44 “Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ 45 You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. 46 And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. 47 Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. 48 As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it. 51 Samaria has not committed half your sins. You have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed. 52 Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have intervened on behalf of your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.
53 “I will restore their fortunes, both the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters, and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and I will restore your own fortunes in their midst, 54 that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all that you have done, becoming a consolation to them. 55 As for your sisters, Sodom and her daughters shall return to their former state, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former state, and you and your daughters shall return to your former state. 56 Was not your sister Sodom a byword in your mouth in the day of your pride, 57 before your wickedness was uncovered? Now you have become an object of reproach for the daughters of Syria and all those around her, and for the daughters of the Philistines, those all around who despise you. 58 You bear the penalty of your lewdness and your abominations, declares the Lord.
59 “For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, 60 yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. 61 Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you. 62 I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, 63 that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.”
But it never goes well with those who prove unfaithful to the Lord, He sees to that, and for this reason: when we become unfaithful, we withdraw ourselves from the range of His protecting grace. As long as we are abiding in Him, we are safe and secure, and no harm can come to us; but once venture beyond that circle of grace, then we can hardly complain if we come to grief, for we have moved from the divine protection. This is what is witnessed to in the second half of this chapter. It is a terrible picture. When the people of God fall away, they generally become worse than the ungodly themselves, they sink further down and become more deeply immersed in sin than the godless themselves (47). The reference in 45 to 'Hittite' and 'Amorite' is not so much geographical or ethnic, as moral (cf, for example, the more general use of the word 'Sodomite' - it is in this morally derogatory sense that Ezekiel uses these words to describe the people of God). The descriptions throughout are very graphic and telling, as for example, in 49 - here is the description of an affluent society, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness. This is the classic combination that generally is the ruin of nations, and this is why the preoccupation, not to say obsession, of modern politicians in our land with the economics of recovery strikes such an ominous note today, from the moral and spiritual standpoint.