Ezekiel 23:2,3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

There were two women, daughters of one mother Judah and Israel, two kingdoms. “Countries are commonly represented as mothers of their people, and the inhabitants as their children: so the daughters of Syria signify the inhabitants of that country, Ezekiel 16:57. Thus Samaria and Jerusalem are described in this chapter as sisters, the offspring of the same land, or country.” And they committed whoredoms in Egypt The Israelites first learned idolatry in Egypt, for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were wholly free from it. They committed whoredoms in their youth The time when the Israelites were in Egypt, or were lately departed out of it, is called their youth in the prophets, because that was the time when God first owned them for his people. There were their breasts pressed “There they served idols, and there they corrupted their ways,” as the Chaldee paraphrase expresses the sense. The reader must observe, “The style of this chapter, like that of chap. 16., is adapted to persons among whom, at that time, no refinement subsisted. Large allowance must be made for language addressed to an ancient eastern people, in the worst period of their history; all whose ideas were sensual; and whose grand inducement to idolatry seems to have been the brutal impurities which it encouraged.” Bishop Newcome. The Scripture commonly calls idolatrous churches and nations by the name of harlots: and in like manner honours those, who preserve their allegiance to God pure and undefiled, with the title of chaste wives, or virgins.