“I spread My cloak over you”
So I spread My cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I pledged Myself to you, entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine (Ezekiel 16:8 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A kind gesture of covering someone with a blanket.
The cultural key
This reads like simple tenderness, wrapping a garment around someone exposed, and it is tender, but it is also a specific legal-romantic gesture. To 'spread the corner (or wing) of your cloak over' a woman was to claim her as your wife and bring her under your protection and provision. Ruth makes the meaning explicit when she says to Boaz, 'spread the corner of your garment over your servant, for you are a kinsman-redeemer' (Ruth 3:9), a proposal of marriage. So when God says to the abandoned newborn He rescued, now grown, 'I spread My cloak over you and covered your nakedness,' the very next clauses spell out the act: 'I pledged Myself to you, entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine.' It is a betrothal. The whole allegory casts Jerusalem as a castoff infant whom God raises, then weds and adorns as His bride. Recognizing the marriage custom turns a gentle image into a wedding vow, which makes her later unfaithfulness in the chapter all the more grievous.
Recovered meaning
Spreading the corner of one's cloak over a woman was the gesture of claiming her in marriage, as Ruth asks of Boaz. God spreading His cloak over the rescued foundling is a betrothal: He enters a marriage covenant with Jerusalem, making her His own.