Re: Ezekiel mentions the two covenants between God and Israel:

ClemsonTiger1988® · 2025-04-04T09:04:55.605Z

Chapter 16: "60 Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant. 61 Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant." Read the entire chapter for context. Israel has really made a mess of itself.

Fordtunate Son

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Apr 4, 2025, 6:47 PM

Ez 16 is a whopper of a chapter. A lot of stuff packed into a few lines. Since you know the Christian interpretation very well, I'll try to illustrate the Jewish view as a point of discussion. Otherwise, we'd all just all sit around and nod ‘Yes,’ right?” And what fun is that? 😊

The context is the Jewish exiles, specifically those from Jerusalem, in Babylon. Ezekiel lived during that time, so it’s not too far-fetched that he wrote about what God told him in his time.

Ez 16:1
“The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices…”

A tangent here is that God called Ezekiel, as a prophet, a “Son of Man.” That’s exactly what Jesus called himself 500 years later. But that’ll be for another post.

As to Ezekiel’s story, God, through Ezekiel, makes a long analogy of captive Jerusalem as an unfaithful wife. If only she had kept her vows, aka the Mosaic/Sinai Covenant, she’d be back down in Canaan and not in chains up in Babylon.

Daughter Jerusalem had a hard life:

Ez 16:3
[You were born] in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

“No one looked on you with pity or had compassion... Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.”

Tough life. Eventually though, through the love of the conquering David in the days of her youth, God arranged a marriage for Daughter Jerusalem with himself.

Ez 16:8
“I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.”

But right after the wedding Daughter Jerusalem went rogue, just as you said. And her kids went to rot, too. Idols, bad behavior, and indiscretions with neighbors. Like a teenage prostitute bride taken off the streets, who heads right back to her Johns.

Ez 16:26
“You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your neighbors with large gen i tals…”

And that made God mad:

Ez 16:30-43
“‘I am filled with fury against you…Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord! Because you did not remember the days of your youth…I will surely bring down on your head what you have done…” ie, Babylonian Captivity.

Then God gets really nasty:

Ez 16:44
“Like mother, like daughter.” You are a true daughter of your mother [the Pagan, Canaanite Hittites from verse 3]

And what’s worse, God calls out Jerusalem’s two rotten sisters. Who he actually says were BETTER than Daughter Jerusalem. Yikes.

Ez 16:46-51
“Your older sister was Samaria, who lived to the north of you with her daughters; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you with her daughters, was Sodom…. your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done… Samaria did not commit half the sins you did.”

But curiously, God then makes a promise he has not kept to this day:

Ez 16:54
‘However, I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and of Samaria and her daughters, and your fortunes along with them, so that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all you have done in giving them comfort…”

God seems to be angling towards a regional peace treaty when, and if, Israel ever gets out of Babylon. But to my knowledge, Sodom is still a hole in the ground, and there’s not much comfort given between Samaria and Israel even to this day. They still worship on their own sacred mountains and kind of keep to themselves. So when that prophecy will be fulfilled in full is anyone’s guess.

Finally we get to the Jewish take on those last verses.

Ez 16:59
“…you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. Yet, I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.”

As surprising as it is, nowhere before is the Sinai covenant, in full, ever declared to be ‘everlasting,’ at least up till now. And this is critical to Jewish understanding. In Jew-think, an implicit deal is about to become an explicit deal.

Pieces of the Sinai covenant are called out as everlasting, like the Sabbath, or the priesthood:

Exodus 31:16–17
“Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath... for a perpetual covenant.

Exodus 40:15
“…for their anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations.”

But not all of it. And Jeremiah implies that one day (maybe the final day), the covenant won’t be about ‘obeying’ at all; Jews will simply love God so much they can’t break the Law, and all the rest of us neighbors will be right there with them, loving God too.

Jeremiah 31:31
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel(not the world, mind you)…
It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors…because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them…”

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel (again, not the world) after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds…No longer will they teach their neighbor, because they will all know me…”

No need to remember to obey the Law when the Law is engrained in your mind. And, captive Jerusalem will be forever secure:

Jer 31:40
“The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.” (Don’t tell the Romans, or the Muslims, or the Crusaders that)

So the deal offered to the Babylonian captives in Ez 16 is not a NEW covenant to them, it’s the re-institution of the same OLD covenant. God doesn’t call it new, either. He clarifies it as explicitly “everlasting,” as opposed to leaving it open-ended before. That is, every time you mess it up, I return to you with the exact same deal - behave, and I’ll look after you.

The only ‘newness’ in the deal to the Jews is that it’s a fresh copy to re-sign again, and again. And God reinforces that Jerusalem ‘forgot’ the deal in the very next line in the Chapter:

Ez 16:60-62
“ Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth (that you forgot), and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.” (since you’re probably going to need forgiveness more than once, after you break it again)

“Then, you will remember your ways (if I give you infinite chances, how could you forget?)…So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord.”

So, Jerusalem, take your punishment (captivity), remember the vows you took, be ashamed of what you have done, don’t be arrogant and boastful about your infidelities again, and come back to me.

Ez 16:63
“Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

For the Jews, the story is not even about all the minutiae and varied specifics of the Law, or about a possible Messiah, even by their definition of a messiah. It’s simply about fidelity to God, which is why it’s told in terms of the fidelity of a marriage. At least, that’s their view.

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Ezekiel mentions the two covenants between God and Israel: