Ezekiel 16:44

"Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter. Thou art the daughter of thy mother, that loatheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters that loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. And thine elder sister is Samaria, that dwelleth at thy left hand, she and her daughters; and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters. Yet hast thou not walked in their ways, nor done after their abominations; but as if that were a very little thing, thou wast more corrupt than they in all thy ways. As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters."

"Hittite ... Amorite ..." (Ezekiel 16:45). See under Ezekiel 16:3, above, for discussion of this. The designation of these as the parents of Israel must be understood spiritually. As Matthew Henry explained it, "The Jews were as much like the Canaanites as if they had been the literal children of them."[30]

"Left hand ... right hand ..." (Ezekiel 16:46). In Biblical literature, the perspective for determining which was left or right was that of facing eastward; thus the left hand was north, and the right hand was south, the respective locations, as related to Jerusalem, of Samaria (north), and Sodom (south).

"Elder sister, Samaria ... younger sister Sodom ..." (Ezekiel 16:46). This has puzzled some writers, because, chronologically, it is contrary to the facts. Sodom was older by more than a thousand years than Samaria. What is indicated is that Samaria had usurped the place of Sodom as the chief sinner of history, represented here as the younger sister supplanting the older. There is another instance of Ezekiel's reversing the chronology in Ezekiel 14:20, above. Spiritually, Samaria had indeed become the older sinner, that is, the worse sinner. The next verse reveals that Jerusalem had surpassed them all in wickedness.

"Thou wast more corrupt than they ..." (Ezekiel 16:47). The "they" here refers to Samaria and Sodom; Jerusalem was more wicked than either of them. This fundamental truth is the foundation of a tremendous moral problem. God had totally destroyed Sodom; how then could it be just for God to spare a remnant of Israel who was more wicked than Sodom? This will be cleared up later in the chapter. As we have often pointed out, the salvation of all men was contingent upon the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham and the patriarchs; and, in a very real sense, God was "stuck with Israel," until the Messiah should at last be born of Mary and cradled in the manger at Bethlehem. The salvation of all the earth depended upon it.

Beasley-Murray commented on this verse thus, "Jerusalem's sin was not only as bad as that of her heathen predecessors, and not only as bad as the sins of Samaria nad Sodom, but even worse than they (Ezekiel 16:47)."[31]

This paragraph is significant in that the pagan city of Sodom is classified as a "sister" of Israel, both alike being God's people in the general sense that all nations are God's, and that God is the God of all nations, and not merely the God of the Jews. This principle is further confirmed in the following paragraph in which restoration is also promised to Sodom.