Everyone who makes up proverbs will say of you, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’
Parallel translations
- WEB “‘“Behold, everyone who uses proverbs shall use this proverb against you, saying, ‘As is the mother, so is her daughter.’
- KJV Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.
- BSB Behold, all who speak in proverbs will quote this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’
- NKJV “Indeed everyone who quotes proverbs will use this proverb against you: ‘Like mother, like daughter!’
- NASB “Behold, everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb about you, saying, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
A proverb fits her: 'As is the mother, so is her daughter.' Jerusalem reflects the pagan character of her spiritual ancestry.
Overview
God invokes a common saying to introduce a comparison of Jerusalem with her 'family' of nations. The proverb stresses that her sinful nature matches her Canaanite origins (verse 3). It sets up the stinging argument that Jerusalem has become like, and worse than, the most notorious pagan cities.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Ezek 18:2–3“What do you mean, that you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?
- 1 Sam 24:13As the proverb of the ancients says, ‘Out of the wicked comes wickedness;’ but my hand will not be on you.
- Ps 106:35–38but mixed themselves with the nations, and learned their works.
- Ezek 16:3and say, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh to Jerusalem: “Your origin and your birth is of the land of the Canaanite. An Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite.
- Ezra 9:1Now when these things were done, the princes came near to me, saying, “The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, following their abominations, even those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.
- 1 Kgs 21:16When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab rose up to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.
- 2 Kgs 17:11and there they burned incense in all the high places, as the nations whom Yahweh carried away before them did; and they did wicked things to provoke Yahweh to anger;
- 2 Kgs 17:15They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom Yahweh had commanded them that they should not do like them.
- 2 Kgs 21:9But they didn’t listen, and Manasseh seduced them to do that which is evil more than the nations did whom Yahweh destroyed before the children of Israel.
- Ezek 16:45You are the daughter of your mother, who loathes 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.
- Ezek 12:22“Son of man, what is this proverb that you have in the land of Israel, saying, ‘The days are prolonged, and every vision fails?’
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Christ at the center
The promise of one Shepherd-King David, a new heart and new Spirit, and the river of life flowing from the temple all stream toward Christ, the good Shepherd who gives the Spirit.
How Ezekiel 16:44 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.