John Calvin Commentary Ezekiel 12:20

"And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be a desolation; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah." — Ezekiel 12:20 (ASV)

He pursues the same sentiment. He had threatened destruction to Jerusalem and its citizens; he now adds the other cities of Judah which were still inhabited. Lastly, he speaks of the whole land, as if he said that no single corner should suppose itself free from slaughter, since God’s vengeance would attack it, as well as the cruelty of enemies, throughout all regions.

Jerusalem was the head of the whole nation. Ezekiel predicts its siege, and after that, it became easy to overthrow and plunder other cities, so that the whole region was rendered subject to the lust of the enemies. He afterward adds what we have noticed previously: you shall know that I am Jehovah. They had heard this instruction from the Prophets; they ought to have been imbued with it from their earliest childhood, for God had borne witness by many proofs that he was the true God.

For his power had become sufficiently known and understood through the frequent aid by which that wretched people had been snatched even from immediate death. But as their impiety had stupefied them, so that they carelessly despised not only the Prophet’s teaching but also the very judgments of God when he openly punished them, this knowledge is not mentioned without reason.

Therefore, when God puts forth his hand for the last time to chastise them, he says that his power would be so manifest among them that it would no longer escape them. Yet they were so hardened in their depravity that they almost entirely forgot God.

For a contrast is always to be observed between that knowledge which springs from performance and that arising from utterance; for those who had closed their ears when God invites them to himself as servants must be compelled to feel him to be God when he is silent and executing his vengeance upon them.