Ezekiel Chapter 16 verse 4 Holy Bible
And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to cleanse thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.
read chapter 16 in ASV
As for your birth, on the day of your birth your cord was not cut and you were not washed in water to make you clean; you were not salted or folded in linen bands.
read chapter 16 in BBE
And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water for cleansing; thou wast not rubbed with salt at all, nor swaddled at all.
read chapter 16 in DARBY
And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.
read chapter 16 in KJV
read chapter 16 in WBT
As for your birth, in the day you were born your navel was not cut, neither were you washed in water to cleanse you; you weren't salted at all, nor swaddled at all.
read chapter 16 in WEB
As to thy nativity, in the day thou wast born, Thou -- thy navel hath not been cut, And in water thou wast not washed for ease, And thou hast not been salted at all, And thou hast not been swaddled at all.
read chapter 16 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 4. - As for thy nativity, etc. We ask, as we interpret the parable, of what period in the history of Israel Ezekiel speaks. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are ignored by him, and he starts from a time of misery and shame. It is obvious that the only period which corresponds to this is that of the sojourn of Israel as an oppressed and degraded people in the land of Goshen. He paints, with a Dantesque minuteness, the picture of a child just born, abandoned by its mother and neglected by all others from the very moment of its birth. It lies unwashed and foul to look upon. No woman's care does for it the commonest offices of motherhood. For to supple, read, with the Revised Version, to cleanse. The practice still met with in the East of rubbing the newborn child with salt may have rested partly on sanitary grounds (Jerome, in loc. Galen, 'De San.,' 1:7), partly on its symbolic meaning (Numbers 18:19). When this was done, the child was wrapt in swaddling clothes (Luke 2:7), but these too were wanting in the picture which Ezekiel draws. The whole scene may have been painted from the life. Such a birth may well have been witnessed during the march of the exiles, when the brutality of their Chaldean drivers allowed no halt, and the child was left to perish of neglect, and the thought may then have flashed across Ezekiel's mind that the pity which he felt for the deserted infant was a faint shadow of that which Jehovah had felt for Israel in the degradation of their heathen bondage.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(4) Washed in water to supple thee.--The various particulars of this and the following verse describe a child cast out into the field immediately upon its birth, unpitied by any one, and in a condition in which it must soon have perished. Neither the text nor the margin seems to have hit upon the sense of the word translated "to supple," the probable meaning of which is "to cleanse." The rubbing of the body of the new-born infant with salt, a custom still prevailing in some parts of the east, probably had a symbolical, as well as a supposed physical effect; and is recommended for the latter reason by Galen (De Sanit. i. 7). The wrapping the body tightly in swaddling-bands (Comp. Luke 2:7) is still common, even in Italy. The time here referred to in the life of Israel is that in which it passed from its embryonic state in the family of the patriarchs to a nation in the bondage of Egypt. Despised, oppressed, and enslaved, no other people ever became a nation under such circumstances. Humanly speaking, national life was an impossibility for them.
