Ezekiel 16:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

The proud and blinded Jews thought their original more pure than that of the heathen; this was an old tradition among them, now that the prophet is to acquaint them with the truth of their polluted original, which they will storm and fret at, he comes thus prefacing his discourse with a Divine commission. The Lord God; who is omniscient, knows all we are and do, who is so just and true, speaks not any thing but the very truth, who is supreme Judge and determiner of controversies. He tells the prophet what they were, and commands him to tell them. Unto Jerusalem, i.e. the whole race of the Jews, as Ezekiel 16:2. Or, perhaps, in more special manner the inhabitants and natives of that proud city, who thought it a singular privilege to be born there, which the Jews counted more holy than the rest of the land of Canaan. Thy birth; thine habitation and thy kindred, so our English of the time of 2 Elizabeth. Thy root whence thou didst spring, the rock whence thou wast cut, the place where thou grewest up, the company and commerce thou didst use, all were of the land of Canaan, and thou hast a fulness of their vicious nature, manners, and practices, both in civil and religious things, as vile and obnoxious to my curse as Canaan itself. Thy father: if the prophet refer to Abraham, it must be understood of his state and religion before God called him, when he, as his father and kindred, worshipped strange gods beyond the river, Joshua 24:14, with Ezekiel 16:2. If the prophet refer to those that were in Egypt, the Jews ancestors that dwelt there, it is certain that many of them forgot Abraham's God, closed with the Egyptian idolatry, and were polluted with idols, Joshua 24:2. If you refer it as a figurative speech, and call them fathers whom we reverence, consult, obey, and imitate, as well we may call such fathers, these were not the best and holiest of men, Matthew 2:7; Matthew 3:34 23:33. O ye Jews, be it known to you, whatever you think, you have no cause to boast of your nobler or purer descent, your fountain was corrupt and poisonous. Was; might have been, for likeness of manners. An Amorite; either because this comprehended all the rest of the cursed nations; or because the Amorites, as the most powerful and mighty, so were the most wicked among them; it was the Amorites which were filling up their sins, Genesis 15:16. Thy mother: sometimes the ill nature of a father is corrected in the child by the sweetness of the mother, but you Jews were not so happy, your mother was as bad every whit as your father; both prodigiously vile in their inclination, civil converse, and choice of their religion, and in the practice of it. The daughters of Heth were women of ill fame and worse manners, Genesis 27:46, enough to make a good soul weary of life. Such is your race, O ye Jews.