Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
The probation in the wilderness. The promise was forfeited by those to whom it was first conditionally made, but was renewed to their children.
Ezekiel 20:11
The "statutes" were given on Mount Sinai, and repeated by Moses before his death (Exodus 20:1 ff; Deuteronomy 4:8).
In them - Or, through them: and in Ezekiel 20:13.
Ezekiel 20:12
See Exodus 31:13. The Sabbath was a sign of a special people, commemorative of the work of creation, and hallowed to the honor of Yahweh, the covenant-God. As man honored God by keeping the Sabbath holy, so by the Sabbath, God "sanctified" Israel and marked them as a holy people. Therefore to profane the Sabbath was to abjure their Divine Governor.
Ezekiel 20:13
My sabbaths they greatly polluted - Not by actual non-observance of the sabbatical rest in the wilderness, but in failing to make the day holy in deed as well as in name by earnest worship and true heart service.
Ezekiel 20:18
The book of Deuteronomy contains the address to "the children" of those who perished in the wilderness. The whole history of Israel was a repetition of this course. The covenant was made with one generation, broken by them, and then renewed to the next.
Ezekiel 20:25
The "judgments whereby they should not live" are those spoken of in Ezekiel 20:18, and are contrasted with the judgments in Ezekiel 20:13, Ezekiel 20:21, laws other than divine, to which God gives up those whom He afflicts with judicial blindness, because they have willfully closed their eyes, Psalms 81:12; Romans 1:24.
Ezekiel 20:26
To pass through - The word also means to "set apart," as the firstborn to the Lord Exodus 13:12. They were bidden to "set apart" their firstborn males to the Lord. They "caused them to pass through the fire" to Moloch. An instance of their perversion of God' s laws.
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Ezekiel 20:18:
Isaiah 65:1
Ezekiel 20:10-26
Ezekiel 20:10-26
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