Ezekiel 23:37
“For they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols. They have also caused their sons, whom they bore to me, to pass through the fire to them to be devoured.”
What does Ezekiel 23:37 mean?
This passage uses the metaphor of unfaithful wives to describe how Israel and Judah abandoned God and turned to idols, compounding their betrayal with grave moral failures. The "blood in their hands" and reference to children passing through fire point to actual practices of child sacrifice that had crept into Israelite worship, which God explicitly condemned. Ezekiel is painting a picture of spiritual corruption so complete that it expressed itself in the worst kinds of physical cruelty and violence. The intensity of this language reflects how seriously the prophet took the people's rejection of God and their adoption of practices fundamentally at odds with what God called them to be.