Ezekiel 16:5

5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

Ezekiel 16:5 in Other Translations

5 None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.

5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

5 No one had the slightest interest in you; no one pitied you or cared for you. On the day you were born, you were unwanted, dumped in a field and left to die.

5 No one cared a fig for you. No one did one thing to care for you tenderly in these ways. You were thrown out into a vacant lot and left there, dirty and unwashed - a newborn nobody wanted.

5 No eye pitied thee, to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, for that thy person was abhorred, in the day that thou wast born.

5 No one who saw you felt sorry enough for you to do any of these things. But you were thrown into an open field. You were rejected when you were born.

5 No one cared [enough] about you to do even one of these things out of compassion for you. But you were thrown out into the open field because you were despised on the day you were born.

5 No one took pity on you. No one was concerned enough to do any of those things for you. Instead, you were thrown out into an open field. You were hated on the day you were born.

Ezekiel 16:5 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 16:5

None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have
compassion upon thee
Or, "one of these" ^F11; not so much as one of them: sad must be the case of an infant, when it meets with no tender heart or kind hand from midwife, nurse, or mother, to do these things for it: this is expressive of the helpless, forlorn, and unpitied state of the Israelites in Egypt; who, when their lives were made bitter with hard bondage, had no mercy shown them by Pharaoh and his taskmasters, ( Exodus 1:14 ) ( Exodus 5:9 Exodus 5:14 Exodus 5:17 ) . So the Targum,

``the eye of Pharaoh did not spare you to do one good thing for you, to give you rest from your bondage, to have mercy on you:''

but thou wast cast out in the open field;
alluding to infants exposed by their unnatural parents, or unkind nurses, and left in an open field, or any desert place, to perish for want, unless some kind providence appears for them: this open field may design the land of Egypt, whither Jacob and his posterity were, being driven out of Canaan by a famine; and where, after the death of Joseph, they were exposed to the hardships and cruelties of the Egyptians; and who, commanding their male children to be slain, doubtless occasioned the exposing of many of them, as well as Moses, to which some reference may be had; and so the Targum paraphrases it,

``and he (Pharaoh) decreed a full decree to cast your male children into the river, to destroy you when you were in Egypt:''

to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born;
the Israelites were loathsome to the Egyptians, as every shepherd was an abomination to them, and such were they, ( Genesis 46:34 ) ; and all this may be applied to the state and condition of men by nature, even of God's elect, whose extraction is from fallen man; descend immediately from unclean parents; are conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity; can have no communication of grace from their parents, or others; by whom they cannot be washed from their sins, or sanctified, or clothed, or made righteous; but are in a hopeless and helpless condition; and are loathsome and abominable to God, and to themselves too, when they come to see the state they are in.

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FOOTNOTES:

F11 (hlam txa) "unum ex istis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Polanus; "unum ex his", Pagninus, Montanus, Starckius.

Ezekiel 16:5 In-Context

3 and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths.

5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

6 “ ‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!”

7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.