Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ezekiel · About this commentary
Your Elder Sister Is Samaria
Ezekiel 16:44-63
44 “‘“Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb against you, saying, ‘As is the mother, so is her daughter.’ · WEB
Jerusalem is placed between two cities she despised and ranked below both, and then given an everlasting covenant she is told she did not earn.
The comparison is designed to be intolerable. Two sisters are named. On the left is Samaria , the capital of the kingdom Judah had watched fall and had congratulated itself on outliving. On the right is Sodom, a name that had become a byword for what God destroys. And the verdict is delivered twice: Samaria hasn't committed half of your sins, and Sodom has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done.
What Sodom's iniquity actually was gets stated here, and it is worth reading against the assumption most readers bring. Pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters. She also didn't strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. The list begins with arrogance and comfort, and the item given weight is a failure to help people who needed it. The chapter does not deny the abomination named in Genesis. It puts the social sins first, in a sentence addressed to a city about to fall for the same combination.
The most cutting clause is that Jerusalem has justified your sisters — made them look righteous by comparison, and so supplied their defense. A city that existed to display what God is like has ended up as the best argument available to the towns he judged.
And then, with no transition and no condition, the chapter turns. Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. The word for it is the same word used of the foundling in the field. Nothing has changed about the woman. What is added, and stated twice, is that this new arrangement is not by your covenant — not on the terms she agreed to and broke.
The last verse is the strangest ending to a chapter of this kind in Scripture, and it holds two things together that are usually opposed. She will remember, be confounded, and never open your mouth any more because of your shame — and the reason given for the silence is not the sin. It is the pardon: when I have forgiven you all that you have done. Shame is not removed by forgiveness here; it is produced by it. That is a claim about how grace actually lands on someone who knows what they are, and the book will make it again in almost the same words Ezekiel 36:31–32.
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