Ezekiel 23:2-21

2‘Son of man, there were two sisters who had the same mother.

3They were prostitutes in Egypt, from the time that they were both young women. Men touched their breasts and made love to them.

4The older sister was called Oholah. The younger one was called Oholibah. In this story, Oholah is Samaria. Oholibah is Jerusalem. They became my wives, and later they gave birth to sons and daughters for me.

5Oholah was my wife but she continued to live as a prostitute. She wanted men from Assyria to be her lovers.

6Her lovers were soldiers who wore blue clothes. Some of them were army officers and leaders. They were all strong young men. Some of them rode on horses.

7Oholah gave herself to them as a prostitute. She had sex with all the important young men of Assyria. She did these disgusting things with anyone that she wanted. She worshipped their idols and she made herself unclean.

8She had lived as a prostitute in Egypt when she was young. Men had sex with her. They touched her breasts and they enjoyed her body for themselves. She continued to do that with the Assyrian men.

9She wanted the Assyrian men to be her lovers. Because of that I put her under their power.

10They removed her clothes to make her ashamed. They took away her sons and daughters. They attacked her and they killed her. Because of her punishment, women everywhere talked about her.

11Ohalah's sister, Oholibah, saw this, but she did even worse things than her sister. She wanted other lovers even more than her sister did.

12She, too, wanted Assyrian men to be her lovers. They were army officers and leaders. They were brave soldiers in beautiful clothes. Some of them rode on horses. They were all strong young men.

13I saw that she was living in the same way that her sister had done. Like her sister, she made herself unclean.

14But Oholibah did even worse things, as a prostitute does. She saw pictures of men on the walls. They were bright red pictures that people had made of Babylonian men.

15The men wore belts around their bodies. They wore large cloths around their heads. They looked like Babylonian army officers who came from Chaldea.

16When Oholibah saw these pictures, she wanted the men to be her lovers. She sent messages to them in Babylonia.

17The Babylonian soldiers came to have sex with her. They did many disgusting things with her so that she was unclean. After they had done this to her, she became upset. She turned away from them.

18She was not ashamed to have sex with many other men. Everyone knew that she lived as a prostitute. So I was very upset. I turned away from her, as I had turned away from her sister.

19But she wanted more and more men to be her lovers. She remembered how she had lived as a prostitute in Egypt when she was a young woman.

20She wanted those strong men to be her lovers. They had sex in a strong way, like donkeys or horses.

21Yes, Oholibah, you thought about the disgusting ways that you had sex when you were young. You wanted men to touch your breasts and make love to you as the Egyptian men had done.