The unfaithful wife in Ezekiel 16 — applications and misapplications

Scripture sometimes uses marital imagery for the relation between God and his chosen people. The Hebrew bible depicts God as the husband of Jerusalem. And the New Testament calls Jesus the bridegroom of the bride, the bride being the ecclesia.

When a wife trashes and desecrates the good things — physical, emotional and spiritual things — that her faithful husband is giving her, she is breaching the marital covenant. If she doesn’t properly value her husband’s faithful covenantal love, and disrespects or squanders the good material provisions he’s given her, she is dishonouring her husband and breaking faith with him.

Ezekiel 16 paints a moving picture of God taking the city of Jerusalem as his wife. He took her under his wing, pledged his faithfulness to her, spread the edge of his garment over her, covered her nakedness, and abundantly provided her with fine food, beautiful clothing and jewellery.

In other words, God as the husband of Jerusalem lavishly provided the three things which a husband is obliged to provide for his wife — 1) food, 2) clothing and 3) lovingkindness in faithful conjugal intimacy. (I elucidated these three obligations in my post on Exodus 21:7-11.)

But Jerusalem took those good things and bestowed them on her pagan lovers.

Passages like Ezekiel 16 have sometimes been unfairly co-opted to denigrate women. In order to prevent my female readers hearing it that way, I need to say this up-front:

In Ezekiel 16, God is severely rebuking his wife. But that doesn’t mean he’s pouring all his scorn on women, while men can escape the rebuke.

After all, Ezekiel’s most blistering rebuke is probably in chapter 8 where he denounces the men in priestly and civil leadership who were worshiping abominations in hidden chambers within the temple!

Why has it been so easy for people to use passages like Ezekiel 16 to denigrate women?

Using passages like Ezekiel to denigrate women has been easy, because there has been a confusion of categories in the husband-bridegroom ↔ wife-bride metaphor, and a consequent chain of false logic which goes like this: “Israel is God’s wife. Therefore, sinful Israel = sinful women. The sins of men are overlooked because men are not God’s wife!”

This confusion of categories has been going on for the entire duration of the church era.

In this male-privileged schema, it is easy to hide, conceal, ignore or minimise the responsibility of male perpetrators of violence.

We can even see traces of it in Matthew 19:10, where Jesus’ disciples objected to Him denouncing the male-privileging interpretations of Deuteronomy 24:1. One of those interpretations enabled men to divorce their wives at whim; the other insisted that a man must divorce his wife if she committed adultery or even attempted an adulterous liaison. And of course, the male religious leaders didn’t apply those privileges to women if the case was reversed.¹

The men who gained ascendancy in the Protestant Reformation, particularly Calvin and his followers, were blind to this problem. They were blind to the confusion of categories which privileged men and disadvantaged women. We can be glad that they rightly rejected many of Rome’s false doctrines. But they left intact the false theology that women are ‘less than’ men in the church, the family, and the world. (For an in-depth explanation read Anna Anderson’s articles: When Honoring our Fathers Means Demeaning our Sisters and The Missing Foundation of the Reformed Doctrine of Gender.)

Bible translation and interpretation has been misrepresenting the nation of Israel as feminine.

John J Schmitt has cogently argued² that when the Hebrew bible refers to the people of Israel or the nation of Israel, it consistently uses masculine terms:

the Hebrew Bible does not know a feminine Israel … I propose that ancient Israel lose its feminine designation in scholarly and popular discourse.

Anna Anderson notes that

Schmitt finds no marital imagery in God’s relation to Israel. Israel is neither mother nor wife. In contrast to Israel as male and son, the city of Jerusalem, and especially Zion, both the historical and eschatological city, are female.
— Anna Anderson, Gender as Trinitarian and Eschatological Representation 

Now let us turn to Ezekiel 16

I have condensed Ezekiel 16:1-3, 8-22 (HCSB). If you want to read the whole chapter, go here.

The word of the LORD came to me again: “Son of man, explain Jerusalem’s detestable practices to her. You are to say: This is what the Lord GOD says to Jerusalem:

(v 8) I spread the edge of My garment over you and covered your nakedness. I pledged Myself to you, entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine. I clothed you in embroidered cloth, fine linen and silk. I adorned you with jewelry, gold and silver. You ate fine flour, honey, and oil.

But you were confident in your beauty and acted like a prostitute because of your fame. You lavished your sexual favors on everyone who passed by. Your beauty became his. You took some of your garments and made colorful high places for yourself, and you engaged in prostitution on them. You also took your beautiful jewelry made from the gold and silver I had given you, and you made male images so that you could engage in prostitution with them. Then you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set My oil and incense before them. You also set before them as a pleasing aroma the food I gave you — the fine flour, oil, and honey that I fed you.

You even took your sons and daughters you bore to Me and sacrificed them to these images as food. Wasn’t your prostitution enough? You slaughtered My children and gave them up when you passed them through the fire to the images.

Ezekiel is castigating Jerusalem as the hot spot of these sins. The people who were doing these heinous things cannot be considered true Israelites.

Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Neither are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants. … That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring.  (Romans 9:6-8, HCSB)

For he is not a Jew who is a Jew outwardly. Neither is that thing circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is hid within, and the circumcision of the heart is the true circumcision, which is in the Spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not from men, but from God.  (Romans 2:28-29, NMB. The marginal note in the NMB says either ‘spirit’ or ‘Spirit’ is plausible.)

Circumcise yourselves to the LORD;
remove the foreskin of your hearts,
men of Judah and residents of Jerusalem.
Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire
and burn with no one to extinguish it
because of your evil deeds. (Jeremiah 4:4 HSCB)

Ezekiel’s description of Jerusalem’s heinous sins parallels the heinous sins that are being perpetrated in many of today’s institutional churches.

Our Lord bounteously fulfills the obligations of a bridegroom towards his bride, but the church often disrespects the good things her bridegroom has given her. Many individuals who profess to follow our Lord are all too ready to tolerate and coddle those who disrespect the good things that our divine bridegroom has given us. This has resulted in most Christian organisations being infiltrated by evildoers who could best be described as human predators. (Read more on this here.)

People can masquerade as Christians while being extremely evil. In the ‘bright world’ these actors regularly attend church, lead churches, or teach in seminaries. In the ‘dark world’ they are raping their own children and trafficking their own and other people’s children to be raped and tortured. In the dark world, some of them ritually murder babies and children.

Stories from survivors of the ‘dark world’

Help[H]er — Safe to Hope podcast, Carya’s story: Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6

The Ugly Truth About The Girl Next Door, Kait’s story: Spotify  Apple Podcasts

Notes

1. There were two groups of religious leaders contesting with each other and trying to trap Jesus into taking a side in their debate. The Hillelites allowed men to divorce their wives for ‘any matter’. The Shammaites insisted that a man must divorce his wife if she committed or even attempted to commit adultery. For detailed argumentation on the Pharisees’ misinterpretations of Deuteronomy 24:1, see my book Not Under Bondage, and my posts:

• When Jesus spoke about divorce and remarriage, he was pushing back against male-privileged interpretations of Deuteronomy 24.
• Isn’t adultery the only ground for divorce?
• Jesus did NOT say “Hardness of heart is grounds for divorce”. Deuteronomy 24 has been greatly misunderstood.

1. John J Schmitt, “The Gender of Ancient Israel”, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 8, no 26, (June 1983): pp. 115-125.

Here is more from Schmitt’s article:

A passage in Jeremiah that may easily be used in some translations as evidence for the marital understanding of the covenant is 31.32 (Hebrew v. 31). Speaking of the new covenant, the verse reads in the RSV: ‘not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord’. The translation ‘husband’ would make Israel or the people feminine, but such a translation has problems. The construction b‘l b occurs in the Bible only here and in Jer. 3.14. On the only other occasion that a form of this verb occurs with a preposition, 1 Chron. 4.22, it has the meaning ‘to lord over’. This latter is the way the Vulgate, the JPS (1917), the JB, and the NAB understand the expression in Jer. 31.32. The NJV surmises the root bhl, ‘to loathe’. The Septuagint and the Peshitta seem to read at this verse the root g‘l, ‘to abhor’. The ambiguity of the expression here hardly makes the verse one on which to base a view of the gender of Israel. …

This survey has tried to show that the dictionaries’ claim that ‘Israel’ in the OT is masculine is correct, although popular practice today does not cohere with them. This is the gender image that the translators of the Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Targums received and passed on. The two exceptions to this rule in the MT are 1 Sam. 17.21 and 2 Sam. 24.9. The latter case is a irregularity which is corrected by the Chronicler’s rendering of the verse, 1 Chron. 21:5.

GENDER

The intention of this paper is to urge a change in current usage. Simple adherence to biblical usage may be reason enough for some to avoid the use of the feminine for Israel. But the further connotations of the use of the feminine gender in our male-dominated society may offer other considerations. My own reasons relate to theology, biblical studies and women’s studies.

It can be questioned whether the relation between God and human beings finds its best symbol in the male-female relation. Perhaps that symbolism was at one time helpful and stimulating. It may still be a good symbol for occasional use and explanation. But I have grown uncomfortable with such an image as the dominant model. And my discomfort arises partially from the fact that it is not a recurrent image for the relation between God and God’s people in the Hebrew Bible.

Biblical scholars are untrue to themselves if they impose on all thought patterns of ancient Israel linguistic usages and catchy imagery that are not representative of the Bible as a whole. It is theology’s task to apply biblical principles to the contemporary situation, and in such work a theologian may choose to use this symbolism. But this imagery is often presented, not as interpretation, but as an accurate description of Israel’s constant thought about itself. Biblical studies, even apart from the old Biblical Theology movement, have in the modern era tried to be faithful to all the connotations of the biblical texts as they are read in the original language. Among them is the fact that the Hebrew Bible does not know a feminine Israel.

Finally, I would point out that the view of biblical Israel as a woman should be a concern of women’s studies. The Hebrew Bible is remarkable for its critique of Israel. Certain biblical passages, for various theological reasons, quite successfully depict the Israel of antiquity as faithless, arrogant, selfish, corrupt, self-willed, complacent, idolatrous, forgetful of the poor and oppressed, given to wallowing in its own sin. To what extent this presentation reflects the real ancient Israel we may never know. But that Israel in such tones is inaccurately labeled by scholars as ‘she’ is something I should think would anger a woman. It disturbs me.

I propose that ancient Israel lose its feminine designation in scholarly and popular discourse.

Post substantially updated January, 2026, after I found Schmitt’s article (it isn’t online, I had to go to a theological library to get it).

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