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you slaughtered my children

Ezekiel 16:15-22 (JDV)

Ezekiel 16:15 ” ‘But you trusted in your beauty and committed fornication because of your fame. You lavished your sexual favors on everyone who passed by. Your beauty became his.
Ezekiel 16:16 You took some of your clothing and made colorful high places for yourself, and you engaged in prostitution on them. These places should not have been built, and this should never have happened!
Ezekiel 16:17 You also took your beautiful jewelry made from the gold and silver I had given you, and you made male images so that you could engage in prostitution with them.
Ezekiel 16:18 Then you took your embroidered clothing to cover them and set my oil and incense before them.
Ezekiel 16:19 The food that I gave you – the fine flour, oil, and honey that I fed you – you set it before them as a pleasing aroma. That is what happened. This is the declaration of the Lord Yahveh.
Ezekiel 16:20 ” ‘You even took your sons and daughters you bore to me and sacrificed them to these images as food. Wasn’t your prostitution enough?
Ezekiel 16:21 You slaughtered my children and gave them up when you passed them through the fire to the images.
Ezekiel 16:22 In all your repulsive practices and acts of prostitution, you did not remember the days of your infancy when you were stark naked and thrashing around in your blood.

you slaughtered my children

Jerusalem’s betrayal of her husband is described in bleak detail here, using the analogy of a bride who is exalted by her husband’s love, and then turns around and gives her pride, beauty, wealth and children to other men.

The worst act of betrayal is that the city sacrificed her children by her legitamate husband — the LORD himself. They were infants sacrificed to Molech, burned to death in a hideous sacrilege of a ritual. The LORD, the rejected husband tells the city “You slaughtered my children and gave them up when you passed them through the fire to the images.”

The question I am pondering today — as I reflect on my being part of the bride of Christ — is my own responsibility to raise my own children as God’s children. Have I sacrificed them to an unholy image?

LORD, give me the wisdom to stay true to the one who gave me my children. You have blessed me with three beautiful daughters. My I continue to commit them to you because they are gifts from you.