Ezekiel 16:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

None eye pitied thee, &c. The cruelty of the Egyptians, who ought, in gratitude for the services they had received from Joseph, to have been as parents to the Israelites, seems to be here hinted at. Thou wast cast out in the open field Thou wast exposed to perish. It was the custom to lay those children, whom their parents would not take the trouble of bringing up, in the open fields, and leave them there. To the loathing of thy person Hebrew, כגעל נפשׁן, to the despising of thy soul, or life. The Vulgate reads, in abjectione animæ tuæ in die qua nata es; in the casting away of thy soul, or life, in the day in which thou wast born. The sense seems to be, In contempt of thee as unlovely and worthless; and in abhorrence of thee as loathsome to the beholder. This seems to have reference to the exposing of the male children of the Israelites in Egypt. And it is an apt illustration of the natural state of the children of men. In the day that we were born; we were shapen in iniquity; our understandings darkened, our minds alienated from the life of God; and polluted with sin, which rendered us loathsome in the eyes of God.