And in all your abominations and your harlotries you did not remember the days of your youth …: Child sacrifice was the worst of Jerusalem’s sins, and in this parable it was especially bad because the girl (who stands for Jerusalem and Judah in the story) was abandoned by her parents as an infant and on the point of death before she was rescued. She, of all people, should have remembered that and treated her own children better, but God says you did not remember. She was so engrossed in her abominations (see Ezek 16.2) and harlotries (see verse 15) that she forgot about her origins. The days of your youth (“your childhood” in Good News Translation) refers to the time when she was a baby and a young girl; this was the time described in verses 3-6. Contemporary English Version renders this whole clause as “You were so busy sinning and being a prostitute that you refused to think about the days when you were young.”

For you were naked and bare, see Ezek 16.7; for weltering in your blood, see Ezek 16.6.

One model for this verse is:

• While you were doing the things I hate and behaving like a prostitute, you did not remember how you were when you were young, when you were naked and exposed and squirming in your own blood.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .