You are the daughter of your mother … and you are the sister of your sisters …: On one level these literal clauses say something so obvious that they have no real meaning, so some translations add a little to make them more meaningful; for example, New International Version has “You are a true daughter of your mother … and you are a true sister of your sisters….” In the context of the proverb in verse 44, these clauses just stress how similar in nature Jerusalem was to Samaria and Sodom. Another possible model is “You are exactly like your mother … and you are exactly like your sisters…” (similarly New Living Translation, New Century Version). But many languages have no difficulty with the Hebrew wording here, so translators can retain it if their readers will understand it. Instead of your sisters, the Hebrew text has “your sister,” but the meaning is clearly plural in this context. This is also true with the same phrase in verses 51, 52, and 55.
Who loathed her husband and her children … who loathed their husbands and their children: Just as Jerusalem had been unfaithful to God, her husband, and had sacrificed her children to false gods, her mother and her sisters had done the same. Loathed may be translated “hated” (Contemporary English Version, New Century Version, New Jerusalem Bible) or “rejected” (Revised English Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh); it renders the same Hebrew root translated “abhorred” in verse 5 (see the comments there).
Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite: See Ezek 16.3. Good News Translation continues to make it explicit that this passage is talking about Jerusalem by saying “You and your sister cities had a Hittite mother and an Amorite father.” This model may be helpful in many other languages as well. For some languages it will be better to begin the verse with this sentence.
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 .