Ezekiel 16:20
““‘“Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne to me, and you have sacrificed these to them to be devoured. Was your prostitution a small matter,”
What does Ezekiel 16:20 mean?
This passage uses stark, painful language to describe ancient Jerusalem's spiritual unfaithfulness. The prophet Ezekiel compares the city's worship of false gods to a parent sacrificing their own children, which was literally practiced by some ancient Near Eastern peoples in desperate acts of idolatry. It's meant to shock us into understanding how destructive turning away from God really is, not just as an abstract betrayal but as something that harms the most precious things we're entrusted with. The verse asks whether the people thought their spiritual infidelity was somehow minor or acceptable, when in fact it was causing deep damage to everything that mattered most.