Bible Strands
Ezekiel 16:33
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.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet Ezekiel addresses Jerusalem, personified as an adulterous wife, within a prophetic oracle condemning her covenant violations.
The words — The Hebrew נְדָנַיִךְ (ne.da.Na.yi/kh) literally means "your gift," marking the specific object Jerusalem provided to her lovers.
The thread — This inverted transaction is echoed in Ezekiel 16:34, which states she paid a fee instead of receiving one, and in Hosea 8:9, where Ephraim hires lovers.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to acknowledge a deliberate reversal of social and covenantal norms where the accused actively paid for illicit union rather than passively receiving it.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 57:9 You went to Molech with oil and multiplied your perfumes. You have sent your envoys a great distance; you have descended even to Sheol itself.
- Hosea 8:9 For they have gone up to Assyria like a wild donkey on its own. Ephraim has hired lovers.
- Genesis 38:16 Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.” “What will you give me for sleeping with you?” she inquired.
- Deuteronomy 23:17 No daughter or son of Israel is to be a shrine prostitute.
- Isaiah 30:3 But Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame, and the refuge of Egypt’s shade your disgrace.
- Isaiah 30:6 This is the burden against the beasts of the Negev: Through a land of hardship and distress, of lioness and lion, of viper and flying serpent, they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people of no profit to them.
- Ezekiel 16:41 Then they will burn down your houses and execute judgment against you in the sight of many women. I will put an end to your prostitution, and you will never again pay your lovers.
- Hosea 2:12 I will destroy her vines and fig trees, which she thinks are the wages paid by her lovers. So I will make them into a thicket, and the beasts of the field will devour them.
- Joel 3:3 They cast lots for My people; they bartered a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine to drink.
- Micah 1:7 All her carved images will be smashed to pieces; all her wages will be burned in the fire, and I will destroy all her idols. Since she collected the wages of a prostitute, they will be used again on a prostitute.