Introduction
STORY OF THE LEWD SISTERS, AHOLAH AND AHOLIBAH.
This is a most horrible picture of the lust and crime of two lost women. Ezekiel’s withering wrath against unchastity expresses itself in very plain language. As Dr. Percy Gardner says, the more reserved manners of modern times makes symbolism borrowed from the relations of the sexes seem out of place in religious exposition; but more primitive and demonstrative races did not feel the incongruity as do we. The idea of generation was closely associated with that of life after death and that of a spirit dwelling in the universe, and this lay at the very bottom of the Eleusinian and other mysteries. Frantic cries and wild dances and scenes of not too chaste a character were the routine of these services ( Greek Antiquities, pp. 221, 284, etc.; see also notes Ezekiel 8:15; Ezekiel 8:17). Many of the paintings of the Egyptian gods are too revolting to be described here, while the foul domestic intrigues of some of the Assyrian and Babylonian deities offend the moral sense far more than the pen pictures of Balzac. Ishtar the passionate favorite of all lands grew hot in wrath against Gilgames (according to the story which everyone knew by heart in Ezekiel’s day) because he told her to her face of her unfaithfulness with Tammuz and Allala, with Tabulu and Ishullanu, with her father’s gardener and even with lions and stallions. Is it any wonder that the young and beautiful priestesses were merely sacred courtesans? No doubt this unchastity was general in most of the heathen temples. In the temples of Bel phallic emblems were as common as they are now in China. It is evident from this how open and careless was the speech of Ezekiel’s contemporaries concerning many things which are to-day kept hidden and secret, even by bad men. Indeed, it speaks well for the Hebrew captives that the prophet is able to arouse their disgust by such a picture; for even Aholibah was not much worse than the great Babylonian goddess Ishtar. It was only in Israel that the worship and imitation of such deities were so fiercely condemned. In the most ancient Jewish law the chastity of the wife was jealously guarded (Genesis 38:24; Deuteronomy 22:22, compare Leviticus 20:10; Ezekiel 18:11). In no other ancient nation could the marriage relationship have been thus used as typical of the union and communion of God with his people (Hosea 2:19; Jeremiah 3:14, etc.).
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