Ezechiel 23:3
And they committed fornication in Egypt, in their youth they committed fornication: there were their breasts pressed down, and the teats of their virginity were bruised.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- et fornicatæ sunt in Ægypto, in adolescentia sua fornicatæ sunt : ibi subacta sunt ubera earum, et fractæ sunt mammæ pubertatis earum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐξεπόρνευσαν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ἐν τῇ νεότητι αὐτῶν, ἐκεῖ ἔπεσον οἱ μαστοὶ αὐτῶν, ἐκεῖ διεπαρθενεύθησαν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַתִּזְנֶ֣ינָה בְמִצְרַ֔יִם בִּנְעוּרֵיהֶ֖ן זָנ֑וּ שָׁ֚מָּה מֹעֲכ֣וּ שְׁדֵיהֶ֔ן וְשָׁ֣ם עִשּׂ֔וּ דַּדֵּ֖י בְּתוּלֵיהֶֽן
Haydock's commentary
Fornication. That is, idolatry. (Challoner)
Down. Virgins used the stomacher, or (Haydock) fascia pectoralis, Isaias iii. 24. This chapter resembles the 16th. (Calmet)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Salvina
A noble alternative truly which is only to be embraced in preference to Satan! In old days even Jerusalem went a-whoring and opened her feet to every one that passed by. It was in Egypt that she was first deflowered and there that her teats were bruised. And afterwards when she had come to the wilderness and, impatient of the delays of her leader Moses, had said when maddened by the stings of lust: “these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt,” she received statutes that were not good and commandments that were altogether evil whereby she should not live but should be punished through them. …
St Gregory the Great The Book of Pastoral Rule, How those are to be admonished who have had experience of the sins of the flesh, and those who have not
( Admonition 29.) Differently to be admonished are those who are conscious of sins of the flesh, and those who know them not. For those who have had experience of the sins of the flesh are to be admonished that, at any rate after shipwreck, they should fear the sea, and feel horror at their risk of perdition at least when it has become known to them; lest, having been mercifully preserved after evil deeds committed, by wickedly repeating the same they die. Whence to the soul that sins and never ceases from sin it is said, There is come unto thee a whore’s forehead; thou refuseth to be ashamed ( Jer. iii. 3 ). They are therefore to be admonished to take heed, to the end that, if they have refused to keep whole the good things of nature which they have received, they at least mend them after they have been rent asunder. …