Ezekiel 16:4-5

“And as for your nativity, in the day that you were born your navel was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you. You were not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. No eye pitied you to do any of these things to you, to have compassion on you. But you were cast out in the open field because your person was abhorred in the day that you were born.”

‘Your nativity.' The time of birth and what immediately followed. The thought is probably that of the ‘birth of the nation' in Egypt, a slave nation treated abominably. But the more general idea was that they were basically unwanted so that no one bothered with them, even those who had ‘fathered' them. (The idea that it was the Abrahamic period mainly in mind is denied by the fact that the father was an Amorite and the mother a Hittite).

The meaning of the word translated ‘to cleanse' is unknown. It is probably a technical term for cleaning up the baby and removing the stains of afterbirth. ‘Salting' was probably for antiseptic purposes. Swaddling was wrapping up the baby for protection. But no one did this for Israel. They were unwanted. So they were, as it were, tossed into a field in their filthy state just as they came out of the womb, because they were hated. This, alas, was all too often the experience of an unwanted baby. The idea behind all this is that in themselves they had nothing to be proud of. Their state was such that they were only to be pitied.