The Cup of Your Sister
28 “For the Lord Yahweh says: ‘Behold, I will deliver you into the hand of them whom you hate, into the hand of them from whom your soul is alienated. 29 They will deal with you in hatred, and will take away all your labor, and will leave you naked and bare. The nakedness of your prostitution will be uncovered, both your lewdness and your prostitution. 30 These things will be done to you because you have played the prostitute after the nations, and because you are polluted with their idols. 31 You have walked in the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand.’ 32 “The Lord Yahweh says: ‘You will drink of your sister’s cup, which is deep and large. You will be ridiculed and held in derision. It contains much. 33 You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of your sister Samaria. 34 You will even drink it and drain it out. You will gnaw the broken pieces of it, and will tear your breasts; for I have spoken it,’ says the Lord Yahweh. 35 “Therefore the Lord Yahweh says: ‘Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, therefore you also bear your lewdness and your prostitution.’” 36 Yahweh said moreover to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then declare to them their abominations. 37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols. They have also caused their sons, whom they bore to me, to pass through the fire to them to be devoured. 38 Moreover this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my Sabbaths. 39 For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and behold, they have done this in the middle of my house. 40 “Furthermore you sisters have sent for men who come from far away, to whom a messenger was sent, and behold, they came; for whom you washed yourself, painted your eyes, decorated yourself with ornaments, 41 and sat on a stately bed, with a table prepared before it, whereupon you set my incense and my oil. 42 “The voice of a multitude being at ease was with her. With men of the common sort were brought drunkards from the wilderness; and they put bracelets on their hands, and beautiful crowns on their heads. 43 Then I said of her who was old in adulteries, ‘Now they will play the prostitute with her, and she with them.’ 44 They went in to her, as they go in to a prostitute. So they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, the lewd women. 45 Righteous men will judge them with the judgment of adulteresses and with the judgment of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands. 46 “For the Lord Yahweh says: ‘I will bring up a mob against them, and will give them to be tossed back and forth and robbed. 47 The company will stone them with stones and dispatch them with their swords. They will kill their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire. 48 “‘Thus I will cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to be lewd like you. 49 They will recompense your lewdness on you, and you will bear the sins of your idols. Then you will know that I am the Lord Yahweh.’”
Judah is handed the cup Samaria drank from, and the chapter's closing charge is that the two sisters kept the Sabbaths while doing all of it.
The sentence is delivered as a drink, and the cup is identified by its previous owner: You will drink of your sister's cup, which is deep and large. Not a different judgment scaled to a different offense, but the same vessel, passed along. The description of drinking it runs past what a metaphor usually bears. Filled with drunkenness and sorrow, drained out, the broken pieces gnawed. A cup finished to the point where the drinker chews the shards is the picture of a judgment with nothing left in reserve.
The reason attached is the same one the book gives everywhere and it is stated in the plainest words: Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back. Two images, and the second is physical. Something put behind you is not destroyed or argued with. It is simply out of the field of vision, and that is the book's steady account of how idolatry works.
What follows is the judgment delivered by the lovers, exactly as in the previous chapters. The Babylonians and Assyrians come against her with weapons, chariots and a host of peoples, and the passage says that God will deliver you into the hand of them whom you hate. The instrument is always the alliance. Nothing extra needs arranging, because the arrangement was made by the party now being judged.
And then the charge that closes the chapter, which is easy to read past and should not be. In the same paragraph as the child sacrifice and the defiling of the sanctuary stands this: when they had slaughtered their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it. They kept the calendar. They have profaned my Sabbaths is listed as a separate item, but the sequence in that verse is the accusation. The same day, from the fire in the valley to the courts of the house. The religion never stopped. That is what the chapter finds unbearable, and it is why the imagery is as violent as it is.
settled What this mark means