[This is part 1 in a series “On Statism and Adultery.” See part two, three, four, five, six, seven]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris 

Although scripture commonly uses terms like adultery, prostitution, and whoredom as metaphors for people who idolize human rulers and seek their protection and benefits, most Christians would be entirely unfamiliar with this concept. These terms are most often understood only in their literal sense, referring to unfaithful spouses or actual street prostitution. This limited perspective likely stems from the watered-down sermons they regularly hear and their own neglect for the prophets, whose scathing condemnations of statism and idolatry would make this metaphorical usage abundantly clear to anyone with even a basic familiarity with them. 

Without seeing that these terms are best understood as referring to statism and political idolatry, most professing Christians cannot even see this core scriptural message that the primary way that men stray away from God is by worshiping, serving, and praising the false gods of pagan kingdoms. These things are often entirely lost on the average Christian who lacks enough discernment to see them. Even worse, they go on to praise these presidents and congressmen themselves without seeing any conflict with God and His word. These statists then think that because they are loyal to their wives or don’t sell their bodies in the streets, that they are not adulterers, prostitutes, fornicators, and whores, when they are precisely all these things in the way that God talks about them!

More than a sexual statement

Though I don’t aim here to dismiss spousal infidelity and am the first to point out that free societies demand strong and godly families that serve as the foundation of a free society, the problem is that this wider understanding of statism as adultery is rarely emphasized, to the point that it is practiced on a wide scale and escapes the condemnation that it deserves. The false pastors of the world will go on an hour rant about being faithful to your wife, but won’t touch the subject of being faithful to God by turning away from statism — from idolatry, praise, support, and worship for the kingdoms of this world. Indeed, they positively condone these things and don’t rebuke the sin of statist adultery. 

Though for most Christians “adultery” would bring to mind spousal infidelity, in scripture the metaphor is very often used to describe a spiritual infidelity, where a people cheat on God with the kingdoms of this world, their figureheads, their armies, and their systems of welfare and public goods and services. In other words, these terms are often used to describe statism, ie., the worldly political ideology that advocates for systems of human civil government that needs to be abolished and also idolizes these rulers and treats them as lords, kings, saviors, judges, and lawmakers. 

There is little reason to wonder why the false pastors of the world would have an interest in dumbing these things down to mere sexual debauchery (though many of them are also simply the blind leading the blind and don’t see it themselves). When people dismiss this political understanding of these terms and emphasize only sexual promiscuity or spousal adultery, they can then partake in the great political sins of the Bible that really make up its core message of seeking the Kingdom of God at the exclusion of all other worldly kingdoms. Without seeing the metaphor here for political idolatry, men can then engage in the grievously sinful acts of supporting human civil government without seeing any contradiction to their Christian faith. Yet this is very often the sense in which God, through His prophets and other inspired writers, intends for these things to mean! Scripture uses these terms to describe the very people on the American scene today who vote for presidents, approve of the systems they represent, place lawn signs of their favorite politicians in their yards, hang flags from their houses, say things like “support the troops” and “back the blue,” collect welfare and retirement benefits from the government, and in general seek protection and aid in the political systems of this world. 

The whoredom of statism in the scriptures

As anyone would soon see if they picked up a Bible, and especially if they read through the prophets, these terms are more so used to describe statism than they are used in a purely sexual sense. The latter is rather often just a powerful metaphor—how filthy to whore yourselves out in the streets!—to describe the equally dirty and adulterous act of engaging in relationships with the kings and kingdoms of this world, which men do merely by thinking these systems should exist at all, much less by voting for them and defending them.

Confining these terms to a purely sexual sense would not tell us the whole story. They are used to describe a people who whore themselves out to Babylonian political systems to be “protected and served” (ie., beaten and caged) by men, rather than abide in God for all their needs. This becomes even more obvious when seeing that Israel is depicted in the Bible as God’s bride, who is often tempted to seek “protection” and security from their Egyptian neighbors, from which the Lord had delivered them before. The covenant between God and Israel established at Sinai was framed as a marriage-like relationship, with God as the sort of husband-king, such that infidelity with God would have to include seeking human kings to rule over you, as God made clear was the case in Samuel 8. 

For God to call His people prostitutes and adulterers did not mean that they were prostituting themselves out in the streets when the sun went down (though they may have been doing that, too, as part of the general moral decline that will accompany any statist society that has already thrown righteousness and morality out the window in their support of human civil government). Rather, it is often used in a metaphorical sense to describe a people’s unfaithfulness to God through idolatry and alliances with pagan kingdoms. It is used to describe the same scene we have today, where men seek aid and protection from the “United States” and trust in its “constitutions” and “lawmakers” and “law enforcers” to provide their law-order for them. People who vote for human rulers, believe that “the troops” keep us safe and free, etc., are not people who can sincerely claim that Christ is King. Rather, they are people who commit spiritual adultery through idolatry for man-made political systems or lust for worldly alliances. They are people who, through the sin of statism, which has their minds focused on worldly kingdoms, betray their love and allegiance for God who sets them free to instead pledge allegiance to false gods who bring them into bondage. Prostituting oneself to other “lovers” than God did not just mean to turn to street walking after midnight, but to human rulers and their authoritarian systems. It was a political infidelity where men replaced God’s kingship with human authority. The imagery of prostitution is just a Biblical way of describing a people’s alliances to political regimes and military machines when they should have been trusting in God as their King and protector. 

We don’t have to search too long to find that statist idolatry—seeking protection, freedom, and provision from human rulers—is what adultery and prostitution are all about. This use of this language under this political meaning, where whoring oneself out to man-made systems is likened to marital infidelity to God, is very common in the books of the prophets.

“You prostituted yourself with your lustful neighbors, the Egyptians, and increased your promiscuity to provoke Me to anger” (Ezekiel 16:26).

The type of “prostitution” that God is concerned about is not just mini-skirt clad women heading for the streets after midnight to sell their bodies to passersby (though, again, this is also the type of immoral behavior one would expect to find in a Babylonian society that has already thrown God’s law out the window). Rather, the type of prostitution that God is often lamenting is the very one that gets buried for relatively watered-down sermons on spousal infidelity or street prostitution: a people whoring themselves out to political systems to provide for them and protect them.

It’s interesting that we usually only ever hear of the relatively weaker meaning of prostitution. For one, because this prostitution is more self-evidently ungodly and doesn’t require sermons. But also because relatively few people are engaged in sexual street prostitution compared to the hundreds of millions of statist idolaters who pimp themselves out to political systems as whores and get off the hook for being counted among the adulterers and prostitutes, all while it is this political adultery that God very often means with the words. Prostitution in the Biblical sense is most often about man’s insatiable desire to serve worldly political systems rather than the Lord, to adopt slogans like “support the troops” and “back the blue” or “I stand with X country” rather than regard the Lord as their King.

“Then you prostituted yourself with the Assyrians, because you were not yet satisfied. Even after that, you were still not satisfied. So you extended your promiscuity to Chaldea, the land of merchants—but even with this you were not satisfied!” (Ezekiel 16:28-29). 

One reason people often fail to see the metaphor of whoredom and prostitution to explain the idolatry and sin of statism is that they’re more acquainted with sermons and the teachings of men than with the prophets themselves. Furthermore, the men giving sermons are most often statist adulterers themselves who never comment on the sin of statism and fight against it the second they are rebuked for it. The prophets, on the other hand, genuinely reveal God’s nature and His will, especially concerning this statist whoredom where humanity abandons God in pursuit of the false gods of worldly political systems. If they knew the prophets more than they listened to the ideas of men, they wouldn’t struggle with these things and wouldn’t be caught dead being a statist adulterer themselves. One doesn’t have to do any digging or parse through some convoluted theology to see it. This basic concept that most Christians are blind to is a common theme in the prophetic books and elsewhere in scripture. For the prophets, terms like “adulterers,” “whores,” and “prostitutes” serve primarily as metaphorical language to illustrate the spiritual unfaithfulness of statism. They deliberately use these sexually immoral images to convey how repulsive political idolatry is in God’s eyes. This rhetorical method of speaking teaches that praising men and their political systems constitutes an equally severe violation of God’s law — if not worse, given that this political adultery (like trusting foreign powers such as Egypt for protection) ultimately leads to a bondage far more devastating, oppressive, and enslaving than the literal prostitution of individuals on the streets.

At any rate, adultery, whoredom, prostitution, and other such terms, are more so referring to the state-seeking of men who have turned their backs on God to chase after the man-made political systems of this world, especially in regards to the praise of their militaries and police that we see among the highly idolatrous Americans. This is why Israel is likened to a “wild donkey” that has “gone up to Assyria” and “hired lovers” among the nation-states of the world, ie., seeking protection in these political regimes and human rulers rather than trusting in God. These metaphors within scripture are part of a literary device that serves the purpose of helping people to understand concepts like statism (where people choose human authority over divine authority), which men are more blinded to seeing, by presenting them through more relatable scenarios and more self-evidently ungodly acts. Rather than directly addressing political betrayal of God for earthly kings in these instances (though it is made clear elsewhere), scripture uses the more familiar image of marital infidelity—a husband abandoning his wife for a prostitute—to make the point that statism—a man abandoning God for presidents, congressmen, and soldiers—is a spiritual transgression just the same. The prophet Hosea himself marries a prostitute (Gomer) to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness to God in a political sense, where men seek human rulers who cannot save, and horses and chariots that are just flesh and not spirit. Specifically, these metaphors continue a general theme in scripture that state-rule comes upon people as a judgment for their sin. By describing things using a story of prostitutes, this literary device helps to explain how men are handed over to their captors (their lovers) when they sin (idolize men), who only bring destruction and terror upon them. They are used to show how cheating on God, which men do when they erect human rulers as their kings and protectors, ends in the people being enslaved and destroyed. 

The Allegory of the Two Sisters (Ezekiel 23) 

Such was the case in the story of the Two Adulterous Sisters (Oholoh and Oholibal) in the Book of Ezekiel, which is not just a story about two adulterers running around who need to stop their sexual sins, but a story where two adulterers are used to represent (respectively) the people of Samaria and Jerusalem who sought protection and aid from statist regimes rather than to remain faithful to the Lord. Stories such as these help to show us that statists, ie., the people today who claim that presidents, police, and state militaries are needed for our protection and freedom, are engaged in a type of spiritual adultery that is to be understood to be of a political nature. The first sister, Oholoh, is consorting with Assyrian soldiers, in the same way men do today when they say “thank the troops,” “the military keeps us safe and free,” and that “America has the most powerful military in the world and you should be grateful to live here.” Those who fawn over police, military, presidents, and congressmen in our time are prostitutes in this same Biblical sense of the term. They are whores in the way that God means it. 

“Oholah prostituted herself while she was still Mine. She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all desirable young men, horsemen mounted on steeds. She offered sexual favors to all the elite of Assyria. She defiled herself with all the idols of those for whom she lusted. She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when men slept with her in her youth, caressed her virgin bosom, and poured out their lust upon her” (Ezekiel 23:5-8). 

The second sister, Oholiba, engages in the same statist sin but goes even further. She lusts after both the Assyrian warriors and the Babylonians (Ezek 23:11-21) — again, just as men do today when they vote for human rulers, accept their benefits paid for from coveting their neighbors’ property, and in general root for the state and its military and police to “save” them. In order to drive home the whorish nature of statism, the second sister engages in the same acts as the “support the troops” and “get out and vote” men of our time.

“She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors dressed in splendor, horsemen riding on steeds, all desirable young men. And I saw that she too had defiled herself; both of them had taken the same path. But Oholibah carried her prostitution even further. She saw the men portrayed on the wall, images of the Chaldeans, engraved in vermilion, wearing belts on their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like officers of the Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth. At the sight of them, she lusted for them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her (Ezekiel 23:12-17).

It is this very statism, where an ungodly people whore themselves out to false gods who call themselves the “government,” that causes God to turn His backs on a people (notwithstanding the millions of statists in the “United States” that pray that God will be with this country and its police and military as they remain in their statist and plunderous ways).

“When Oholibah openly prostituted herself and exposed her nakedness, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. Yet she multiplied her promiscuity, remembering the days of her youth, when she had prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after their lovers” (Ezekiel 23:18-20).

Like the first sister, she must also face judgment for seeking other lovers, as idolatrous statists do when they vote for men to rule over them or apologize for these systems (Ezek 23:22-35). This is just another way of saying that statists, who lust after other men to rule over them, must face judgment for their sin, which namely comes in the form of the oppressive nature of these rulers coming down on them and bringing terror upon them for their wicked works of trusting in men rather than God. In scripture, God needn’t intervene directly to bring divine judgment upon a people; it is accomplished just as well by allowing self-destructive men to bring all the evils upon themselves through the political systems of this world that are inherently evil and sure to bring wickedness with them. We may read, in some places, how God himself destroys a people, as in the Plagues of Egypt (Ex 7-12) or Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:24-25); in others we read how God simply allows the proverbial Assyrians to come upon a people as a punishment for their faith in Egyptians, Babylonians, or some other statist regime to “protect and serve” them, such as the Assyrian conquest of Israel (2 Kings 17:5-23) for their sins against the Lord or the Babylonian conquest of Judah for idolatry and injustices (2 Kings 24-25; Jer 25:8-11). The latter case of divine judgment via statist oppressors is the case in this allegory of the Two Sisters by the prophet Ezekiel, where a hostile assembly—other state rulers of the world—gather around Samaria and Jerusalem as instruments of God’s judgment (Ezek 23:40-45). 

(To strengthen the case for this rather obvious argument that the adultery of the sisters here is representative of the sin of statism where men cheat on God with human governments and their armies in a sort of spiritual-political alliance with men, it is no coincidence here that the scriptures make Assyria, a regime often used in the Bible to represent a State, into the regime that the sisters sought after, as Ashur, the Hebrew root for the word Assyria, represents a powerful empire known for its military might and influence. In other words, those who believe in the “United States military” to fight their battles for them and keep them safe and free are engaging in the same type of adultery as the two sisters are in the story of Ezekiel. Furthermore, the Hebrew root for Babylon is Bavel, which often symbolizes a center of idolatry and opposition to God. It is not difficult to say that statists, ie., people who advocate for the existence of human civil government, are adulterers who idolize worldly systems of false gods. These names, like Assyrians, Babylonians, etc., refer not to a race of people, or something like that, but to political systems and jurisdictions. Egypt is not just a place, but a Biblical symbol of worldly power. Those who seek protection in the “United States military” today are engaged in the same type of temptation for political protection and support as was Biblical Israel, which was always understood as turning away from God. This is how great the whoredom of statism is in a man. Although God delivers His people from Egyptian systems, they long to go back to them for support, prostituting themselves out to them again).  

The two sisters of Ezekiel 23 are not a story of sexual adultery or infidelity with one’s spouse, which, to be sure, is also behavior that is not conducive to a free society based on the family as God’s provision for social order, as well as behavior that one would expect to find in a statist society like ours. Rather, Ezekiel’s story of the two adulterous sisters, who symbolically represent the people of Samaria and Jerusalem and their prostitution with neighboring kingdoms and armies, is a means of explaining statism as adultery. Men cheat on God when they trust in Assyrians (or “Americas”) to protect them from their enemies. They make men into their kings, lords, lawgivers, and saviors. Furthermore, they do so at their peril. For it is not possible to violate the laws of God—in this case having other gods than the Lord—without paying the price for it (Ezek 23:36-49). Men drink from the cup of God’s wrath when they trust in men to “save” them from their enemies, as all statists necessarily do by merely apologizing for the existence and alleged necessity of human government, which cannot be disassociated from the idea that men are allegedly needed as protector-saviors. 

The real prostitution and whoredom of statism

Prostitution in scripture thus largely refers to a people who seek protection and aid from the rulers of the world and their militaries and police forces, which is decidedly to turn away from God’s protection and provision — to “cheat” on Him with men. Men fail to serve God when they make covenants with false gods, such as when they submit themselves to “U.S. Constitutions” and “Congresses.” God had always warned His people not to make these covenants, but they have always “played the harlot” (Exodus 34:15-16), making alliances and pledging allegiance to worldly rulers and falling into these idolatrous practices. We are told to avoid the systems of the world and come out of them and be God’s Kingdom-seeking people who follow His way, but men always whore themselves out to the ruler-gods of the world in their sin — they turn their back on God and seek men to rule over them. Men abandon their allegiance to the Lord alone when they make alliances with worldly kingdoms for their protection, such as when they believe that the “U.S. military” will keep them safe or that global institutions like “NATO” or “UN” accomplish these things on a wider scale.

Conclusion

There is no compatibility between God and human government, notwithstanding the tens of millions of people in the “United States” who have illegitimately blended the light with the darkness in an unholy alliance and allegiance to “God and country.” When God looks down upon a people who cheer on the political systems of this world, He sees that “a spirit of prostitution is within them, and they do not know the LORD” (Hosea 5:4). God is not impressed that some people claim to know Him, all while acting as Babylonian whores who participate in political elections. support the war-making of these regimes, and seek benefits from the hands of Pharaohs. Scripture everywhere condemns these people as false converts who merely take the Lord’s name in vain. God sees that statists are just “people [who] draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13). God is not looking for more and more people to profess His name, all while prostituting themselves out to the systems of men. He is looking for people who believe that He is their only King and whore repent from the whoredom of statism altogether. Statism is the essence of idolatry and adultery. When God sees people voting for men and clamoring for presidents and congressmen to serve them, He sees people who are “determined to follow worthless idols” (Hosea 5:11).