This case-study on the origins and the historical development of Ezekiel's wedding-metaphors (God is a groom; Israel is a bride) intends to illustrate that content and pragmatic function of these metaphorical themes changed over the centuries. Against the backdrop of his findings the author asks in how far the experiential grounding hypothesis put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is useful in the interpretation of metaphors with a strong diachronic component such as biblical metaphors. The issue in those cases is in whose experience the metaphor is rooted. The author observes that metaphors can be invested with new and highly emotional meanings without any knowledge at all of the original settings out of which they emerged. He concludes that metaphors can also shape one's experience of the sacred instead of expressing it. (Ralph Bisschops)