Ezekiel 16:5

5 No one took pity on you. No one was concerned enough to do any of those things for you. Instead, you were thrown out into an open field. You were hated on the day you were born.

Ezekiel 16:5 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 16:5

None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have
compassion upon thee
Or, "one of these" ^F11; not so much as one of them: sad must be the case of an infant, when it meets with no tender heart or kind hand from midwife, nurse, or mother, to do these things for it: this is expressive of the helpless, forlorn, and unpitied state of the Israelites in Egypt; who, when their lives were made bitter with hard bondage, had no mercy shown them by Pharaoh and his taskmasters, ( Exodus 1:14 ) ( Exodus 5:9 Exodus 5:14 Exodus 5:17 ) . So the Targum,

``the eye of Pharaoh did not spare you to do one good thing for you, to give you rest from your bondage, to have mercy on you:''

but thou wast cast out in the open field;
alluding to infants exposed by their unnatural parents, or unkind nurses, and left in an open field, or any desert place, to perish for want, unless some kind providence appears for them: this open field may design the land of Egypt, whither Jacob and his posterity were, being driven out of Canaan by a famine; and where, after the death of Joseph, they were exposed to the hardships and cruelties of the Egyptians; and who, commanding their male children to be slain, doubtless occasioned the exposing of many of them, as well as Moses, to which some reference may be had; and so the Targum paraphrases it,

``and he (Pharaoh) decreed a full decree to cast your male children into the river, to destroy you when you were in Egypt:''

to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born;
the Israelites were loathsome to the Egyptians, as every shepherd was an abomination to them, and such were they, ( Genesis 46:34 ) ; and all this may be applied to the state and condition of men by nature, even of God's elect, whose extraction is from fallen man; descend immediately from unclean parents; are conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity; can have no communication of grace from their parents, or others; by whom they cannot be washed from their sins, or sanctified, or clothed, or made righteous; but are in a hopeless and helpless condition; and are loathsome and abominable to God, and to themselves too, when they come to see the state they are in.

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FOOTNOTES:

F11 (hlam txa) "unum ex istis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus; "unum ex his", Pagninus, Montanus, Starckius.

Ezekiel 16:5 In-Context

3 "Tell them, 'The LORD and King speaks to Jerusalem. He says, "Your history in the land of Canaan goes back a long way. Your father was an Amorite. Your mother was a Hittite.

4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut. You were not washed with water to clean you up. You were not rubbed with salt. And you were not wrapped in large strips of cloth.

5 No one took pity on you. No one was concerned enough to do any of those things for you. Instead, you were thrown out into an open field. You were hated on the day you were born.

6 " ' "I was passing by. I saw you kicking around in your blood. As you were lying there, I said to you, 'Live!'

7 I made you grow like a plant in a field. Soon you had grown up. You became the most beautiful jewel of all. Your breasts had formed. Your hair had grown. But you were naked and bare.