Ezekiel 16:28

⁷So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath Pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria and out of the hand of the king of Israel, who rise up against me.”

⁶It also will be carried to Assyria for a present to a great king. Ephraim will receive shame, and Israel will be ashamed of his own counsel.

³⁶Why do you go about so much to change your ways? You will be ashamed of Egypt also, as you were ashamed of Assyria.

¹⁸Now what do you gain by going to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Shihor? Or why do you go on the way to Assyria, to drink the waters of the River?

¹⁰King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath Pileser king of Assyria, and saw the altar that was at Damascus; and King Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest a drawing of the altar and plans to build it. ¹¹Urijah the priest built an altar. According to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, so Urijah the priest made it for the coming of King Ahaz from Damascus. ¹²When the king had come from Damascus, the king saw the altar; and the king came near to the altar, and offered on it. ¹³He burned his burnt offering and his meal offering, poured his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings on the altar. ¹⁴The bronze altar, which was before the LORD, he brought from the front of the house, from between his altar and the LORD’s house, and put it on the north side of his altar. ¹⁵King Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, “On the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, the evening meal offering, the king’s burnt offering and his meal offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, their meal offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle on it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice; but the bronze altar will be for me to inquire by.” ¹⁶Urijah the priest did so, according to all that King Ahaz commanded.

¹⁷King Ahaz cut off the panels of the bases, and removed the basin from off them, and took down the sea from off the bronze oxen that were under it, and put it on a pavement of stone. ¹⁸He removed the covered way for the Sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king’s outer entrance to the LORD’s house, because of the king of Assyria.

²³For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus which had defeated him. He said, “Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them, that they may help me.” But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.

¹²She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and rulers—her neighbors, clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. ¹³I saw that she was defiled. They both went the same way.

¹⁴“She increased her prostitution; for she saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with red, ¹⁵dressed with belts on their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like princes, after the likeness of the Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth. ¹⁶As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them into Chaldea. ¹⁷The Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their prostitution. She was polluted with them, and her soul was alienated from them. ¹⁸So she uncovered her prostitution and uncovered her nakedness. Then my soul was alienated from her, just like my soul was alienated from her sister. ¹⁹Yet she multiplied her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth, in which she had played the prostitute in the land of Egypt. ²⁰She lusted after their lovers, whose flesh is as the flesh of donkeys, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. ²¹Thus you called to memory the lewdness of your youth, in the caressing of your nipples by the Egyptians because of your youthful breasts.

¹¹“Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations, and has done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has also made Judah to sin with his idols;

⁵“Oholah played the prostitute when she was mine. She doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbors, ⁶who were clothed with blue—governors and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. ⁷She gave herself as a prostitute to them, all of them the choicest men of Assyria. She defiled herself with the idols of whomever she lusted after. ⁸She hasn’t left her prostitution since leaving Egypt; for in her youth they lay with her. They caressed her youthful nipples and they poured out their prostitution on her.

⁹“Therefore I delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians on whom she doted.

⁶The children of Israel again did that which was evil in the LORD’s sight, and served the Baals, the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines. They abandoned the LORD, and didn’t serve him.