These things will be done to you, because you have played the prostitute after the nations, and because you are polluted with their idols.
Parallel translations
- KJV I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted with their idols.
- BSB have brought these things upon you, because you have prostituted yourself with the nations and defiled yourself with their idols.
- NKJV I will do these things to you because you have gone as a harlot after the Gentiles, because you have become defiled by their idols.
- NASB These things will be done to you because you have adulterously pursued the nations, because you have defiled yourself with their idols.
- NLT You brought all this on yourself by prostituting yourself to other nations, defiling yourself with all their idols.
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
God states plainly that these calamities come because Judah chased after the nations and defiled herself with their idols. It pinpoints idolatry as the root cause of her ruin.
Overview
The verse gives the explicit reason for the judgment: spiritual prostitution 'after the nations' and pollution by their idols. God is not capricious; the punishment fits the persistent, willful sin. By naming the cause, Scripture vindicates God's justice and calls every generation to examine its own divided loyalties.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Ezek 6:9Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
- Jer 22:8–9“Many nations will pass by this city, and they will each ask his neighbor, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this great city?’
- Jer 2:18–20Now what do you gain by going to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Shihor? Or why do you to go on the way to Assyria, to drink the waters of the River?
- Jer 16:11–12Then you shall tell them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me,’ says Yahweh, ‘and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshiped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;
- Ezek 23:12–21She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and rulers, her neighbors, clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men.
- Ps 106:35–38but mixed themselves with the nations, and learned their works.
- Ezek 23:7She gave herself as a prostitute to them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them. She defiled herself with the idols of whoever she lusted after.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
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 23:30 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
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.