Mike,

I hope this will find you in perfect health. I am aware of how busy you are but I cannot wait to ask you this:

In Ezekiel 23:20, 21 the Scriptures speaks of the following;

1. Genitals like those of a donkey,
2. Emissions like that of horses,
3. Bosom caressed and
4. Breasts fondled.

Comparing spiritual to spiritual here has become a hard nut for me to crack! I am trying to find any link that you have taught of these things, but I have not yet succeeded! I will patiently be waiting for a response when as when you get the time to respond. No hurry!

Any help will do,

YbitC,

G____

Hi G____,

Thank you for your question concerning the meaning of Ezekiel 23: 20-21.

I don’t believe I have written anything on these particular verses, so this will give me that opportunity. While the word ‘genitals’ is not in those verses, that does indeed appear to be the subject of verse 20 in the context of the southern kingdom of Judah committing spiritual fornication against her own God and Savior, who had brought her up out of the bondage of Egypt. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been taken captive, and instead of learning to fear God, Judah became even more of a harlot than her sister had been.

These two sisters are called by God “Aholah, and Ahollibah”, and the verses you reference deals with the younger sister, Aholabah”. Before we demonstrate who these two sisters are, let’s first look at what is said in introducing these them to us:

Eze 23:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
Eze 23:2 Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother:
Eze 23:3 And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.
Eze 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 names; Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah.

For many years I attempted to understand the meaning of these two sisters, knowing that Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel and that Jerusalem was the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah. At first I contrived the older sister to be Judaism and the younger sister to be the apostate Christian church. Later I thought the older sister was the Catholic church and the younger sister was the Protestant church. In doing that, I was not applying the principle of “all things are yours” to the scriptures.

1Co 3:21 Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;
1Co 3:22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;
1Co 3:23 And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.

I knew that Rev 1:3 applied to the events of the book of Revelation, but had not yet come to see that Revelation is just one book in the entire revelation of Jesus Christ, which is in truth the entire word of God, the entire Bible:

Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Rev 1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

A good example of how this principle works is in Genesis.

Gen 41:25 And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh is one: God hath shewed Pharaoh what he is about to do.

Pharaoh had two dreams. The first was a dream about two kinds of cows, and the second was about to types of corn, but Joseph tells him that the dream is actually one dream with one message, and that message is that a famine is coming on the land.

Since we are plainly told that these two sisters represent Samaria, the elder, and Jerusalem the younger, we already know they are both merely types of the one nation that came up out of Israel. The nation was divided simply for our sakes, and to tell us what Ezekiel is telling us in this prophecy:

1Co 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

2Co 4:15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

1Pe 1:9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
1Pe 1:10 Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
1Pe 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.
1Pe 1:12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.

Hard as it is to believe, what Ezekiel is saying is not for the people of that day as much as it is for you and me today. Oh yes! This did happen to them, and it is written, but it was all done for our admonition upon whom the product of the ages have first come.

This same principle applies to this prophecy concerning these two sisters. It is “not unto themselves, but unto us” that Ezekiel is giving this prophecy. These two harlot sisters are both symbols of who we are individually at two different stages of our own spiritual development. We are first Aholah, and then we are Aholibah, which both, interestingly enough mean “His tent” or “My tent”, [ My dwelling place], in her”.

Here is Hitchcock’s definition of these two names:

Aholah
his tabernacle; his tent
Aholibah
my tent, or my tabernacle, in her

So both these women actually represent God’s apostate people in whom He has and will “tabernacle”, or dwell:

Heb 8:1 Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
Heb 8:2 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.

If Christ is within us, then you and I are that “true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man”.

1Co 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
1Co 3:17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

So these two sisters are simply types and shadows of who we are as our first beast in Aholah receives a deadly wound, and Aholibah is who we are when our deadly wound is healed, and we are now more corrupt and seven times more insulated against the doctrines of Christ than we were at the beginning.

Eze 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.

The doctrine of being a “carnal… babe in Christ”, or a “Jew which believes on Christ [ yet] seeks to kill Him”, is unknown to those “carnal… babes”, nevertheless it is a very Biblical doctrine:

Joh 8:30 As he spake these words, many believed on him.
Joh 8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

Joh 8:37 I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.

1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
1Co 3:2 I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
1Co 3:3 For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?
1Co 3:4 For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

As is always the case in the natural world where ‘the hatred he had for her was more than the love he had for her’, we become estranged from our spiritual lovers, and they also turn upon us and devour us.

2Sa 13:15 Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.

Eze 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.
Eze 23:12 She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men.

Eze 23:19 Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.
Eze 23:20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.
Eze 23:21 Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.
Eze 23:22 Therefore, O Aholibah, thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will raise up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy mind is alienated, and I will bring them against thee on every side;

So ‘the vision is one’ and these two sisters and all the extremely graphic language describing their adulteress sexual immorality is all about us when we first receive the word of God as a deadly wound to our old man. Then our deadly wound is healed, and we return to being the beast we are, and we deny Him, and seven devils more evil than the first come into our lives, and we are worse off than we were at the beginning.

That is the message we are given about these two sisters who wanted to be more like those around them than they wanted to be like Christ and suffer the persecution He suffered. Here is the solution to the affliction of Aholah and Aholibah within us all:

Rom 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Rom 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

The cross of Christ is a bloody, messy, dying daily crucifixion which we just naturally abhor. Aholah and Aholibah abhorred being different from those around them and they, as types and shadows of us, went spiritually whoring after the world around them.

King Solomon’s wives are the same as the lovers of Aholah and Aholibah. Whatever comes between us and our God is spiritual adultery and fornication, which we must come to acknowledge and repent.

I hope all these verses help you to understand what ‘caressed bosoms, donkey genitalia, and the issue of a horse’ is all about. It is God’s very graphic words He chose to use to tell us just how disgusted He is with our ways, which He Himself gives to us to demonstrate for us why it is that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. (1Co 15:50)

Your brother in the Christ,

Mike

P.S. I did a word study below which I will include in this note.

H1320
בּשׂר
baÌ‚sÌaÌ‚r
baw- sawr’

From H1319; flesh (from its freshness); by extension body, person; also (by euphemism) the pudenda of a man: – body, [fat, lean] flesh [-ed], kin, [man-] kind, + nakedness, self, skin.

Gen 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh [Hebrew – basar, H1320] instead thereof;

Gen 17:14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh [basar H1319] of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

H1319
בּשׂר
baÌ‚sÌar
baw- sar’

A primitive root; properly to be fresh, that is, full (rosy, figuratively cheerful); to announce (glad news): – messenger, preach, publish, shew forth, (bear, bring, carry, preach, good, tell good) tidings.

2Sa 4:10 When one told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought good tidings [ Hebrew, basar, H1319], I took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I would have given him a reward for his tidings:

Strong’s
H2231
זר××”
zirmâh
zir- maw’
Feminine of H2230; a gushing of fluid (semen): – issue.

Eze 23:20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue [ H2231, zirmah, H2231] is like the issue[ H2231, zirmah, H2231] of horses. (KJC)

H2231
זר××”
zirmâh
Total KJV Occurrences: 2
issue, 2
Eze_23:20 (2)

This is the only verse in scripture where this word is found, but it is the feminine of H2230 which is:

H2230
זר×
zerem
Total KJV Occurrences: 9
storm, 3
Isa_4:6, Isa_25:4 (2)
tempest, 3
Isa_28:2, Isa_30:30, Isa_32:2
flood, 1
Isa_28:2 (2)
overflowing, 1
Hab_3:10
showers, 1
Job_24:8