Thou art thy mother's daughter,.... Exactly like her; they that have known the one must know the other. The Targum is,

"wherefore art thou become the daughter of the land of Canaan, to do according to the works of the people?''

that loatheth her husband and her children; a true character of an adulteress; and which agrees both with the mother the Canaanites, and with the daughter the Jews; who both despised, rejected, and forsook God their husband, Creator, and lawgiver, and sacrificed their children to idols; see Ezekiel 16:20;

and thou art the sister of thy sisters; the true genuine sister of them, Samaria and Sodom after mentioned; being not only allied to them in blood, more nearly to the one more remotely to the other, but exceedingly alike in manners, religion, and worship:

which loatheth their husbands and their children; as before:

your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite; these the Israelites succeeded in their land, and followed their customs; See Gill on Ezekiel 16:3. The Targum is,

"was not your mother Sarah among the Hittites? and she did not do according to their works; and your father Abraham was among the Amorites, and he walked not in their counsels.''

Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy {y} sisters, who lothed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

(y) That is, of Samaria and Sodom.

16:45 Thou - The nation of the Jews. Thy mother's daughter - As much in thy inclinations, as for thy original. Loatheth - That was weary of the best husband.

45. mother's . that loatheth her husband-that is, God ("haters of God," Ro 1:30); therefore the knowledge of the true God had originally been in Canaan, handed down from Noah (hence we find Melchisedek, king of Salem, in Canaan, "priest of the most high God," Ge 14:18), but Canaan apostatized from it; this was what constituted the blackness of the Canaanites' guilt.

loathed . children-whom she put to death in honor of Saturn; a practice common among the Phonicians.

sister of thy sisters-Thou art akin in guilt to Samaria and Sodom, to which thou art akin by birth. Moab and Ammon, the incestuous children of Lot, nephew of Abraham, Israel's progenitor, had their origin from Sodom; so Sodom might be called Judah's sister. Samaria, answering to the ten tribes of Israel, is, of course, sister to Judah.

16:1-58 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.