Ezekiel 20:18-26

God’s Dealings with Israel Rehearsed

¹⁸“Instead, I said to their children in the wilderness, ‘Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers or keep their ordinances or defile yourselves with their idols. ¹⁹I am the Lord your God; walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and follow them. ²⁰Sanctify My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, so that you may know that I am the Lord your God.’ ²¹But the children rebelled against Me; they did not walk in My statutes, nor were they careful to follow My ordinances which, if a person follows them, then he will live by them; they profaned My Sabbaths. So I resolved to pour out My wrath on them, to use up My anger against them in the wilderness. ²²But I withdrew My hand and acted for the sake of My name, so that it would not be defiled in the sight of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out. ²³Also I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them among the lands, ²⁴because they had not complied with My ordinances, but had rejected My statutes and had profaned My Sabbaths, and their eyes were on the idols of their fathers. ²⁵I also gave them statutes that were not good, and ordinances by which they could not live; ²⁶and I pronounced them unclean because of their gifts, in that they made all their firstborn pass through the fire so that I might make them desolate, in order that they might know that I am the Lord.” ’