Charles Ellicott Commentary Ezekiel 16:15

"But thou didst trust in thy beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy whoredoms on every one that passed by; his it was." — Ezekiel 16:15 (ASV)

Did you trust in your own beauty. —Compare to Deuteronomy 32:15; Hosea 13:6. There can scarcely be a more striking instance of the working of the hand of Providence in history than the story of the kingdom of Israel during and after the reign of Solomon. Raised as a theocracy to great power and wealth by the Divine blessing, it began to trust in its own beauty. Solomon’s policy was to make it a great and powerful empire among the nations of the earth, losing sight of its true character as the kingdom of God. Consequently, the very means he took to aggrandise it became the instruments of its fall.

His vast Oriental harem, gathered from all surrounding nations, introduced idolatry into the palace, and fostered it throughout the land. His magnificence was sustained by taxation, which gave the pretext for revolt. The doom was pronounced that the kingdom should be divided. When this was fulfilled at Solomon’s death, his empire outside the boundaries of Palestine fell apart like a rope of sand. Within, instead of one compact and united monarchy, there were two petty kingdoms often in hostility to one another. Each invited to its assistance the most powerful neighbouring monarchs, to whose rapacity the whole ultimately fell prey.

You played the harlot ... his it would be. —The political relation of the two parts of Israel just described, placed her at the mercy of every more powerful nation, and gave the impetus to every sort of idolatry which her masters chose to encourage. This apostasy from God, still maintaining the metaphor of the earlier part of the chapter, is represented as harlotry. And not only so, but it was indiscriminate harlotry, for Israel never adopted and clung to any one false god, but worshipped the abominations of every nation which prevailed over her.