Ezekiel 16 is a very long and graphic chapter using the allegory of a woman to describe God's relationship with Jerusalem. Initially God finds and rescues Jerusalem as an abandoned child "for on the day you were born you were despised". God cared for her: "I made you grow like a plant of the field... I then when you were older married you and entered into a covenant relationship with you... I dressed you with fine linen and costly garments and adorned you with jewelry... you became very beautiful and rose to be a queen... but you trusted more in your beauty than you trusted in me... and you used your fame to become a prostitute... and you made gaudy high places to practice your prostitution... and you sacrificed your children to idols... and you forgot from where I had brought you... Woe to you declares the Sovereign Lord... and then you engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians... and with the Philistines and Assyrians... and then included the Babylonians... you are a brazen prostitute... you prefer strangers to me your husband... you adulterous wife... in the light of all this I will gather all your foreign lovers and expose your nakedness... they will stone you and hack you to pieces... and I will put a stop to your prostitution... for you are worse than your sister Sodom... your sins were more vile than theirs... so I will deal with you as you deserve but I will remember the covenant of your youth and will establish an everlasting covenant with you... and you will know that I am the Lord".
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