Four messages announce God's judgment on Jerusalem for her unfaithfulness (vv. 22-27, 28-31, 32-34, 35).
23:22-24 Because of her behavior the Lord promised to turn Oholibah's soldier-lovers against her, even the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and the tribal groups of the empire.323Pekod, Shoa, and Koa were tribes that lived in eastern Babylonia and that were part of the empire (cf. Isa. 22:5; Jer. 50:21). They would all come against her from every direction, attack her from all sides, and try to destroy her using their own customary methods. Ezekiel painted a picture of the whole world coming against Israel. The Lord would allow this to happen to her.
23:25-27 The Lord would express His jealousy over her and deal with her in His wrath. Her enemies would cut off her nose and her ears. This was an ancient Near Eastern punishment for adulteresses, which was understandable since these women typically adorned themselves with nose and ear rings.324This punishment would make them grotesque and unappealing to anyone else. Thus God would make Jerusalem unappealing to other nations.
These enemies would also kill many Israelites, deport others (2 Kings 24:10-16; 25:11; Dan. 1:1), and burn still others (2 Kings 25:18-21). They would strip the nation of her clothes and jewelry, perhaps a reference to her wealth, possessions, and temple treasures (cf. 2 Kings 25:13-17; 2 Chron. 36:18). The Lord would allow this to teach Oholibah to abhor the Egyptians as political partners.
23:28-29 The Lord also announced that He would turn Jerusalem over to those whom she had come to hate, namely, the Babylonians. They would hate her, rob her of her property, and leave her naked and ashamed (in 586 B.C.).
23:30-31 This punishment would come on her because she committed political adultery with the nations and had defiled herself with their idolatry (cf. Exod. 20:1-7; Deut. 17:14-20). She had behaved as her older sister, so the Lord would give the cup of His wrath to her to drink (cf. Isa. 51:7, 22; Jer. 25:15-17, 28; Hab. 2:16; Zech. 12:2; Matt. 20:22; 26:39; Rev. 14:10), the same cup Oholah had to drink.
"In using this imagery Ezekiel belongs to a long prophetic chain that was to culminate in Jesus, who absorbed in his own person the horror of God's judgment, accepting it from his hand not without a shudder (Mark 14:36)."325
23:32-34 The Lord also promised that Oholibah would indeed drink from the large cup of God's judgment from which Oholah had drunk.326Drinking it would make her an object of scorn as well as drunk and sad. The cup would contain punishment in the form of horror and desolation, just like Samaria had experienced. Oholibah would drain the cup; she would endure all the punishment God had for her. She would even madly gnaw the fragments of the earthenware cup or shatter it to pieces. The same Hebrew verb means "to gnaw"(NASB, NRSV) and "to break"(AV, NIV, NKJV). She would also tear at her breasts probably in remorse over how she had used them to seduce her lovers. In other words, she would despise herself for her former behavior.327
23:35 Jerusalem would bear the Lord's punishment for her lewd and immoral behavior because she had abandoned Him. This short message identifies the root problem in Israel's apostasy: she had forsaken Yahweh.
"When a nation (or an individual) discards God, there is no other road to follow but that which leads to perversion and utter degradation."328
