Ezekiel 16:3

King James Version (KJV)

And say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan - It would dishonor Abraham to say that you sprung from him: ye are rather Canaanites than Israelites. The Canaanites were accursed; so are ye.

Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite - These tribes were the most famous, and probably the most corrupt, of all the Canaanites. So Isaiah calls the princes of Judah rulers of Sodom, Isaiah 1:10; and John the Baptist calls the Pharisees a generation or brood of vipers, Matthew 3:7. There is a fine specimen of this kind of catachresis in Dido's invective against Aeneas: -

Nec tibi Diva parens, generis nec

Dardanus auctor, Perflde;

sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens

Caucasus, Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres.

Aen. lib. 4:365.

"False as thou art, and more than false, forsworn;

Not sprung from noble blood, nor goddess born:

But hewn from hardened entrails of a rock, -

And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck."

Dryden.

This is strong: but the invective of the prophet exceeds it far. It is the essence of degradation to its subject; and shows the Jews to be as base and contemptible as they were abominable and disgusting.

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Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

Birth - See the margin; the word represents “origin” under the figure of “cutting out stone from a quarry” (compare Isaiah 51:1).

An Amorite - the Amorite, a term denoting the whole people. The Amorites, being a principal branch of the Canaanites, are often taken to represent the whole stock Genesis 15:16; 2 Kings 21:11.

An Hittite - Compare Genesis 26:34. The main idea is that the Israelites by their doings proved themselves to be the very children of the idolatrous nations who once occupied the land of Canaan. Compare Deuteronomy 20:17.

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Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary

In this chapter God's dealings with the Jewish nation, and their conduct towards him, are described, and their punishment through the surrounding nations, even those they most trusted in. This is done under the parable of an exposed infant rescued from death, educated, espoused, and richly provided for, but afterwards guilty of the most abandoned conduct, and punished for it; yet at last received into favour, and ashamed of her base conduct. We are not to judge of these expressions by modern ideas, but by those of the times and places in which they were used, where many of them would not sound as they do to us. The design was to raise hatred to idolatry, and such a parable was well suited for that purpose.

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