Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
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.
Other Adam Clarke entries containing Ezekiel 16:3:
Revelation 17:1
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