NOTES for Eze 23:1-49

We are already accustomed to the Bible comparing apostates’ immersion in the pagan realm with fornication, but do we always fully understand what lies behind this comparison? We certainly remember that the Covenant with God is likened to marriage and its violation to marital infidelity, and since sexual rituals formed part of pagan cults, accusations of fornication against pagans were more than a metaphor. All this is true, but quite apart from what has been mentioned, the very essence of paganism contains something that deeply affects the sensual sphere and makes a person dependent on the obscure urges of the subconscious, which reason cannot always control.

In the end, the unbridled “freedom of the senses” turns into dependence on desires, and permissiveness proves to be slavery like that into which a drug addict or alcoholic falls. So it is here: the punishment for fornication is the very union with their lovers that sinners so greatly desired. Sinners receive exactly what they sought, and from this flow all the other disasters they would like to avoid, but it is already too late. Sinners do not perish when they are stoned; that is only the finishing touch. They perish much earlier, when they consent to self-destruction.