Eze 23:22-35 | KingComments | STEP | “Therefore” ( ) refers to the unfaithfulness mentioned in the previous verses. The LORD will, as punishment for that unfaithfulness, set against her the nations from whom she has previously sought help. The LORD says who those are ( ). They are the Babylonians and the Assyrians, with some nomadic tribes, whom she has so admired ( ), but against whom she has also rebelled again. They will come against Jerusalem with great military display and set themselves against her from all sides ( ). They will be given power by the LORD to execute judgment on Jerusalem. They will do so in accordance with the customs of the nations she has adopted. Through the former lovers, the LORD will make Jerusalem feel His jealousy ( ). He acts like a jealous husband who has been cheated by his wife in the lowest way. For this He is so wroth that He will bring His anger down on the city through the enemies. They will mutilate Jerusalem, make it hideous. Those who remain alive in the city will fall by the sword or be taken. Jerusalem will be deprived of all that is graceful and she will be displayed naked ( ). That punishment will have the result that she will cease behaving shamefully and playing the harlot ( ). She will no longer think of an adulterous relationship with Egypt. That she will no longer think of Egypt is not because she has come to repentance. It is because the LORD has delivered her up to her enemies and she has lost all attractiveness because of her deformity. In particular, she need not think any more of Egypt, which is not interested in a stripped and disheveled Jerusalem. repeat in other words, what has already been said in . The LORD is so repulsed by her behavior that He presents her with her sins once again. He has to because she is so stubborn. He gives her over to the power of peoples she hates and from whom she sought to tear herself away ( ). Those nations, driven by hatred, will treat her shamefully, and will take away everything from her and leave her poor and destitute ( ). She brought this judgment upon herself by her own disgraceful behavior toward the LORD ( ). She has offended Him to the depths of His soul by seeking support in political alliances with the neighboring nations. That lewd connection has manifested itself in the worship of the stink gods of those heathen peoples. What an insult to Him! Thus, Jerusalem has gone the same way as her sister Samaria ( ). Therefore, Jerusalem will suffer the same judgment as Samaria; only it will be carried out by a different people. She will have to drink the cup of the wrath of God when the city is invaded by the Babylonians, just as Samaria drank that cup in her removal by the Assyrians. This judgment is placed before the attention of Jerusalem once more in a song ( ). The fate of Jerusalem will not provoke pity, but jeers and mockery. The cup of God’s wrath is filled to the brim. The enemies will note with gloating that the cup she is given to drink is well full, that severely she is punished. The cup is so full that whoever drinks it will be filled with drunkenness ( ). This drunkenness will not result in ‘pleasantness’, but in great and bitter suffering. Jerusalem can check with her sister Samaria to see what drinking that cup means. Jerusalem will drink that cup and will drink it and drain it ( ). The punished harlot, who used to become drunk in committing her shameful fornication with lust, will now become drunk and insane with pain and grief when she has to drink the cup of God’s wrath to the last drop. Out of her mind with pain, she will bite the cup to pieces; with the fragments, she will rip open her breasts, with which she used to please her lovers. The Lord GOD has personally spoken this word and therefore it will happen. Once again, the cause of this disciplinary action is emphatically presented to Jerusalem ( ). She has forgotten the LORD. That ignoring of the LORD is a guilty forgetting. It is the source of the misery. However, she has gone even further and cast Him contemptuously behind her back, thereby demonstrating how worthless she finds Him, not worth paying any attention to anymore. What she now faces are the consequences of her own sins.