AN ANCIENT ALLEGORY

One such lesson is presented as an allegory in Ezekiel chapter 23. The allegory involves two sisters who failed to trust in God and looked elsewhere for blessing and protection. The older sister was Oholah and the younger one, Oholibah. Oholah is identified as representing Samaria, the final capital of the northern or ten-tribe kingdom of Israel, and Oholibah as representing Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah. The capitals being representative of kingdoms, the sisters stand for two kingdoms.

OHOLIBAH DOES NOT PROFIT FROM OHOLAH’S WARNING EXAMPLE

Oholibah, symbolizing the kingdom of Judah, had good reason to contemplate the fate of her sister kingdom. In keeping with the meaning of her name (“My Tent Is in Her”), Oholibah was favored in having Jehovah’s tent or temple in her capital city Jerusalem. But she failed to appreciate this. She defied the warning example of Oholah and carried on her spiritual prostitution in an even more extreme fashion.​—Ezek. 23:11-17.

Forgetting Jehovah and her marriage-like covenant with him, Oholibah, the southern kingdom, also played politics with Assyria. This was notoriously so in the days of Judean king Ahaz. Contrary to the counsel of Jehovah by the prophet Isaiah, Ahaz called the Assyrian conqueror Tiglath-pileser to his aid against the allied kingdoms of Syria and Israel. (Isa. 7:1-20; 2 Ki. 16:5-10, 17, 18) King Hezekiah, successor to Ahaz, saw how disastrously Oholah’s courting the political favor of Assyria ended in the year 740 B.C.E., with the destruction of Samaria and its kingdom. Yet he, though delivered from the Assyrian king Sennacherib, entertained the friendly advances made by the Babylonians.​—Isa. 37:36–39:7; 2 Ki. 19:35–20:18.

It was particularly toward the close of the seventh century B.C.E., when Jehoiakim and Zedekiah ruled as kings tributary to Babylon, that Oholibah “exercised her sensual desire more ruinously” than did her sister Oholah by courting the political favor of the Babylonian World Power. (Ezek. 23:11-16) This international intercourse kept up during the reigns of both kings until Oholibah tired of the domination of Babylon. So “her soul began to turn away disgusted” from the Babylonians by rebelling against the king of Babylon. (Ezek. 23:17) At that time Oholibah began “calling to mind the days of her youth, when she prostituted herself in the land of Egypt,” that is, she began looking southward to Egypt for military aid to support her rebellion.​—Ezek. 23:19.

Oholibah’s course, like that of her sister, was bound to lead to calamity. Jehovah was disgusted with the kingdom of Judah. This meant that, as in the case of the northern kingdom, Jehovah would abandon the symbolic Oholibah into the hands of her passionate lovers. (Ezek. 23:18-23) So wicked was Oholibah that Jehovah could speak of her former lover, the Babylonians, as “righteous men,” that is, comparatively “righteous men.” They were also “righteous men” in the sense that they would execute Jehovah’s righteous judgment. (Ezek. 23:43-49) Through his prophet Ezekiel, Jehovah foretold what these lovers would do to Oholibah:

“They will set themselves against you all around, and I will give judgment over to them, and they must judge you with their judgments. And I will express my ardor against you, and they must take action against you in rage. Your nose and your ears they will remove, and the remainder of you will fall even by the sword. Your sons and your daughters they themselves will take, and the remainder of you will be devoured by the fire. And they will certainly strip off you your garments and take away your beautiful articles. And I shall actually cause your loose conduct to cease from you, and your prostitution carried from the land of Egypt; and you will not raise your eyes to them, and Egypt you will remember no more.”​—Ezek. 23:24-27.

Accordingly, Jehovah God would allow Oholibah’s lovers to apply his judicial decisions according to their own cruel way. They would ruin Oholibah’s beautiful face or national appearance. Her anointed king and other prominent officials, who were like the “very breath of [her] nostrils,” would be taken away. (Lam. 4:20) Her priests, judges and literary men, who were like ears to listen and give balance to the headship of the nation, would also be removed violently. What was remaining of adulterous Oholibah would fall by the executional sword of the victorious Babylonians. Those of her sons and daughters surviving would be taken captive and enslaved. The remainder of her, in the way of nonportable material properties, would be “devoured by the fire.” Oholibah would thus be stripped of her garments and beautiful articles with which she practiced her allurements as a nation.

Oholibah may have thought that she could escape this calamity by regretting her association with Babylon and turning away in disgust. The Babylonians, however, would not forget her engagements with them. And her turning away from the Babylonians and coming to hate them did not clear her record with Jehovah God. Oholibah was not repenting over her spiritual adultery. She was still inclined to violate her covenant with Jehovah and adulterously enter alliances with pagan nations, such as Egypt, to ensure her safety. Hence Jehovah would expose her nakedness by laying bare her record as a shameless prostitute. Like her sister Oholah, she would be forced to drink a cupful of national destruction and deportation from her land. Oholibah would be forced to pay to the full the divine penalty for her unfaithfulness to God, as if having to gnaw and crunch the “earthenware fragments” of her cup in order to imbibe every last drop of moisture that had soaked into them. To the maliciously minded nations round about, Oholibah would become an “object of laughter and derision.” All these things came upon her in 607 B.C.E. when Jerusalem was destroyed in fulfillment of Jehovah’s judgment.​—Ezek. 23:28-35.