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.

OHOLAH’S FAILURE TO TRUST IN JEHOVAH

It was not until 997 B.C.E., however, that the symbolic Oholah and Oholibah took definite form. In that year ten tribes of Israel refused further allegiance to the royal house of David and set up their own kingdom. This revolt did not cancel the covenant the entire nation had entered into with Jehovah at Mount Sinai. Both of the new kingdoms were still in this covenant and were therefore still subject to Jehovah as to a spiritual Husband. (1 Ki. 11:29-39) But the ten-tribe kingdom, Oholah, refused wifelike subjection to Jehovah and became idolatrous. Oholah (meaning “Her Tent”) set up her own tent for carrying on religious worship. She forgot Jehovah, for the northern kingdom went over to the worship of the golden calf and later adopted Baal worship. Oholah also lost her trust in Jehovah as her Protector and played politics with pagan nations, especially Assyria.​—2 Ki. 15:17-22; Ezek. 23:5-8; Hos. 5:13; 12:1.

Oholah’s failure to trust in Jehovah and to remain faithful to him proved to be calamitous. Ezekiel 23:9, 10 states: “[Jehovah] gave her into the hand of those passionately loving her, into the hand of the sons of Assyria, toward whom she had lusted. They were the ones that uncovered her nakedness. Her sons and her daughters they took, and her they killed even with sword. And she came to be infamy to women, and acts of judgment were what they executed upon her.” Yes, Jehovah abandoned the northern kingdom to the brutal Assyrians who had passionately loved to force a worldly alliance upon it. The Assyrians acted as executioners of divine judgment, giving symbolic Oholah the treatment that an adulterous wife deserved. They “uncovered her nakedness” by stripping the land of her Israelite children, deporting them far off. And with the sword of war they killed her as a political nation, destroying her national capital Samaria, in 740 B.C.E. Oholah indeed became “infamy to women,” that is, to pagan kingdoms of that time. They looked down upon her as a nation that had gained shameful infamy for herself and they shuddered at her fate.

The tribes that formed the northern kingdom, or Oholah, included those that descended from Jacob’s two oldest sons, Reuben and Simeon, and also from Jacob’s firstborn son by Rachel, namely, Joseph, whose two sons Ephraim and Manasseh became two distinct tribes. Hence Oholah could rightly be called the “older” sister.