Whore's Glory, Pt. 1
"But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his." - Ezekiel 16:15
There are various reasons I don’t often read Bible stories to my kids; why I opt, rather, for the top down approach of teaching them theological concepts. We spend a lot of time talking about God. On orthodoxy, but off script. We talk about the why, not as much the what. We’ll get to the stories someday, but I digress.
One of the reasons I don’t often read the actual Bible or Bible stories to my kids is because they weren’t actually written for kids. We all have blushed internally when someone points out how many graphic and unsavory scenes are contained in scripture. And sure, I could leave those parts out. I think most of us grew up with white-washed stories about vague, enigmatic sins we didn’t really understand. And maybe that’s why it takes many of us so long to grasp the depravity of our own sin as well as the mercy of God. If the sin is seen as small, or unseen at all, the mercy is trivial. But the Bible doesn’t paint us pictures of small sins or trivial mercies. We are given graphic pictures.
Can we really paint these graphic pictures for kids? Well, no. But neither do we want to gloss over the seriousness of sin. So, we struggle to strike that balance, if we’re honest.
I don’t want to tell my kids stories that can’t be both put on their level and paint a palpable image of justice and mercy.
But, ah, that is another topic for another time. Today, I’m not telling stories to kids. I’m telling the story of maybe the most graphic picture of justice and mercy we are given in scripture. And perhaps the most awkward. It’s not a sermon you look forward to hearing in church sitting next to the blue hairs and the fourth graders. And maybe you never have. There’s a reason: it’s uncomfortable. Why?
Cause it’s a picture that forces us to peer into the darkest parts of our souls. Oh, we pretend it’s about others. We pretend it’s just the indecency of the topic that creates that sickly tension in our midst, and maybe it is. But that’s not all it is.
And that’s why kids can be neither nakedly told these stories nor have them white-washed. It’s a dance of waiting until the story can be told in all it’s gore, so that all it’s glory may be felt: the whore. Wait, I forgot we’re in church: the prostitute.
And when the story of this willful wretch can be told, we tell it in full so that the horror of the story may bring forth in it’s hearer the same words David spoke in his own rage against injustice: “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die!” So that we may, just as Nathan did, respond much to their dismay: “You are the man.” (2 Sam. 12.)
You didn’t think I was going to start writing on a boring note, did you?
The Whore
What a terrible word. Again, not said much in church. We soften it. But scripture does not. In fact, it does even more than give us a startling, ugly word. It gives us a rather embarrassing description of the startling, ugly word. Hence that whole prelude to this essay. Indulge me with a few examples if you will:
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus."
-Revelation 17:1-6
But this is just a recap at the very end of the Bible! Let’s work backwards a bit:
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. They played the whore in Egypt; they played the whore in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and their virgin bosoms handled. Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
“Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them, and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin bosom and poured out their whoring lust upon her. Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. These uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters; and as for her, they killed her with the sword; and she became a byword among women, when judgment had been executed on her.
-Ezekiel 23:1-10
Gosh, that’s awkward. Just finish the prophecy if you want to hear the fate of such a “woman.” I’m guessing you already know.
Alright, well, now that we’ve got that out of the way, we have to back way up, gain a little context, and introduce the auxiliary topic of this post: the covenant.
The Covenant
In Genesis 15-17, God made a covenant with Abram (and changed his name to ‘Abraham.’) In scripture, covenants typically come with a few things: blessing, a new name, a sign, a seal. I’ll refrain from touching on any of these for now, save a few words on the sign where it is relevant.
What is a covenant? A covenant can be between two people, between one person and many persons, or between parties. In the simplest terms, it’s a promise to remain faithful to one another in pursuit of a common goal. And although a plurality of persons can be involved in various covenants, the first, and perhaps the best, illustration we have is the covenant of marriage. Because it is meant to teach us about the Bridegroom and his bride, marriage is definitively a sacred union between one man and one woman. There is only one groom and, though she is made up of many, there is one bride.
But Abram does not yet know this about the Bridegroom. He can only be familiar with the covenants, such as were made with Adam and Noah, that preceded him, handed down through word and story. So let us return to his setting.
So, God made a covenant with Abram, a promise to be faithful to one another, the common goal being Abram’s inheritance. But there is a problem. Abram was sinful and could not remain faithful to God. What promise could he possibly hope to keep to God in his fallen state? Of the two parties, God was the only one who could keep his word, dooming Abram at the outset. Especially since the covenant involved the acquisition of land inhabited by hostile forces. Could Abram guarantee the outcome of any of his actions? Of course not.
What then could be done? Only one thing; a thing which had never been heard of in all of myth and legend: God had to keep the covenant for both of them. Though covenants are supposed to involve the promises of two, this one was different.
In Genesis 15:17-18, we see what may have been a common ritual at the time when making oaths:
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.
An animal was cut in two, presumably for both parties to walk through, binding their word to one another. Yet, here, we see only God passing through the two pieces, essentially binding himself to his own word.
All Abram had to do was believe God. His faith that God would hold up both ends of the covenant was counted to him as righteousness (Hebrews 11:8); it was viewed as if Abram had kept his side of the covenant, though we see him failing over and over again to trust the promise of Yahweh, leaving disaster in his wake more than once as he tried to make the promise come about by his own hand.
And after this, in Genesis 17, we see Abram receive his new name, the blessing of children, and by extension a nation, and the sign of circumcision.
The Law
Fast forward to Deuteronomy 28. When God gave the written law to Moses, he explained that as long as the Israelites were obedient and faithful, they would be blessed and their nation would prosper. But if they were unfaithful, they would be cursed and defeated by their enemies (Deuteronomy 28:25).
From that point on, the Old Testament in nearly its entirety consists of accounts of Israel’s predictable and tiresome cycle. They would begin in faith, loyal to Yahweh and his law, and prosper accordingly. In a matter of sometimes only one generation they would forget God and commit idolatry, being unfaithful, and Yahweh would remove his hand, causing enemies to overtake them, and brutally so. Such desperation would begin the cycle over again. And again. And again.
Skim through any book written by one of the prophets and just read the headings. You will see the same cycle: Israel is unfaithful, God calls them to repent, they refuse, God judges by giving them over to their enemies, they repent, God delivers.
Israel “took” God’s name…
All this in mind—the beginnings of a nation with Abraham and its fruition in Israel’s formation at Mount Sinai—we come to what it means, in part, to be this whore, starkly contrasted against the covenant of marriage—the most sacred of all human covenants.
The 3rd command in the Ten Commandments reads:
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” - Exodus 20:7
Another phrase that we use regarding the marriage covenant is when the woman “takes the name of her husband.” (Interesting that feminism has attacked this tradition and started the practice of hyphenating last names or women keeping their own names, hm?) And we know that when Israel entered the Mosaic covenant with Yahweh, this is exactly what she was doing, for the Lord is called her husband:
“For your Maker is your husband,
the Lord of hosts is his name;
and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
the God of the whole earth he is called.”
- Isaiah 54:5
The Israelites, by entering into the covenant with God, were “taking God’s name.”
If this is what it means to take God’s name, what did it mean to take God’s name in vain?
…in vain
Were you taught that saying “Oh my God” was to take God’s name in vain? While that is a good habit to avoid, it is the palest shade of the truth of what it means to break this commandment. It’s that white-washing that was done to bring the terrible reality of sin down to an elementary level and, thus, watering down righteousness to something that feels not so offensive, perhaps even humanly attainable.
If the “Sunday school” understanding of this is never fleshed out as we mature, the simplest meaning of it remains with us and stunts the development of a deeper reflection on our own treachery. God spends pages of scripture painting us a horrific picture—for our benefit. (You can hear echos of Galatians 3:22 here: “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that…”) But most of us have stopped at the narratives of scripture because the poetic imagery in the middle of the Bible feels too hard to understand or seems to lack application to us. Never mind trying to make it appropriate and understandable for kids.
God used the image of a whore, a treacherous woman, willing to do anything to get what she wants, to describe Israel when she committed idolatry and became unfaithful to the covenant made with her husband—Yahweh. Refer back to Ezekiel 23 and Revelation 17 & 18. (Also depicted in many other books such as Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, etc.)
We use the same language to describe a woman who is unfaithful in marriage. She is breaking the covenant. Or, taking her husband’s name in vain.
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Oh, Israel, how the Lord has warned: don’t enter the marriage covenant with Yahweh and proceed to be unfaithful. But they did. Constantly.
Like a whore bent on satiating her own lusts, willfully unfaithful, breaking the sacred covenant to go her own way. And how beautiful and desirable she looks, arrayed in scarlet and jewelry, how men throw themselves at her feet. And she is successful in her selfish pursuits, gaining anything her heart desires.
“[Trusting] in her beauty [she] played the whore because of [her] renown and [lavished her] whorings on any passerby.”
This is the whore in all her glory.
Or so it seems.
[To be continued.]
In Russian the translation says, “don’t say the name of God in vain” but more recent translations say “don’t use the name of God in vain.” So I was raised with the elementary understanding of the commandment. I love the deeper meaning of “taking” God’s name.