In the Hebrew Bible, Oholah (אהלה) and Oholibah (אהליבה) (or Aholah and Aholibah in the King James Version and Young's Literal Translation) are pejorative personifications given by the prophet Ezekiel to the cities of Samaria in the Kingdom of Israel and Jerusalem in the kingdom of Judah, respectively. They appear in chapter 23 of the Book of Ezekiel.[1]
There is a pun in these names in the Hebrew. means "her tent", and means "my tent is in her".[2]
The Hebrew prophets frequently compared the sin of idolatry to the sin of adultery, in a reappearing rhetorical figure.[3] Ezekiel's rhetoric directed against these two allegorical figures depicts them as lusting after Egyptian men in explicitly sexual terms in Ezekiel 23:20–21:[4]
There are many opinions available on a detail of translation. "'He went in to her as to a harlot, indeed they have gone in to Oholah and Oholibah אשח of wickedness.' The easiest and perhaps correct solution to the difficulty of the anomalous אשח in this verse is to assume the text is corrupt and emend it."[5] Most translators chose synonyms for harlot.
In the divergent Theology of the Cathars, the heterodox Christian movement thriving in the 12th to 14th Centuries, Oholah and Oholibah inspired the belief that the Cathar Invisible Father had two spiritual wives, Collam and Hoolibam.