusalem was in question, now it is the Church; but it
is ever the opposition of the devil to the Son of God,