Ezekiel 23
Ezekiel 23 is a companion to the great allegory of chapter 16, and it tells its story through two sisters - Aholah and Aholibah, daughters of one mother. The names are interpreted in the text itself: Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah (v. 4). They stand for the two kingdoms of God's own people, north and south. And the heartbreak of the whole chapter is summed up in three small words about both of them: they were mine (v. 4). They belonged to the LORD - and yet they kept giving themselves to others. The picture the prophet uses is a marriage betrayed, and it is meant to land hard; but the betrayal it describes is finally spiritual and political - a covenant people who would not trust the LORD for their security, and ran instead to the great empires of the age, courting Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt for the protection and belonging only God could give.3
The two sisters are not treated alike, and that is the point. Aholah, the elder - Samaria - doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours (v. 5), and the LORD delivered her into the hand of those very lovers (v. 9): Assyria, the power she had courted, was the power that destroyed her in 722 B.C. Then comes the unbelievable turn. Aholibah - Jerusalem - saw this (v. 11). She watched her sister's ruin with her own eyes, and learned nothing. Instead she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she (v. 11), courting Assyria and then reaching past it to Babylon, sending messengers, making alliances, never satisfied. The deepest charge is that she had a warning written in her own family's history and ran the same road anyway.
From there the chapter turns to judgment, and its logic is unsparing and exact: the lovers a people runs to will become the instruments of its ruin. I will raise up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy mind is alienated (v. 22). Babylon, which Jerusalem had courted, would be the very nation God brought against her. The sister's cup - the cup Samaria drank - must now be drunk by Jerusalem too (vv. 31-33). And underneath every foreign alliance the chapter finally names the deeper sin that drove it all: idolatry, the worship of other gods, with the innocent blood it cost and the sanctuary it defiled (vv. 37-39). It is a sobering portrait of an unfaithful people - and precisely as such it makes the heart long for the faithful Bridegroom and the cleansed bride the New Testament holds out, and for the day when a forgiven people will know that I am the Lord GOD.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Ezekiel 23:1-10Aholah Doted on Assyria
1The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 2Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: 4And the names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister: and they were mine, and they bare sons and daughters. Thus were their names; Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah. 5And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours, 6Which were clothed with blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses. 7Thus she committed her whoredoms with them, with all them that were the chosen men of Assyria, and with all on whom she doted: with all their idols she defiled herself. 9Wherefore I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted. 10These discovered her nakedness: they took her sons and her daughters, and slew her with the sword: and she became famous among women; for they had executed judgment upon her.
The prophet is told to picture two women, the daughters of one mother (v. 2), and the chapter at once tells us plainly who they are: Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah (v. 4). They are the two kingdoms of God's own people, the northern and the southern, sprung from one stock. And before a single charge is laid, the LORD says the three words that make everything that follows a tragedy rather than a mere indictment: they were mine. These were not strangers; they belonged to Him. He had bound Himself to them, and they to Him. That bond is the whole reason the language of the chapter is so severe. The figure Ezekiel uses - a marriage broken by betrayal - is the prophets' standard picture for what happens when a covenant people turns from the LORD to other things; the same image runs through Hosea and Jeremiah. It is meant to be uncomfortable, because betrayal of a love is far worse than a stranger's sin. The horror is not measured by the acts in the allegory but by the bond they break: they were mine, and they gave themselves away.3
The elder sister is named first: Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours (v. 5). Read past the harsh figure to the history underneath it, because that is where the real sin lies. Samaria, the northern kingdom, had looked at the rising superpower next door - Assyria, with its captains and rulers… desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses (v. 6) - and been dazzled. Rather than trust the LORD for her security, she courted the empire: paid tribute, made treaties, leaned on Assyrian strength, and along with the alliance took up Assyria's gods - with all their idols she defiled herself (v. 7). That is what the doting names: not romance, but a nation's frantic, faithless reach for protection and prestige from a foreign power, and the idolatry that always rode in with it. The word the chapter keeps using - doted - is stronger than “admired.” It is obsessive craving, the look that cannot turn away. Samaria could not stop looking at Assyria's power, and she gave herself to it. And the deepest irony, which the next verses will spring, is that the very strength she trusted to save her was the strength that would destroy her.
The judgment on the elder sister is told in a single, terrible sentence: Wherefore I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted (v. 9). Sit with the exactness of it. The hand she ran to is the hand she was given over to. Assyria, the lover Samaria courted for safety, became the destroyer that took her sons and her daughters, and slew her with the sword (v. 10). This is the plain history of 722 B.C., when Assyria swept away the northern kingdom and carried it into exile - and the prophet reads that catastrophe as the working-out of a spiritual law. When a people gives itself to a false security, that security turns and consumes it. The LORD does not need to invent a punishment from outside; He lets the betrayal collect its own wages. And there is a chilling phrase at the end - she became famous among women; for they had executed judgment upon her (v. 10). Samaria became an object lesson, a name the other nations would point to. The whole point of an object lesson is that someone is meant to see it and be warned. The next verse will reveal whether Jerusalem, watching her sister fall, learned anything at all.
Ezekiel 23:11-21Aholibah Saw, and Was More Corrupt
11And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms. 12She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. 13Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way, 14And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, 15Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity: 16And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea. 18So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister. 19Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.
Everything in this section turns on two words at the start: saw this. And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she (v. 11). Aholibah - Jerusalem - had the one thing her sister never had: a warning. She watched Samaria court Assyria and be destroyed by Assyria. She saw the whole tragedy play out next door, in her own family, the elder sister's ruin laid bare. And she learned nothing - or rather, she learned the wrong thing entirely, and ran harder down the very road that had killed her sister. The verse is emphatic about it: not merely as corrupt, but more corrupt; her unfaithfulness exceeded her sister's. This is one of the most sobering truths in the chapter. A warning unheeded does not leave a person where they were; it hardens them. Jerusalem had every reason to turn back - the sanctuary of God in her midst, the prophets in her streets, her sister's grave as a billboard - and the more reason she had, the deeper her guilt when she refused it. To see the consequences of sin clearly and pursue it anyway is a worse thing than to stumble into it blind.
Aholibah first repeats her sister's mistake exactly - she doted upon the Assyrians (v. 12) - but then she goes further, reaching past Assyria to a new fascination: Babylon. The chapter describes how the craving started, and it is strikingly modern. When she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion (v. 14) - Babylonian warriors painted in brilliant red on a wall, girded with girdles… all of them princes to look to (v. 15). She did not even meet these men; she saw their images, their propaganda, their glamour rendered in bright paint, and was captivated. As soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea (v. 16). The whole seduction happened through the eyes - a picture of strength and splendor that she could not stop looking at, until she sent embassies chasing after it. Here is a piercing observation about how the heart goes astray: it is so often the eye that leads. We see an image of a life, a power, a security we do not have, painted in the brightest colors, and the craving is lit before we have weighed a single thing. Jerusalem courted Babylon the way a heart is captured by a glittering picture - and the picture, like all such pictures, did not tell the truth about what it would cost.
The pursuit only feeds on itself. The Babylonians came to her… and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them (v. 17) - and notice that even getting what she chased did not satisfy her; it left her cold and estranged. This is the unfailing testimony of every idol: it never delivers what it promised, and the heart that gave itself to it ends up alienated even from the thing it craved. Then the saddest note of all: Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt (v. 19). When Babylon disappointed, she did not turn home to the LORD - she turned back to Egypt, the oldest of her false lovers, the place this whole pattern had begun (v. 3, where the chapter traced the harlotry all the way back to Egypt). She reached backward, to an old security she had leaned on before. That is the deadly spiral of misplaced trust: one false lover fails, and instead of returning to God the heart simply reaches for the next, or the previous, never stopping at the one place that could end the hunger. The tragedy of Aholibah is not a single bad choice but a settled refusal to come home - running from Assyria to Babylon to Egypt and back, anywhere and everywhere except to the One who had made her His own.
Ezekiel 23:22-35I Will Raise Up Thy Lovers Against Thee
22Therefore, O Aholibah, thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will raise up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy mind is alienated, and I will bring them against thee on every side; 23The Babylonians, and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, and Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them: all of them desirable young men, captains and rulers, great lords and renowned, all of them riding upon horses. 24And they shall come against thee with chariots, wagons, and wheels, and with an assembly of people, which shall set against thee buckler and shield and helmet round about: and I will set judgment before them, and they shall judge thee according to their judgments. 25And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy remnant shall fall by the sword: they shall take thy sons and thy daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire. 26They shall also strip thee out of thy clothes, and take away thy fair jewels. 27Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee, and thy whoredom brought from the land of Egypt: so that thou shalt not lift up thine eyes unto them, nor remember Egypt any more. 28For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will deliver thee into the hand of them whom thou hatest, into the hand of them from whom thy mind is alienated: 29And they shall deal with thee hatefully, and shall take away all thy labour, and shall leave thee naked and bare: and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy lewdness and thy whoredoms. 30I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted with their idols. 31Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister; therefore will I give her cup into thine hand. 32Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup deep and large: thou shalt be laughed to scorn and had in derision; it containeth much. 33Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of thy sister Samaria. 35Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back, therefore bear thou also thy lewdness and thy whoredoms.
The sentence on Jerusalem is announced with a phrase that is the dark hinge of the whole chapter: I will raise up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy mind is alienated, and I will bring them against thee on every side (v. 22). Every word lands like a verdict. The lovers she courted - Babylon and the Chaldeans, named in verse 23, the very ones she sent messengers chasing - will now be raised up against her. The thing she ran to for safety becomes the instrument of her destruction. This is not God reaching for a punishment from outside the situation; it is God handing her over to the consequences of her own choices. She wanted Babylon; she shall have Babylon - with its chariots, wagons, and wheels and its armies round about (v. 24). And the chapter is honest about the horror of what conquest meant in the ancient world (vv. 25-26): the violence, the captivity, the stripping away of everything she had. Yet even inside the judgment there is a strange mercy hidden, and it must not be missed: Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee… so that thou shalt not lift up thine eyes unto them, nor remember Egypt any more (v. 27). The judgment, terrible as it is, has an aim beyond punishment - to break the spell at last, to end the doting, to cure the eyes that could not stop looking. Even here, the LORD is working to bring His people to the place where the false lovers finally lose their hold.
The judgment is then pressed home through the image of a cup. Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister; therefore will I give her cup into thine hand. Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup deep and large (vv. 31-32). The logic is exact and inescapable: walk the same road, drink the same cup. Samaria drank the cup of astonishment and desolation - conquest, exile, the loss of everything - and because Jerusalem chose the identical path, the same cup is now placed in her hand. The cup of judgment is one of Scripture's recurring and most weighty images; it stands for a portion measured out and given to be drunk to the dregs. And the chapter says this cup is deep and large, that it containeth much (v. 32), and that she will drink it and suck it out - there will be no leaving part of it. The point being made is that consequences are not arbitrary; they run along the lines we ourselves have drawn. Jerusalem cannot claim the road and refuse the destination. The cup she must drink is simply the cup her own choices poured. This is the most sobering truth the section presses: the way we walk has an end, and to choose the way is, in time, to choose the cup at the bottom of it.
The whole indictment is finally gathered into one searching diagnosis, and it is quieter and deeper than all the violent imagery around it: Because thou hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back (v. 35). There it is - the root beneath every alliance and every idol. Underneath all the running to Assyria and Babylon and Egypt lay a single failure: she forgot the LORD and put Him behind her back. To cast something behind your back is to treat it as out of sight, out of mind, no longer worth facing. She had not merely added other loves alongside God; she had turned her back on Him and walked away, and the alliances were what rushed in to fill the space He had occupied. This is how unfaithfulness almost always works - not as a sudden, dramatic renunciation, but as a slow forgetting, a quiet turning of the back, until the One who should be in front of us is somewhere behind us and the heart has given itself to whatever is now in view. And it is a mercy, even here, that the LORD names the real disease. The problem was never finally Assyria or Babylon; the problem was a forgotten God. Which means the cure, when it comes, will not be better politics or stronger walls. It will be remembering Him, and turning back to set Him before our face again.
Ezekiel 23:36-49Declare Unto Them Their Abominations
36The LORD said moreover unto me; Son of man, wilt thou judge Aholah and Aholibah? yea, declare unto them their abominations; 37That they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands, and with their idols have they committed adultery, and have also caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them. 38Moreover this they have done unto me: they have defiled my sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my sabbaths. 39For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house. 40And furthermore, that ye have sent for men to come from far, unto whom a messenger was sent; and, lo, they came: for whom thou didst wash thyself, paintedst thy eyes, and deckedst thyself with ornaments, 41And satest upon a stately bed, and a table prepared before it, whereupon thou hast set mine incense and mine oil. 42And a voice of a multitude being at ease was with her: and with the men of the common sort were brought Sabeans from the wilderness, which put bracelets upon their hands, and beautiful crowns upon their heads. 45And the righteous men, they shall judge them after the manner of adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood; because they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands. 46For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will bring up a company upon them, and will give them to be removed and spoiled. 47And the company shall stone them with stones, and dispatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire. 48Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness. 49And they shall recompense your lewdness upon you, and ye shall bear the sins of your idols: and ye shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
In this final movement the LORD turns from the allegory to lay the charge bare, naming in plain terms what the figure of harlotry had been picturing all along: Son of man, wilt thou judge Aholah and Aholibah? yea, declare unto them their abominations (v. 36). And when the abominations are declared, the language shifts from the marriage figure to the literal sin beneath it: with their idols have they committed adultery (v. 37). This is the key that unlocks the whole chapter. The “adultery” was never finally about the body; it was idolatry - the worship of other gods, the giving of the heart's loyalty and the nation's trust to things that were not the LORD. And the chapter is unflinching about what that idolatry cost in real lives: blood is in their hands… and have also caused their sons… to pass for them through the fire, to devour them (v. 37). The same horror named briefly in chapter 16 returns - children sacrificed to idols - and it is named here and then left, without lingering, because the point is not to dwell on it but to expose what idolatry always leads to in the end. This is the deadly trajectory of every false worship traced to its conclusion: it demands more and more, until it devours what is most precious. The bloodshed is not a separate sin from the idolatry; it is what the idolatry produced. Whatever a people sets in the place of God will, in time, ask of them a price they were never meant to pay.
The charge then reaches its most appalling detail - the collision of idolatry with the worship of the true God: they have defiled my sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my sabbaths (v. 38). The chapter spells out exactly how: when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house (v. 39). This is the depth of the corruption laid bare. They would offer their children to an idol in the morning and walk into the LORD's temple the same day as though nothing were wrong, mingling the worship of God with the worship of devils, treating His holy house and His sabbaths as one more thing to use. They even took mine incense and mine oil (v. 41) - the LORD's own gifts, the very things meant for His worship - and lavished them on the idolatrous feast, exactly the inversion chapter 16 had named. This is the final ugliness of divided loyalty: not the honest paganism of those who never knew God, but the hollow religion of those who kept the outward forms of His worship while their hearts were given wholly to other things. It is the sin the prophets hated most and the Lord Jesus would later expose - drawing near with the lips while the heart is far away. The chapter forces Jerusalem to see that her temple-going was no cover for her treason; the God whose tent was in her saw straight through it.
The chapter ends with judgment, but the judgment is given two aims that are larger than mere punishment, and they are easy to miss in the severity of the closing verses. The first is teaching: Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness (v. 48). The sentence on Jerusalem is meant to become a lesson the watching world can read - a public undoing of the lie that a people can betray God and prosper. The second aim is the one that closes the whole chapter, and it is the deepest purpose of all the LORD's dealings in Ezekiel: and ye shall know that I am the Lord GOD (v. 49). That refrain rings through this book like a bell. Everything - the allegory, the indictment, even the judgment - is finally aimed at knowing Him, at bringing a people who had forgotten Him (v. 35) to the place where they recognize, at last, who He is. There is a strange hope folded into that closing line. The goal is not destruction but recognition; the LORD judges so that He may be known. And to a people who once gave their hearts to lovers that could not save, to be brought to know that I am the Lord GOD is the beginning of the only thing that ever heals an unfaithful heart - the turning back, in knowledge and trust, to the One who alone is God, and who alone is faithful.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Ezekiel 23 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the sisters' symbolic names Aholah and Aholibah (v. 4), for the verb “agav (vv. 5, 7, 9, 12, the obsessive “doting” on the nations), and for the recurring zanah word-group the KJV renders “whoredoms” that the prophets use for covenant unfaithfulness.
- Ezekiel 23 ↔ Ezekiel 16 · Hosea · Jeremiah 3 · Ephesians 5Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Ezekiel 23 to the rest of Scripture - the two unfaithful sisters read beside Jeremiah's “backsliding Israel” and “treacherous Judah” (Jer. 3:6-11), the cup of judgment passed from sister to sister (vv. 31-33), and the betrayed-marriage figure answered at last by the faithful Bridegroom who presents the church without spot (Eph. 5:25-27).
- Ezekiel 23 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Ezekiel 23 - the meaning of the names in verse 4, the historical alliances with Assyria and Babylon behind the imagery, the fall of Samaria reflected in verses 9-10, and the “cup” of judgment in verses 31-34 that recurs across the prophets.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Aholah Doted on Assyria
- Isaiah 31:1Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses... but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel!The same folly as verses 5-7 - trusting a foreign power for security instead of the LORD.
- Hosea 8:9For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath hired lovers.The northern kingdom’s courting of Assyria (v. 5) named in the same marriage-betrayal figure.
- 2 Kings 17:6the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria.The fall of Aholah in verses 9-10 as plain history - the lover became the destroyer.
- Jeremiah 17:5Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.The root sin under the doting of verses 5-7 - a heart that leans on flesh and turns from God.
- Psalm 118:8It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.The lesson Aholah refused (vv. 5-9) - the LORD, not the nations, is the only safe trust.
Aholibah Saw, and Was More Corrupt
- Jeremiah 3:6-11treacherous Judah... when... backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away... yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not.The same two-sister figure as this section - Judah saw the north’s fate and proved worse.
- Ephesians 5:25-27Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it... that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle.The faithful Bridegroom the unfaithful sisters needed - love that cleanses rather than uses.
- Jeremiah 31:3I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.The covenant love betrayed in verses 11-19 - offered, even so, as everlasting.
- 2 Peter 2:21it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn.Why Aholibah’s guilt exceeds her sister’s (v. 11) - greater light makes turning away worse.
- Matthew 6:22-23The light of the body is the eye... if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!The seduction through the eyes in verses 14-16 - what the eye fixes on shapes the whole self.
I Will Raise Up Thy Lovers Against Thee
- Jeremiah 2:19thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee... that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God.The logic of verse 22 - the sin itself becomes the punishment; the lovers turn into destroyers.
- Exodus 20:5I the LORD thy God am a jealous God.The jealousy of verse 25 - not pettiness but the rightful zeal of covenant love.
- Psalm 75:8For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup... and the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.The cup of judgment passed to Jerusalem in verses 31-33 - a portion measured and drunk.
- Matthew 26:39O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.The cup of desolation (vv. 31-33) taken up by Christ, who drank it in His people’s place.
- Nehemiah 9:26they were disobedient, and rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind their backs.The very gesture of verse 35 - the LORD set behind the back, out of sight and out of mind.
Declare Unto Them Their Abominations
- Matthew 15:8This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth... but their heart is far from me.The defiled, divided worship of verses 38-39 - the forms of devotion with the heart elsewhere.
- Matthew 21:12-13My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.The profaned sanctuary of verse 38 - answered by the One who came to cleanse His house.
- 1 Corinthians 3:16Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?Beyond the defiled temple of verse 38 - a people made, themselves, the cleansed dwelling of God.
- Jeremiah 31:34they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them... for I will forgive their iniquity.The chapter’s closing aim (v. 49) fulfilled - a forgiven people brought to truly know the LORD.
- John 17:3this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.Where the refrain of verse 49 finally leads - knowing God Himself as the whole of life.