You also played the harlot with the Egyptians …: This verse continues using sexual terminology to describe the way the people of Jerusalem and Judah were unfaithful to God. Here God says they acted like prostitutes with the Egyptians. Whenever the Israelites made treaties with the nations around them, it showed that they did not trust God to protect them. Often they had to allow those nations to bring their religious practices into Judah as well. In verses 26, 28 and 29, God recalls how Judah had made treaties with Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia. He describes this as having sex with the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. For played the harlot, see verse 15. The Egyptians lived in the northeast corner of Africa. They played an important role in Israel’s history, already beginning with Abraham. This whole clause may be rendered “You acted like a prostitute with the Egyptians” or “You paid to have sex with the Egyptian men.”

The Egyptians are described as your lustful neighbors. Revised Standard Version and most other translations use euphemism here because the Hebrew is literally “your neighbors big of flesh” (similarly King James Version). The Hebrew phrase for “big of flesh” means “having large penises” (so New Jerusalem Bible, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). Presumably God is not talking about the actual size of the penises of Egyptian men but is referring to the traditional assumption that men with big penises are highly sexed and indulge in more sexual activity than those whose penises are smaller. This phrase poses a problem for translators—how to render the sense of the passage without offending the readers, but also without compromising the meaning or losing the element of coarseness in language. Of course, it must be remembered that part of God’s aim in using this language was to shock his audience, so it is best to try to retain some of the coarseness of this phrase in translation. Translators can take comfort in the fact that the Hebrew, despite its crudity, is itself euphemistic. English has the coarse euphemism “well-hung,” which renders this phrase well; other cultures may have their own euphemisms for it. If all the available colloquial euphemisms are felt to be too crude to appear in the Bible, translators may resort to the traditional assumption about the significance of large penises, as Revised Standard Version and most other English versions have done by using the word lustful. But this rendering loses the element of crudity that is crucial to a proper understanding of Ezekiel. Better renderings are “over-sexed” and “always wanting to have sex.” The Egyptians are called neighbors since their country was on the southwest border of Judah.

Multiplying your harlotry: See verse 25.

To provoke me to anger: See 8.17. The Hebrew clause here can either show purpose or result, but since it is unlikely that the unfaithful people of Judah deliberately tried to make God angry, it is better to understand that God’s anger was the result of their actions. New Century Version provides a helpful model for this clause and the previous one, saying “Your sexual sins became even worse, and they caused me to be angry.” New American Bible is similar with “You played the harlot … so many times that I was provoked to anger.”

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .