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.”
The force of the statement in 53ff is not to give a promise of restoration, but rather an announcement of the impossibility of it. What Ezekiel means is that Sodom and Gomorrah are more likely to be restored (and Sodom and the cities of the plain had long ago been destroyed) than Judah, at that stage in her sinful existence. Yet, in 60, there is the promise that God would remember His covenant with His people. This is not so much a contradiction, as a reference to the remnant among the exiles, whom God would then have dealings with, after the final doom of Jerusalem. Reference was made in an earlier Note about the glory of the Lord leaving the city of Jerusalem and moving eastwards, as if towards the captives at Chebar, indicating that it was with them that God would have dealings in the future, rather than with those in Jerusalem, who were now doomed.
One final word before we leave the chapter: the picture it gives us is of a God whose love has been violated and insulted by the sin and infidelity of His people, a God with a broken heart. This is what makes sin so terrible. We sometimes speak of Paul's 'law-court' metaphor (Romans 3) which speaks of the guilt of sin being removed by the divine acquittal. But, wonderful as that picture is, it is not sufficient in itself to convey the whole idea of God's grace and mercy in the gospel. The judge in the law court is an impersonal figure, it is his job to pass sentence on criminals, and it is all in a day's work to him. He is not personally involved with the prisoner. But in the divine situation, the divine lawgiver is not an impartial figure, He is also our God, and the Lover of our souls. This is why we must always remember that the divine/human relationship is never merely one in which guilt is put away, but one that is spoken of here in nuptial terms. Sin not only incurs guilt, it breaks the heart of God, and spits in the face of a lover. This is why sin is such a terrible thing.