This final message brings Oholah and Oholibah back together and passes judgment on all Israel. It is a summary oracle for the section that indicts Israel's leaders (chs. 20-23).
23:36-37 The Lord called Ezekiel to pass judgment on Oholah and Oholibah (cf. 20:4; 22:2). He should then announce their fate because they had committed adultery (cf. Exod. 22:20; 23:13; Deut. 4:15-24; 12:24-32) and had shed innocent blood in their unfaithfulness (cf. Exod. 20:13; Lev. 18:21; 20:1-5). Their spiritual adultery consisted of idolatry, and their bloodshed was the practice of child sacrifice in connection with idolatry. They had killed the Lord's own children.
23:38-39 They also made the temple unclean (cf. Exod. 20:24-26) and treated the Sabbath as any other day of the week (cf. Exod. 20:8-11; Lev. 19:3, 30). On the same days that they practiced child sacrifice they entered the temple to worship Yahweh. This amounted to treating Molech and Yahweh as though they were equal.
23:40-42 These daughters had sent to other nations and invited ambassadors to come to them to make treaties (cf. Deut. 17:14-20). They had made themselves as attractive as possible, like a prostitute does for her lover. They even used the things that they should have used only for the worship of Yahweh to entice desert lovers (e.g. the Arabians, Moabites, and Edomites). The whole atmosphere of the reception was like that of a drunken orgy. The same Hebrew word, saba'im, can mean "Sabeans"and "drunkards"(v. 42), and both meanings could have been intended. These foreign lovers gave the Israelites the wages of a prostitute including bracelets and crowns.
23:43-45 The Lord marveled that the nations would find Samaria and Jerusalem attractive partners since they had proved to be such unsatisfying lovers for so long. Yet they did. There is hardly anyone more pathetic and disgusting than an old whore. However, righteous people would pass judgment on the sisters as adulteresses who had blood on their hands. The enemies of Israel were righteous in judging her, not that they were right with God spiritually. They may have even been more righteous in their conduct than the Israelites.329
23:46-49 The Lord commanded a group of soldiers to attack these cities and to terrorize and plunder them. These invaders would stone the guilty (the punishment for adulterers and murderers in the Mosaic Law), slay them and their children with their swords, and burn their houses. Thus the Lord would cause such shameful unfaithfulness to cease from His land (cf. 22:15), and He would teach other nations not to do as these two "women"had done. Samaria and Jerusalem would bear their punishment for practicing idolatry, and they would learn that Yahweh is God.
"While most parables and messages concerning sin in the Old Testament seek to produce repentance, that is not so here. The message closed with a note of finality."330
