Prostitute Themselves

Deuteronomy 31:15-16 – Then the Lord appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the cloud stood over the entrance to the tent. And the Lord said to Moses: “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them.

Exodus 34:15 – “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices.

Deuteronomy 4:25-26 – After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed.

1 Kings 18:18 – “I have not made trouble for Israel,” Elijah replied. “But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.

Jeremiah 2:13 – “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Jeremiah 19:4 – For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

Application:

• ·         Prostitute themselves was a metaphor widely used in the Old Testament to refer to Israel’s unfaithfulness to her covenant Lord, who, according to a related metaphor, had become Israel’s “husband” when He established His special covenant with her.
• ·         The pattern of the Israelites’ rebellion, resulting in expulsion from the land, and then their repentance, leading to restoration to the land, is prominent in Deuteronomy.
• ·         The source of Israel’s trouble was not Elijah or even the drought, but Ahab’s breach of covenant loyalty.
• ·         Idols, like broken cisterns, will always fail their worshipers; by contrast, God provides life abundant and unfailing.
• ·         “Filled this place with the blood of the innocent” was the blood of godly people, specifically as shed by wicked King Manasseh.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV