“You were not rubbed with salt”
On the day of your birth your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing. You were not rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. (Ezekiel 16:4 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Strange, harsh-sounding details, especially rubbing a baby with salt.
The cultural key
The verse catalogs, by their absence, the ordinary things done for every newborn in the ancient Near East. A midwife would cut and tie the umbilical cord, wash the blood and birth-fluid from the baby, rub its skin with powdered salt (thought to cleanse, firm, and protect the delicate newborn skin, and perhaps to guard against infection), and then bind it snugly in swaddling bands to keep the limbs straight and the child warm. To receive none of these was the fate of an unwanted infant, abandoned uncared-for and left exposed to die, a real and grim practice for babies, especially girls, deemed a burden. So God's allegory opens by picturing Jerusalem as exactly that: a newborn cast into a field the moment she was born, cord uncut, unwashed, unsalted, unwrapped, and dying, until He passed by and said, 'Live!' The 'rubbed with salt' that baffles modern readers is simply routine ancient infant care; its absence signals total abandonment.
Recovered meaning
The list, cutting the cord, washing, rubbing with salt, and swaddling, is the standard ancient newborn-care routine; salt was thought to cleanse and toughen a baby's skin. Jerusalem is pictured as an abandoned infant denied all of it and left to die, until God rescued her.