Ezekiel 16:3

3 and thou shalt say, The Lord God saith these things. A! thou Jerusalem, thy root and thy generation is of the land of Canaan; thy father is Amorite, and thy mother is Hittite. (and thou shalt say, The Lord God saith these things. O! thou Jerusalem, thy roots and thy generation be from the land of Canaan; thy father is an Amorite, and thy mother is a Hittite.)

Ezekiel 16:3 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 16:3

And say, thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem
To the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as the Targum: thy birth and thy nativity [is] of the land of Canaan;
here the Jewish ancestors for a time dwelt and sojourned, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and so the Targum, Jarchi, Kimchi, and Ben Melech, interpret the first word, "thy habitation" or "sojourning" ^F6: but whereas it follows, "and thy nativity", this does not solve the difficulty; which may be said to be of the land of Canaan, because their ancestors were born here; for though Abraham was a Chaldean he was called out of Chaldea into the land of Canaan, where Isaac was born; and so was Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes; besides, the Israelites were the successors of the Canaanites in their land, and so seemed to descend from them; and it is not unusual for such to be reckoned the children of those whom they succeed; to which may be added, that they were like to the Canaanites in their manners, particularly in their idolatries; and so their children, as such, are said to be the offspring and descendants of those whose examples they follow, or whom they imitate; see the history of Susannah in the Apocrypha:

``So he put him aside, and commanded to bring the other, and said unto him, O thou seed of Chanaan, and not of Juda, beauty hath deceived thee, and lust hath perverted thine heart.'' (Susannah 1:56)

thy father [was] an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite;
Abraham and Sarah, who were, properly speaking, the one the father, the other the mother, of the Jewish nation, were Chaldeans; and neither Amorites nor Hittites; yet, because they dwelt among them; are so called; and especially since before their conversion they were idolaters, as those were; besides, the Jews who descended from Judah, and from whom they have their name, very probably sprung from ancestors who might be Amorites and Hittites: since Judah married the daughter of a Canaanite, and such an one seems to be Tamar, he took for his son Er, and by whom he himself had two sons, Pharez and Zarah, from the former of which the kings of Judah lineally descended, ( Genesis 37:2 Genesis 37:6 Genesis 37:29 Genesis 37:30 ) ( Matthew 1:3 ) ; besides, the Jews were the successors of these people, and possessed their land, and imitated them in their wicked practices, ( Amos 2:10 ) ( 9:7 ) ; and these two, the Amorite and Hittite, of all the seven nations, are mentioned, because they were the worst, and the most wicked, ( Genesis 15:16 ) ( 27:46 ) . The Jews ^F7 say Terah the father of Abraham, and his ancestors, came from Canaan.

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FOOTNOTES:

F6 (Kytyrkm) "habitationes tuae", Pagninus, Calvin; "mansiones tuae", Montanus; "habitatio tua", Vatablus, Grotius; so R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 30. 1.
F7 T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 44. 2. & Gloss. in ib.

Ezekiel 16:3 In-Context

1 And the word of the Lord was made to me, and he said,

2 Son of man, make known to Jerusalem their abominations;

3 and thou shalt say, The Lord God saith these things. A! thou Jerusalem, thy root and thy generation is of the land of Canaan; thy father is Amorite, and thy mother is Hittite. (and thou shalt say, The Lord God saith these things. O! thou Jerusalem, thy roots and thy generation be from the land of Canaan; thy father is an Amorite, and thy mother is a Hittite.)

4 And when thou were born, thy navel was not cut away in the day of thy birth (thy navel-string was not cut on the day of thy birth), and thou were not washed in water into health, neither salted with salt, neither wrapped in (swaddling) ?clothes.

5 An eye spared not on thee, that it having mercy on thee, did to thee one of these things; but thou were cast forth on the face of (the) earth, in the casting out of thy soul, in the day in which thou were born. (An eye spared thee not, that it having mercy on thee, did to thee one of these things; but thou were thrown forth onto the face of the earth, or onto the ground, in the casting out of thyself, on the day on which thou were born.)