Ezekiel 16:3 - Exposition

Thy birth and thy nativity, etc. A prosaic literalism (as e.g. in interpreters like Hitzig and Kliefert) has seen in Ezekiel's language the assertion of an ethnological fact. "The Jebusite city," the prophet is supposed to say," was never really of pure Israelite descent. Its people are descended from Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, and are tainted, as by a law of heredite, with the vices of their forefathers." So taken, the passage would remind us of the scorn with which Dante ( ut supra ) speaks of the cruel and base herd of Fiesole, who corrupted the once noble stock of the inhabitants of Florence (so also 'Inf.,' 15.62). Rightly understood, it is believed that Ezekiel's words imply the very opposite of this. As Isaiah ( Isaiah 1:10 ) had spoken of "the rulers of Sodom, and the people of Gomorrah;" as Deuteronomy 32:32 had spoken of the vine of Israel becoming as "the vine of Sodom;" as our Lord speaks of the Jews of his time as not being "the children of Abraham" ( John 8:39 ); so Ezekiel, using the strongest form of Eastern vituperation, taunts the people of Jerusalem with acting as if they were descended, not from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but from the earlier heathen inhabitants of what was afterwards the land of Israel. It is not necessary to enter into a history of the three nations whom he names. Briefly, the Canaanites represented the dwellers in the lowland country west of the valley of the Jordan—the plains of Philistia, Sharon, Esdraelon, and Phoenicia; and their leading representatives in Ezekiel's time were the cities of Tyre and Zidon. The Amorites were people of the mountains, at first, west of the Jordan, on the heights over the Dead Sea and as far as Hebron, but afterwards, under Sihon, on the high tablelands east of the Jordan. The Hittites, on whose history much light has been thrown by recent Egyptian and other discoveries, appear first in the history of the purchase of the cave of Macphelab, at Kirjath-arba, or Hebron, and that history implies commerce and culture. Esau's marriage with the daughters of two Hittite chiefs implies, perhaps, a recognition of their value as allies ( Genesis 26:34 ). They are always numbered with the other six nations, whom the Israelites were to conquer or expel (generally in conjunction with the Canaanites and Amorites as the three first, though not always in the same order, Exodus 3:8 ; Exodus 13:5 ; Exodus 33:2 ; Exodus 34:11 ). And this fact obviously determined Ezekiel's choice. In the later historical books they appear but seldom. One Hittite captain, Uriah, occupies a high position in David's army ( 2 Samuel 11:3 ). The kings of the Hittites trade with Solomon, and give their daughters to him in marriage ( 1 Kings 10:29 ). They meet us for the last time as possible allies of the kings of Judah ( 2 Kings 7:6 ), and in the list of the older nations in Ezra 9:1 and Nehemiah 9:8 . Then they disappear from the page of history till the discovery and decipherment of Egyptian records in our own time shows them to have been among the mighty nations that have passed with their rulers into the Hades of departed kingdoms.