Ezekiel 16 Footnotes

16:17-25 The “male images” (v. 17) could have been phallic-shaped stones used in fertility cults. Children were sacrificed to Molech, a molten hot image into whose arms a live baby was placed (v. 20). Devotees of these cults practiced sacred prostitution—male and female—at the shrines among groves of trees on the side of hills called “high places” (bamoth); in the city streets they might even build an artificial “elevated place” for this purpose (vv. 24-25). God’s response of “woe, woe” (v. 23), was a common expression of horror uttered at the arrival of some disaster (1Sm 4:8; Pr 23:29; Is 3:9).

16:48-50 Judah was called the “sister” of Sodom since both Israel and Judah had followed the same course as Sodom in pride and perversion (v. 49). “Daughters” often referred to villages that were the suburbs of the larger cities. Judah’s reprimand was more excessive than either Sodom or Samaria; she deserved a more severe judgment (vv. 50-54).