God gave Ezekiel a picture-story to help Jerusalem understand her history. In the story, Jerusalem was like a newborn girl left in the open field on the day she was born. No eye pitied her. No one washed her or wrapped her in blankets. She was helpless and alone.

God passed by and said to her, Live! He cared for her as she grew. He washed her with water and anointed her with oil. He clothed her with embroidered work, fine linen, and silk, and gave her bracelets, a chain, earrings, and a beautiful crown. Her renown went out among the nations for her beauty, through the majesty God had put on her.

But she trusted in her own beauty and turned away from the one who saved her. She used his gifts to make places for idols and was unfaithful to the covenant. Her pride was like Sodom's, whose people did not help the poor and needy. Yet God promised to remember his covenant from the days of her youth, establish an everlasting covenant, and forgive all that she had done.

Ezekiel 16 is one of the longest chapters in the prophets, an allegory of Jerusalem's history from God's point of view. Her origins were humble: her father was an Amorite and her mother a Hittite, meaning the city began among the nations of Canaan. In the picture, she was a newborn cast out in the open field, unwashed and unwanted. Then God passed by and said, Live! The whole story begins with grace that she did nothing to earn.

God entered into a covenant with her, and she became his. He washed her, anointed her with oil, and clothed her with embroidered work, fine linen, and silk. He adorned her with ornaments and a beautiful crown, and her renown went out among the nations because of the majesty God had put on her. Then came the tragic turn: she trusted in her beauty, forgot the days of her youth, and poured God's gifts into idol worship and alliances with Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea. The chapter describes this unfaithfulness in strong terms; the point is that she gave her heart to others instead of God.

God compared Jerusalem with her sisters Samaria and Sodom and found her worse. Sodom's sin is named plainly: arrogance, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease, without strengthening the hand of the poor and needy. Yet the final word is not judgment. Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. When God forgives all she has done, she will remember and be humbled. In the New Testament, Romans 5:8 says: But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.