31 For when you offer ayour gifts and make your sons pass through the fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols, even to this day. So shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live,” says the Lord God, “I will bnot be inquired of by you.
32aWhat you have in your mind shall never be, when you say, ‘We will be like the Gentiles, like the families in other countries, serving wood and stone.’
God Will Restore Israel
33 “As I live,” says the Lord God, “surely with a mighty hand, awith an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, I will rule over you.
34 I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out.
35 And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there aI will plead My case with you face to face.
36aJust as I pleaded My case with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will plead My case with you,” says the Lord God.
37 “I will make you apass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the bcovenant;
38aI will purge the rebels from among you, and those who transgress against Me; I will bring them out of the country where they dwell, but bthey shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
39 “As for you, O house of Israel,” thus says the Lord God: a“Go, serve every one of you his idols—and hereafter—if you will not obey Me; bbut profane My holy name no more with your gifts and your idols.
40 For aon My holy mountain, on the mountain height of Israel,” says the Lord God, “there ball the house of Israel, all of them in the land, shall serve Me; there cI will accept them, and there I will require your offerings and the firstfruits of your1 sacrifices, together with all your holy things.
41 I will accept you as a asweet aroma when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered; and I will be hallowed in you before the Gentiles.
42aThen you shall know that I am the Lord, bwhen I bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for which I raised My hand in an oath to give to your fathers.
Here begins the second division of the prophecy. Lest the covenant people should abandon their distinctive hopes and amalgamate with the surrounding heathen, He tells them that, as the wilderness journey from Egypt was made subservient to discipline and also to the taking from among them the rebellious, so a severe discipline (such as the Jews are now for long actually undergoing) should be administered to them during the next exodus for the same purpose (Ezekiel 20:38), and so to prepare them for the restored possession of their land (Hosea 2:14-15). This was only partially fulfilled before, and at the return from Babylon: its full and final accomplishment is future.
with a mighty hand, . . . will I rule over you—I will assert My right over you in spite of your resistance (Ezekiel 20:32), as a master would in the case of his slave, and I will not let you be wrested from Me, because of My regard to My covenant.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Ezekiel 20:33:
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