Ezekiel — Chapter 16
The longest chapter in Ezekiel: an extended allegory of Jerusalem as an abandoned infant, adopted and adorned by God, who becomes a harlot worse than the nations around her. Lapide notes its shocking literary power and its dual reference — literal to Israel, allegorical to the apostate soul. He cites Origen's Homilies on Ezekiel for the allegorical reading of the individual soul's fall from baptismal grace.
Verse 3
Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite: Lapide reads this genealogical statement allegorically — Israel's 'natural' origin is paganism (as all men descend from Adam's fallen state); its true origin is entirely from divine grace (the covenant). This undercuts all ethnic pride in divine election.
Verse 8
God spreads His garment over Jerusalem (expandere amictum meum super te): Lapide reads this as the covenant of Sinai, and allegorically as baptism in which the soul is clothed with Christ (Gal. 3:27). The subsequent unfaithfulness is apostasy or mortal sin.
Verse 46
Samaria thy elder sister and Sodom thy younger sister: Lapide follows the patristic tradition (Origen, Jerome) of reading the three sisters as three degrees of sin — Israel the worst, having sinned against the greatest light and grace. He cites Augustine's Quaestiones in Heptateuchum on the rehabilitation of Sodom as a type of future restoration.
Verse 60
'Et recordabor ego foederis mei tecum in diebus adolescentiae tuae' — God will remember the covenant of Israel's youth: Lapide reads this Messianic promise as pointing to the new and eternal covenant established in Christ's blood (Heb. 9:15), which makes the old covenant's infidelities irreversible but not final.