NOTES for Eze 16:1-34

Today's reading offers us Ezekiel's parable of the unfaithful wife, by whom he, like other prophets who use this image, means Israel. For a full perception of the image, it is important to keep in mind that, unlike Russian, in Hebrew the word "Israel" is feminine.

Such parables are found not only in Ezekiel; Hosea, Isaiah of Jerusalem, and Jeremiah also compared Israel to an unfaithful wife. But Ezekiel's parable is remarkable because it describes a kind of divine pedagogy. Here God's attempts to direct His people onto the path of repentance are clearly visible. The parable begins by stating the undeniable fact that without God the Jewish people simply would not have existed on earth. They would have perished like an infant abandoned on the road, and only God's direct intervention in the situation allowed them to become what they became (vv. 3-14).

But everything God had done for His people was forgotten by the people themselves, and forgotten very quickly. The reason for this, as can be seen, was self-reliance, a readiness to rely not on God but on His gifts, which came to be perceived not as gifts but as something self-evident and inalienable (v. 15). It is no surprise that the people also considered themselves entitled to dispose of God's gifts at their own discretion (vv. 16-26). But God does not break off His relationship with the people despite their obvious and open betrayal. On the contrary, He makes attempts to bring to their senses those who have completely forgotten God (v. 27).

The people themselves must have perceived such measures as punishment from God, but judging by the prophet's words, this was only God's attempt to remind them of Himself and of the relationship that had once bound the people of God to their God. But no measures guarantee either remorse or conversion, since both are possible only voluntarily, and God does not need "remorse" obtained by force. Therefore He does not force anyone to turn back; He only lets His people understand that the path they have chosen leads to a dead end. But even then the choice remains, since in such a situation not only conversion but also rejection of God is possible.

In the case of rejection, however, the situation becomes completely unnatural. Apparently, in a person's relationship with God, and in the relationship of a whole people with Him, there are stages, not only when a person or a people goes toward God, but also when that person or people moves away from God. It is possible that, at the beginning of a path leading away from God, God still takes certain actions to stop the one who is leaving. Perhaps the disasters He allows in such a situation mark precisely the boundary that can be considered a kind of "point of no return." And after passing this point, a person can no longer return to God easily and without serious consequences. Now, even in the event of conversion and repentance, he will have to bear some consequences of the sins he has committed. And for a people, to pass the "point of no return" in relation to God means to doom itself to an inevitable catastrophe, which for the Jewish people was the defeat of Judah by the Babylonians and the Babylonian exile.