The Harlot · The Symbolism of Scripture
The Harlot
Scripture’s hardest metaphor, and the thing that makes it intelligible rather than merely brutal: adultery requires a marriage. The charge is only ever brought where a covenant already exists.
What It Stands For
the bond underneath the charge
Before anything else, the plain thing: the subject of this symbol is covenant betrayal, and never women. Scripture uses a figure drawn from the worst thing that could happen inside a marriage, and it uses it about a nation, a city, and a church. Matthew Henry states the grammar of it in one line:
A whore [in this passage] is one that is married, and has been false to her husband's bed, has forsaken the guide of her youth, and broken the covenant of God.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Revelation 17:1
One that is married. Every part of the metaphor depends on that, and Ezekiel says it in the verse itself rather than leaving it to be worked out:
You adulterous wife! You receive strangers instead of your own husband!The comparison names the relationship it depends on: a wife, and a husband being replaced.
A wife of whoredoms - That is, says Newcome, a wife from among the Israelites, who were remarkable for spiritual fornication, or idolatry. God calls himself the husband of Israel; and this chosen nation owed him the fidelity of a wife.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hosea 1:2
Two Charges, Not One
checked across the canon
Harlotry
brought against anyone who sells herself, covenant or no covenant
- Nineveh
“the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations”
Nahum 3:4 - Tyre
“she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world”
Isaiah 23:17 - Babylon
“the great whore that sitteth upon many waters”
Revelation 17:1
Adultery
requires a marriage, so it is only ever brought where there is one
- Israel
“backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away”
Jeremiah 3:8 - Judah
“her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also”
Jeremiah 3:8 - Jerusalem
“as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband”
Ezekiel 16:32 - Christians
“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?”
James 4:4
because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.Nineveh is called a harlot, and the offence named is what she sells, nations, and families.
You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.And the other charge, brought against Christians. Note that James does not explain the metaphor; he assumes it.
James could not have written that sentence to Nineveh. The word he chooses requires a marriage on the reader’s side of it, and he uses it without a word of explanation — which tells you how settled the figure was. Albert Barnes traces exactly what is being claimed:
These words are frequently used to denote those who are faithless towards God, and are frequently applied to those who forsake God for idols, Hos 3:1; Isa 57:3, Isa 57:7; Ezek. 16; 23. It is not necessary to suppose that the apostle meant that those to whom he wrote were literally guilty of the sins here referred to; but he rather refers to those who were unfaithful to their covenant with God by neglecting their duty to him, and yielding themselves to the indulgence of their own lusts and passions. The idea is, You have in effect broken your marriage covenant with God by loving the world more than him
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
James 4:4
Covetousness is elsewhere called idolatry, and it is here called adultery; it is a forsaking of him to whom we are devoted and espoused, to cleave to other things; there is this brand put upon worldly-mindedness--that it is enmity to God.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
James 4:4
Ye adulterers and adulteresses - Who have broken your faith with God, your rightful spouse. Know ye not that the friendship or love of the world - The desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life, or courting the favour of worldly men, is enmity against God?
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Methodist
James 4:4
C. S. Lewis puts the same reading in one sentence and does not soften the pronoun: “"Adulteresses" St. James calls us, because we turn aside to the "friendship of the world", while God "Jealously longs for the spirit He has implanted in us".” (The Problem of Pain, chapter 3)
The Harlot Who Pays
Ezekiel 16, and a reversal the chapter marks itself
But because of your fame, you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot. You lavished your favors on everyone who passed by, and your beauty was theirs for the asking.What the charge starts from: not need, but beauty and reputation.
Men give gifts to all their prostitutes, but you gave gifts to all your lovers. You bribed them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors.And the detail that breaks the analogy in an unexpected direction.
So your prostitution is the opposite of that of other women: No one solicited your favors, and you paid a fee instead of receiving one; so you are the very opposite!The chapter says it outright: this is contrary to what other women do.
All prostitutes receive payment: but you have given payment to all your lovers, and you would give them anything to come in to you from every direction to fornicate with you. And it happened in you contrary to the custom of women in your fornications, and there will be no fornication after you. For in that you have given payment, and have not received payment: it has become contrary to you.
Jerome· Commentary on Ezekiel, 420Latin, fifth century
Ezekiel 16:32-34
This is the detail that stops the metaphor from being merely an accusation. A harlot is at least paid. This one pays, and the text pauses to say that no woman does that. The picture Ezekiel is drawing is not of someone taking a profitable option. It is of someone spending everything she has to be taken.
Thy renown - Her renown abroad drew to her idolatrous strangers, who brought their idols with them. Pouredst out - Didst readily prostitute thyself to them; every stranger, who passed thro' thee, might find room for his idol, and idolatry.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Methodist
Ezekiel 16:15
The prophet now describes the idolatries of the time of the Kings. The earlier offences in the time of the Judges are not noticed, that being an unsettled time. The conduct of the people after they had prospered into a kingdom is to be described. Because of thy renown - The marriages of Solomon with pagan wives, and his consequent idolatries, are a clear instance of such, misuse of glory.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Ezekiel 16:15
A Law God Breaks in Their Favour
Jeremiah 3:1, and the invitation that should not be there
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Would not such a land be completely defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers— and you would return to Me?” declares the LORD.Read the whole verse. It sets out a rule, applies it, and then does the opposite in the last clause.
It was ever understood, by the law and practice of the country, that if a woman were divorced by her husband, and became the wife of another man, the first husband could never take her again. Now Israel had been married unto the Lord; joined in solemn covenant to him to worship and serve him only. Israel turned from following him, and became idolatrous. On this ground, considering idolatry as a spiritual whoredom, and the precept and practice of the law to illustrate this case, Israel could never more be restored to the Divine favor: but God, this first husband, in the plenitude of his mercy, is willing to receive this adulterous spouse, if she will abandon her idolatries and return unto him.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Jeremiah 3:1
Albert Barnes states the argument at its coldest — “The prophet has completed his survey of Israels conduct, and draws the conclusion that as an adulterous wife could not be taken back by her husband, so Israel has forfeited her part in the covenant with God.” — which is what makes the verse’s last four words so strange. Gregory the Great, preaching in the sixth century, does not smooth it over. He says the whole point is that God is doing what He has just said cannot be done:
Behold, he gave the example of a shameful woman. He showed that after such shame she cannot be received back. But he overcomes by mercy this very example that he set forth, when he says that a fornicating woman can by no means be received back, and yet he himself waits to receive the fornicating soul. Consider, brothers, the weight of such great tenderness. He says what cannot be done, and demonstrates that he himself can do this even against custom. Behold, he calls, and those whom he declares to be defiled, he also seeks to embrace, those by whom he complains he has been abandoned.
Gregory the Great· Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 33, 604Latin, sixth century
Jeremiah 3:1
He says what cannot be done, and demonstrates that he himself can do this even against custom. That sentence is the hinge of the whole symbol. The metaphor is brought in to establish that there is no way back — and then the one who brought it in walks through the wall He built.
She saw that because faithless Israel had committed adultery, I gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away. Yet that unfaithful sister Judah had no fear and prostituted herself as well.Two sisters, one watching the other. Judah has the whole case in front of her and is not frightened by it.
Rather, And I saw that because apostate Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away, and given her the writing of her divorcement, yet false Judah her sister feared not.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Jeremiah 3:8
But our being cast out of covenant is owing purely to ourselves and our own folly. The breach is on man's side
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Hosea 1:9
Origen, reading the same chapter in the third century, notes the order and refuses to make it a competition: “Israel having played the harlot first, Judah too played the harlot afterward.”
The Prophet Made to Live It
and a question the commentators genuinely differ on
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, He told him, “Go, take a prostitute as your wife and have children of adultery, because this land is flagrantly prostituting itself by departing from the LORD.”The command, and the reason for it in the same sentence, 'for the land hath committed great whoredom'.
Was the marriage literal, visionary, or a symbol acted out?an old question, and the readings are not settled
Jerome takes it as a real marriage and defends the prophet for it:
We should not blame the prophet if he converted a prostitute to virtue, but we should rather praise him because he turned a bad woman into a good one.
Jerome· Commentary on Hosea, 420Latin, fifth century
Hosea 1:2
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the description as applied ahead of the fact — Gomer is called a wife of whoredoms anticipatively, of what she would become rather than what she was:
Gomer is called "a wife of whoredoms," anticipatively. children of whoredoms--The kingdom collectively is viewed as a mother; the individual subjects of it are spoken of as her children.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Hosea 1:2
Others through the centuries have read the whole episode as a vision or an enacted parable rather than a marriage. The honest position is that the chapter does not settle it, and that the meaning of the sign does not depend on which reading is right.
to Hosea He enjoined, as the beginning of his prophetic office, an act contrary to mans natural feelings, yet one, by which he became an image of the Redeemer, uniting to Himself what was unholy, in order to make it holy.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hosea 1:2
Where It Points
two women, and one introduction
Then one of the seven angels with the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.Remember this sentence. It is used again, word for word, four chapters later, for someone else.
And there came one of the seven angels, saying, Come hither - This relation concerning the great whore, and that concerning the wife of the Lamb, chap. xxi, 9, 10, have the same introduction, in token of the exact opposition between them.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Methodist
Revelation 17:1
John Wesley has caught a piece of structure that is easy to miss. Revelation 17:1 and 21:9 open identically — one of the seven angels with the seven vials comes and says come hither, I will shew thee. The book sets the harlot and the bride side by side on purpose, in the same frame. Whatever else the last vision is doing, it is asking the reader which woman he is looking at.
Who Revelation’s harlot is has been answered many different ways since the second century, several of them by naming an institution or a city. MannaFest does not adjudicate it here, and the identifications , ancient and modern, are not repeated on this page.
What Scripture says outright
- Ezekiel 16:32
The comparison is stated as a marriage broken: as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband.
- Ezekiel 16:34
The chapter names its own reversal, that this one gives a reward and receives none, which is contrary to other women.
- Jeremiah 3:1
The legal rule and the invitation are in the same verse, with nothing between them but the word yet.
- James 4:4
The New Testament applies the word to believers without explaining it: the marriage figure is assumed as common ground.
What readers have heard in it
Readings and identifications, named as such.
- Hosea 1:2
That the command to Hosea was literal, or visionary, or an enacted parable. All three have been held by serious readers since antiquity, and the chapter does not settle it.
- Revelation 17:5
Every identification of the woman with a named city, church or institution. They begin in the patristic period and have changed in every century since; MannaFest does not adjudicate the question.
- Jeremiah 3:8
That the bill of divorce means God has finished with Israel. Jeremiah is the prophet who goes on to promise a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah (31:31), and the invitation to return is in this same chapter.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the charge, in the order it is brought
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, He told him, “Go, take a prostitute as your wife and have children of adultery, because this land is flagrantly prostituting itself by departing from the LORD.”
The prophet is made to live the metaphor, and the verse gives the reason in its own second half: the land hath committed great whoredom.
But because of your fame, you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot. You lavished your favors on everyone who passed by, and your beauty was theirs for the asking.
The charge at its hardest, and note what it starts from, not poverty or desperation, but 'thine own beauty' and 'thy renown'.
You adulterous wife! You receive strangers instead of your own husband!
And the sentence that supplies the whole logic. A wife. Which means there was a marriage.
So your prostitution is the opposite of that of other women: No one solicited your favors, and you paid a fee instead of receiving one; so you are the very opposite!
Then the reversal the text marks itself: this one pays, and the chapter says that is contrary to what any harlot does.
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Would not such a land be completely defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers— and you would return to Me?” declares the LORD.
A legal impossibility set out in full, and then, in the same verse, the invitation that ignores it.
She saw that because faithless Israel had committed adultery, I gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away. Yet that unfaithful sister Judah had no fear and prostituted herself as well.
Two sisters, and the second watches what happens to the first without learning anything from it.
because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.
The other charge, brought against a nation that never had a covenant, and the offence is commerce, not betrayal.
You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.
And the word turned on the church, which only works if the covenant is still a marriage.
Then one of the seven angels with the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.
The last use of the image, introduced in exactly the words used four chapters later for the bride.
The Voices
with the work named
Matthew Henry gives the page its first sentence: a whore, in this passage, is one that is married — and without it none of the rest is intelligible. Adam Clarke sets out the legal problem in Jeremiah 3 at full strength before letting the mercy in, which is the only way that verse works. Albert Barnes states the argument coldly enough for the last clause to land, and traces what James is actually accusing his readers of.
Jerome carries the strangest detail in the symbol: the harlot who pays , in Ezekiel’s own words. Gregory the Great supplies the sentence the page turns on: God says what cannot be done, and then does it against custom. And John Wesley notices that Revelation introduces the harlot and the bride with the same words on purpose.
Where to Go Next
The marriage underneath it
What the charge is about
Nearby in the index
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: