Ezekiel 16:45

Eze 16:45 Thou [art] thy mother’s daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou [art] the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children: your mother [was] an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

Ver. 45. Thou art thy mother’s daughter.] As like her as if spat out of her mouth; so like her, that thou art the worse again.

Your mother was an Hittite.] And doth therefore seek her daughter in the oven, because she had first been there herself. See Eze 16:3.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That is, of Samaria and Sodom.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

mother's . . . that loatheth her husband--that is, God ("haters of God," Rom 1:30); therefore the knowledge of the true God had originally been in Canaan, handed down from Noah (hence we find Melchisedek, king of Salem, in Canaan, "priest of the most high God," Gen 14:18), but Canaan apostatized from it; this was what constituted the blackness of the Canaanites' guilt.

loathed . . . children--whom she put to death in honor of Saturn; a practice common among the Phœnicians.

sister of thy sisters--Thou art akin in guilt to Samaria and Sodom, to which thou art akin by birth. Moab and Ammon, the incestuous children of Lot, nephew of Abraham, Israel's progenitor, had their origin from Sodom; so Sodom might be called Judah's sister. Samaria, answering to the ten tribes of Israel, is, of course, sister to Judah.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(45) Which lothed their husbands.—Israel, like Samaria and Sodom, being spiritually of Amorite and Hittite descent, they are represented as her sisters. A certain difficulty arises from the statement that they, too, “lothed their husbands and their children,” and this is only removed by remembering that, notwithstanding their heathenism and long course of idolatry, they are still regarded as having gone astray from primeval revelation, and proved false to the only true God whom they once had known.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

45. that lotheth her husband] In the sense of the allegory “lothing her husband” should mean changing her god for another; and in the case of Jerusalem and Samaria the charge is intelligible, Jehovah being the husband (ch. 23). But such a charge could hardly be made against the Canaanites, the Hittite mother and Sodom (Jer_2:11). The prophet appears to desert the allegory, introducing real features into his description, and referring to actual adultery and unfaithfulness, which were characteristic of the Canaanite nations. Another interpretation, as old as Theodoret, considers Jehovah to be the “husband” even of the Hittite mother, heathen idolatries being infidelity to the true God. Such a reflexion is not natural to a prophet of this age, though a similar idea occurred to St Paul (Romans 1). At the same time this prophet predicts the restoration of Sodom and its union to the people of the Lord. Cornill, considering the difficulties of interpretation as insuperable, strikes out the words as a gloss.

sister of thy sisters] The sisters of Jerusalem were Samaria and Sodom, and she had a genuine family likeness to them.

your mother] Your (plur.) refers to the three sisters.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And thine elder sister is Samaria,.... The metropolis of the ten tribes; "sister" to the Jews, because of the same descent, having one and the same father; the "elder" or "greater" (x), because more in number and power; the kingdom of Israel consisted of ten tribes, and the kingdom of Judah but of two; and the ten tribes also were the first in the apostasy from the true worship of God:

she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand; as Samaria the sister was the metropolis of the ten tribes, her daughters are the other cities and towns belonging thereunto; and so the Targum renders it, she and her villages; these were situated to the north of the land of Israel, as Judah was to the south, which with the Jews were left and right; as a man standing with his face to the east has the north on his left and the south on his right side:

and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters; where Lot the kinsman of Abraham lived, and from whom sprung the Ammonites and Moabites. Sodom was a lesser kingdom than that of Judah, and which lay to the south; that is, to the right of it; even that and the other cities, which perished with it, called her daughters, as Admah, Zeboim, &c.

(x) "major", V. L. Pagninus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Thou, the nation of the Jews,

art thy mother’s daughter; as much for her vicious inclinations, as for thy original derived from her, the most wicked daughter of as wicked a mother.

That loatheth; that was weary of the best Husband, that while she doted on abominable adulterers, did most contemptuously disregard her Husband, and forsake him. Other lewd women have had some love for their children, because born of them, bred by them, and resembling them; so much of the mother was in the children, that some adulteresses have loved themselves in the children; but here is a loose woman, an unnatural beast, that loathes her own flesh, persecuting such as are constant to the law of God their Father, and murdering others in sacrifice to devils.

The sister of thy sisters: it runs in the blood; as the mother, so the sisters, loved and doted on strange flesh, were as inordinate in their affections to others, as they were in their disaffection to their own husbands and children.

Your mother: see Eze 16:3. He speaks of them collectively, and as the greatest part were.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ezekiel returns to the thought of the spiritual parentage of Jerusalem and Judah, as in ver. 3. Reading between the lines, we find something like an anticipation of St. Paul"s thought that Jehovah was the God of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. (Rom_3:29) The Hittites and Sodom and Samaria, to whom she is compared, had all alike been guilty of unfaithfulness to their husbands. Their idolatry was therefore, like hers, an act of apostasy. Jehovah was their husband also, their children were his children (ver. 21). He claimed them as his own, had entered with them also into a relation which, though less close than that with Israel, was as that of the husband to the wife. The thought expands, as we shall see, in the sequel of the chapter.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Thou - The nation of the Jews. Thy mother's daughter - As much in thy inclinations, as for thy original. Loatheth - That was weary of the best husband.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

your mother’s daughter The nation of Canaan, whose land you inherited.

spewing forth her husband and her children Who so increased their abominations that the land spewed forth its inhabitants, the fathers and the children together.

and you are your sister’s sister Sodom, which is next to the land of Israel.

your mother was a Hittite, etc. Jonathan renders: Is it not so that your mother Sarah was among the Hittites, yet did not do as their deeds, and your father Abraham was among the Amorites, yet did not follow their counsel!

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.