Ezekiel 16:59-63: in context

Ezekiel 16 is one of the most brutal chapters in the prophets, an extended and deliberately shocking allegory in which Jerusalem is a foundling child rescued at birth, raised, adorned, and then unfaithful beyond all measure. This passage is how it ends.

The judgment is stated first, plainly: I will deal with you as you have done, you who despised the oath by breaking the covenant. Then, in the same breath, the word that turns it. Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.

What follows is stranger still. You will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, the elder and the younger, and I will give them to you as daughters, though not on account of your covenant. Sodom and Samaria, named earlier in the chapter as her worse-behaved sisters, are included in the restoration. And the purpose of the whole thing is stated: I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, that you may remember and be confounded and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done. Being forgiven is what finally silences her. What would I have nothing left to say about, if I actually accepted that it had been forgiven?