16:43-48
The diatribe against Jerusalem continues, with her being castigated for not remembering the days of her youth. She only needed to look back at her history to realise that she was utterly dependent upon the Lord for her existence.
Now God reminds of her of her human ancestry, her mother was a Hittite, and her father an Amorite. She descended from nations that she despised. The northern kingdom was Samaria, which had been defeated and scattered by Assyria a good number of years earlier. Judah despised Samaria (something that continued up until Jesus’ day), but God tells her that she is no better, she is a “true sister”, ie just like her sister. Indeed she was far worse, and is worse even than Sodom!
16:49-52
Now this verse needs to be treated carefully. There are those who delight in this verse, thinking “look, Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed for their homosexual behaviour but for their arrogance and lack of concern for the poor”. This is a most foolish reading of the text. Sin never comes alone, several sins usually travel together. Lying will almost always accompany whatever sin someone commits. Violence is another frequent bedfellow, and mistreatment, abuse and exploitation of the poor will often be there as well. To say homosexuality is not the only sin is certainly true, and something we must bear in mind, but there is nothing here to say that homosexual acts are not sinful! We should also note that here the emphasis is on Judah and Jerusalem being far worse than Samaria. She needed to realise how sinful she was, she needed to be ashamed of her sin, instead of being proud and haughty.
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