408 LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM
waterless land. I shall make her childless and long for children. I
shall show her children no pity, for they are children of prosti-
tution, their mother having whored and shamed her children.
She said, "I shall be a whore to my lovers. They gave me my
bread and water and garments and clothes and wine and oil
and everything I needed." Look, I shall shut them up so that she
will not be able to chase after her adulterers. When she seeks
them and doesn't find them, she will say, "I will go back to my
former husband, for then I was happier than now."
Again in Ezekiel he said,^4
It happened that after much depravity, the lord said, "You built
yourself a brothel and made yourself a beautiful place in the
streets. You built whorehouses in every alley and you wasted
your beauty, you spread your legs in every alley, and multiplied
your acts of prostitution. You were a whore for the sons of Egypt,
those who are your neighbors, men great of flesh."
But what does "the sons of Egypt, men great of flesh" signify, if not the domain
of the flesh and the perceptible realm and the affairs of the earth by which the
soul is defiled here, receiving bread from them as well as wine, oil, clothing,
and the other external nonsense surrounding the body—whose things she
thinks she needs?
But as to this whoring, the messengers of the savior commanded,^5 "Guard
and purify yourself against it," and not just the body's prostitution but espe-
cially the soul's. That is why the messengers write to the churches of god that
such whoring might not go on here.
Yet the greatest struggle is the prostitution of the soul. From it comes the
prostitution of the body. So Paul, writing to the Corinthians, said,^6
I wrote in my letter, "Do not associate with whores," meaning
not the whores of the world or the greedy or thieves or idol wor-
shipers, since then you would have to leave the world.Here he is speaking spiritually:^7
- Ezekiel 16:23-26.
- See Acts 15:20, 29, 21:25; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; 1 Corinthians 6:18; 2 Corinthians 7:1.
6.1 Corinthians 5:9. - Ephesians 6:12.