Ezekiel 23:11 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Ezekiel 23:11
And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms.
a sister (used very widely (like brother) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
Aholibah
אָהֳלִיבָ֔ה'o.ho.li.Vah
H172
Oholibah · proper noun, a woman's name
saw
וַתֵּ֙רֶא֙va.Te.re'
H7200
to see · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
corrupt
וַתַּשְׁחֵ֥תva.tash.Chet
H7843
to decay · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
love
עַגְבָתָ֖הּ'ag.va.Tah
H5691
love (abstractly) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
whoredoms
תַּ֨זְנוּתֶ֔יהָtaz.nu.Tei.ha
H8457
harlotry · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
sister
אֲחוֹתָֽהּ'a.cho.Tah
H269
a sister (used very widely (like brother) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
whoredoms
מִזְּנוּנֵ֖יmi.ze.nu.Nei
H2183
adultery · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jeremiah 3:8-11 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet he…
Ezekiel 16:47-51 Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted…
Ezekiel 23:4 And the names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister: and they were mine, and they bare sons and daughters. Thus were their…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 23:11-21
The prophet Hosea, in his time, observed that the two tribes retained their integrity, in a great measure, when the ten tribes had apostatized (Hos 11:12, Ephraim indeed compasses me about with lies, but Judah yet rules with God and is faithful with the saints; and this was justly expected from them: Hos 4:15, Though thou Israel play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend); but this lasted not long. By some unhappy matches made between the house of David and the house of Ahab the worship of Baal had been brought into the kingdom of Judah, but had been by the reforming kings worked out again; and at the time of the captivity of the ten tribes, which was in the reign of Hezekiah, things were in…
Judah, the southern kingdom, though having the "warning" (see on Eze 23:10) of the northern kingdom before her eyes, instead of profiting by it, went to even greater lengths in corruption than Israel. Her greater spiritual privileges made her guilt the greater (Eze 16:47, Eze 16:51; Jer 3:11).
Adam Clarke on Ezekiel 23:6
Clothed with blue - The purple dye was highly valued among the ancients, and at first was only used by kings, at last it was used among the military, particularly by officers of high rank in the country.
John Gill on Ezekiel 23:11
And when her sister Aholibah saw this,.... The two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, when, they saw the idolatries the ten tribes fell into, and the destruction which came upon them for the same; instead of receiving instruction, and taking caution by all this,
she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she; in courting the friendship, alliance, and help of their Heathen neighbours:
and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms; guilty of more idolatries than the ten tribes, as in the times of Manasseh; see Jeremiah 2:28.
Keil & Delitzsch
The Church Fathers
(Vers. 11 seqq.) When her sister Oholibah saw this, she became more wicked than her, and her desire for sexual immorality surpassed that of her sister. Shamelessly, she displayed her prostitution to the sons of Assyria, to their captains and leaders who came to her. She was dressed in various (or costly) garments, riding on horses with riders, all of them handsome young men. And I saw that both of them had defiled the same path, and they multiplied their sexual immorality. And when she saw the painted figures on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with colors, having their loins girded with belts, and their heads covered with painted turbans, in the likeness of the rulers (or of the most miserable) of the Babylonians and the land of the Chaldeans, where they were born, she was inflamed with lustful desire for them. And she sent messengers to them in Chaldea. And when the sons of Babylon came to her, to the bed of her prostitution, they defiled her with their harlotry, and she was defiled by them, and her soul turned away from them. And she uncovered her fornication and revealed her disgrace, and my soul withdrew from her as my soul withdrew from her sister. For she multiplied her fornication, remembering the days of her youth when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt. And she went crazy with desire for their lovers, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose genitals are like the genitals of horses. And you visited the wickedness of your youth: when your breasts were conquered in Egypt, and the breasts of your puberty were broken. According to the letter, the interpretation is easy, that when Oholibah, that is, Jerusalem, in which was the tabernacle of God, saw the stripes of her sister, she was not warned by example to turn away her foot from error; but she increased her sister's prostitution. For she once made idols outside in Dan and Bethel: but she frequently worshiped the statue of Baal in the high places and in the temple of God, and fornicated with the Assyrians. But the idol of Baal, or Bel, and (to speak plainly) Belis, is the religion of the Assyrians, consecrated by Nino the son of Belis in honor of his father. And he shamelessly offered his prostitution to the Assyrians, to leaders and magistrates, who were clothed in various and multicolored garments, and to horsemen and young men who were distinguished in appearance…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Aholah And Aholibah — (my tabernacle) two symbolical names, are described as harlots, the former representing Samaria and the latter Judah. Ezek. 23.
Aholibah — My tent is in her, the name of an imaginary harlot, applied symbolically to Jerusalem, because she had abandoned the worship of the true God and given herself up to the idolatries of foreign nations.…
Nebuchadnezzar, Or Nebuchadrezzar — (may Nebo protect the crown), was the greatest and most powerful of the Babylonian kings. His name is explained to mean “Nebo is the protector against misfortune.” He was the son and successor of…
Assyria · The Jews condemned for following the idolatries of — The Jews condemned for following the idolatries of
Idolatry · .Licentiousness of — .Licentiousness of
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
on Ezekiel 23:11-21
Whoredom of Judah
Eze 23:11. And her sister Oholibah saw it, and carried on her coquetry still more wantonly than she had done, and her whoredom more than the whoredom of her sister. Eze 23:12. She was inflamed with lust towards the sons of Asshur, governors and officers, standing near, clothed in perfect beauty, horsemen riding upon horses, choice men of good deportment. Eze 23:13. And I saw that she had defiled herself; they both went one way. Eze 23:14. And she carried her whoredom still further; she saw men engraved upon the wall, figures of Chaldeans engraved with red ochre, Eze 23:15. Girded about the hips with girdles, with overhanging caps upon their heads, all of them knights in app…
Samaria’s reputation and punishment were known to everyone in Ezekiel’s time. Her sister, Oholibah (Jerusalem), followed the same pattern of life and was even worse than her sister. What a succession of Judah’s kings regarded as wise political maneuvering—seeking alliances with Babylon as well as with Assyria—the prophet presents as a pattern of consistent, ever-deepening spiritual adultery.
Rashi on Ezekiel 23:11
And her sister Oholibah saw all the evil that befell her sister because of her harlotries, but she was unafraid.
she became... corrupt in her lust [Heb. עַגְבָתָה,] her lust, wai(y)ter in Old French, unbridled passion.