You built your high places at the head of every road, and made your beauty to be abhorred. You offered yourself to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your acts of harlotry.
Parallel translations
- WEB You have built your lofty place at the head of every way, and have made your beauty an abomination, and have opened your feet to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your prostitution.
- KJV Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms.
- BSB At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty. With increasing promiscuity, you spread your legs to all who passed by.
- NASB You built yourself a high place at the beginning of every street and made your beauty abominable, and you spread your legs to every passer-by and multiplied your obscene practice.
- NLT On every street corner you defiled your beauty, offering your body to every passerby in an endless stream of prostitution.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
She set up shrines at every crossroad and offered herself to all who passed by. Her unfaithfulness became utterly shameless.
Overview
The harlotry imagery intensifies: Jerusalem made her beauty 'an abomination,' soliciting every passerby. Historically this points to her eager alliances and idol-borrowing from surrounding nations. The relentless multiplication of her sin shows an appetite for betrayal that knew no restraint.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Jer 3:2“Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? You have sat waiting for them by the road, as an Arabian in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness.
- Ezek 16:31in that you build your vaulted place at the head of every way, and make your lofty place in every street, and have not been as a prostitute, in that you scorn pay.
- Rev 17:1–5One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters,
- Ezek 16:15“‘“But you trusted in your beauty, and played the prostitute because of your renown, and poured out your prostitution on everyone who passed by. It was his.
- Jer 2:23–24“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled. I have not gone after the Baals’? See your way in the valley. Know what you have done. You are a swift dromedary traversing her ways;
- Jer 6:15Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I visit them, they shall be cast down,” says Yahweh.
- Ezek 23:32“Thus says the Lord Yahweh: ‘You will drink of your sister’s cup, which is deep and large. You will be ridiculed and held in derision. It contains much.
- Isa 3:9The look of their faces testify against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They don’t hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought disaster upon themselves.
- Ezek 23:9–10“Therefore I delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, on whom she doted.
- Prov 9:14–15She sits at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city,
- Rev 17:12–13The ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour.
- Gen 38:14She took off of her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she wasn’t given to him as a wife.
- Rev 17:16The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, and will make her desolate, and will make her naked, and will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire.
- Gen 38:21Then he asked the men of her place, saying, “Where is the prostitute, that was at Enaim by the road?” They said, “There has been no prostitute here.”
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The promise of one Shepherd-King David, a new heart and new Spirit, and the river of life flowing from the temple all stream toward Christ, the good Shepherd who gives the Spirit.
How Ezekiel 16:25 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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