26<\/strong>. might make them desolate<\/em> ] Or, destroy them;<\/strong> less probably: horrify them (ch. Eze 32:10<\/span>). The train of thought is the same as that expressed in ch. Eze 14:9<\/span>. The penalty of sin is further delusion and worse sin, the end of which is death. The last clause “to the end Lord” is wanting in LXX.<\/p>\n Verse 26<\/span>. I polluted them in their own gifts<\/B><\/I>] I permitted<\/I> them to pollute themselves by the offerings which they made to their idols. Causing their children to pass through the fire was one of those pollutions<\/I>; but, did God ever give them a statute<\/I> or judgment<\/I> of this kind<\/I>? No. He ever inveighs against such things, and they incur his heaviest displeasure and curse. See on Eze 20:31<\/span>.<\/P> <\/p>\n Polluted them; <\/B>either I permitted them to pollute themselves, or discovered that they had polluted themselves, or treated them with loathing and abhorrence, as polluted persons. <\/P> In their own gifts; <\/B>either in their gifts which they pretended to bring to me, or rather in their sacrifices they offered to whom, or at least in what manner, they, not I, had chosen; or, which is most likely, gifts are here their first-born, which are more than other children accounted gifts. <\/P> Through the fire:<\/B> see Eze 16:20<\/span>,21<\/span>. Most insufferable affront to God, to see those children inhumanly offered to the devil, which, in remembrance of his redeeming the fathers, were consecrated to God! Exo 13:2<\/span>; and possibly this was first done when they offered to Baalpeor, Num 25:3<\/span>. <\/P> To the end, <\/B>& c.; to provoke God so to afflict, weaken, and waste by his judgment, till it should undeniably appear that God had by signal displeasure against them for their sins brought them to desolation. <\/P> Might know; <\/B>be convinced, and forced to own, that the Lord is a mighty King in punishing those that might, but would not, have him a gracious King in governing and guiding them. <\/P> <\/p>\n 26. I polluted them<\/B>notdirectly; “but I judicially gave them up<\/I> to pollutethemselves.” A just retribution for their “polluting Mysabbaths” (Eze 20:24<\/span>).This Eze 20:26<\/span> is explanatoryof Eze 20:25<\/span>. Their own sin Imade their punishment. <\/P> caused to pass through <\/B>thefire<\/B><\/I> <\/B>FAIRBAIRNtranslates, “In their presenting<\/I> (literally, ‘the causingto pass over’) all their first-born,” namely, to the Lord;<\/I>referring to the command (Ex 13:12<\/span>,Margin,<\/I> where the very same expression is used). Thelustration of children by passing through the fire was a laterabomination<\/I> (Eze 20:31<\/span>).The evil here spoken of was the admixture of heathenish practiceswith Jehovah’s worship, which made Him regard all as “polluted.”Here, “to the Lord” is omitted purposely, to imply, “Theykept up the outward service indeed, but I did not own it as done untoMe, since it was mingled with such pollutions.<\/I>” ButEnglish Version<\/I> is supported by the similar phraseology in Eze20:31<\/span>, see on Eze 20:31<\/span>.They made all<\/I> their children pass through the fire; but henames the first-born,<\/I> in aggravation of their guilt; that is,”I had willed that the first-born should be redeemed as beingMine, but they imposed on themselves the cruel rites of offering themto Molech” (De 18:10<\/span>). <\/P> might know . . . theLord<\/B>that they may be compelled to know Me as a powerful Judge,since they were unwilling to know Me as a gracious Father.<\/P><\/p>\n And one polluted them in their own gifts<\/strong>,…. Suffered them to defile themselves; or declared them to be, and treated them as polluted persons, in the gifts and sacrifices which they offered to idols, particularly their firstborn: as the next clause explains it:<\/p>\n in that they caused to pass though [the fire] all that openeth the womb<\/strong>; this very likely they did, when they sacrificed to Baalpeor, the same with Molech, Nu 25:3<\/span>;<\/p>\n that I might make them desolate<\/strong>; their families, by stripping them of their children, their firstborn, and strength:<\/p>\n to the end that they might know that I [am] the Lord<\/strong>; a righteous God, in punishing men for sin, in a way it deserves. Some interpret this, not of causing the firstborn to pass through fire to an idol; but of causing them to pass, or of setting them apart, to the Lord, according to the law in Ex 13:12<\/span>; where the same word is used as here; and the sense is that God declared them to be impure in or with all their gifts, by commanding them to cause their firstborn to pass to him, which they were obliged to redeem; which sense is approved of by Gussetius l; and so Abendana, taking the words to refer to both, gives this sense of them,<\/p>\n “I pronounced them impure, and removed them far from me, instead of sanctifying them; because they caused everyone that opens the womb to pass from me, whom I commanded to give to me for holiness, but they have given them to idolatry;”<\/p>\n rather, according to Braunius m, the words may be understood of God’s rejecting and causing the firstborn to pass from him, and not suffering them to offer gifts and sacrifices unto him; which may be meant by pronouncing them impure, or polluting them in their gifts; this was after the worship of the golden calf; when he took Aaron and his sons in their room.<\/p>\n l Ebr. Comment. p. 576, 939. m Selecta Sacra, l. 4. c. 11. p. 522.<\/p>\n There is no doubt that God here continues the same doctrine’ hence we gather that injurious laws were given to the people when they adopted various errors and worshipped idols of their own fabrication instead of God: hence it is added, I polluted them in their gifts. This, then, was added by the Prophet, lest the Jews should object that they had not altogether rejected the worship of God; for they mingled the ceremonies of the laws with the fictions of the Gentiles, as we saw before, and the Prophet will shortly repeat: in this way they thought they discharged their duty to God, though they added mixtures of their own. Here the Prophet meets them, and cuts off all occasion for turning aside, since they were polluted in their gifts, and nothing was pure or sincere when they thus corrupted God’s precepts by their comments. However, they daily offered their gifts, and professed to present them to the true God; yet they obtained no advantage, because God abominated mixtures of this kind, as we have previously said; for he cannot bear to be worshipped by the will of men, but wishes his children to be simply content with his commands. Now, we perceive the meaning of the Prophet — God pollutes them in their gifts; that is, renders their gifts polluting whenever they think that they discharge their duty; — but how? why, he says, when they cause whatever opens the womb to pass through. (280) Here the Prophet touches on only one kind of superstition, but, by a figure of speech, he means all kinds, by which the Jews vitiated God’s pure worship; for this superstition was very detestable, to pass their sons through the fire, and to consecrate them to idols. But in this passage God speaks only of the first-born, so as greatly to exaggerate the crime: that ceremony was indeed general; but since God claimed the first-born as his own, and wished them to be redeemed at a fixed price, (Exo 13:2<\/span>, Exo 22:29<\/span>, and Exo 34:19<\/span>,) and by this act wished the remembrance of their redemption to be kept up, since all the first-born of Israel, as well as of animals, had escaped, while those of the Egyptians perished, (Num 3:13<\/span>, and Num 8:16<\/span>,) was it not monstrous to pass through the fire, and to offer to idols those who were specially devoted and sacred to God? We see, then, that the Prophet does not speak in vain of the first-born. <\/p>\n That I should destroy thou, says he, and they should know that I am Jehovah. God here shows that he had proceeded gradually to the final vengeance; and for this reason the people were the more convicted of stupidity, since they never perceived God’s judgments manifest. If God had suddenly and impetuously issued his vengeance from heaven, men’s astonishment would not have been wonderful; but when he grants them space of time and a truce that they may weigh the matter at leisure, and admonishes them to repentance, not once only, but often; and then if they remain always the same and are not effected, they show themselves utterly desperate by this slothfulness, as the Prophet now asserts. But when he adds, that they may know that I am Jehovah, he means that as he was not acknowledged as a father by the Jews, he would be their judge, and compel them whether they would or not to feel the formidable nature of that power which they despised. Since we have treated this subject fully before, we now pass it by more lightly. Yet we must notice this, that God is recognized by the reprobate, since, when his fatherly goodness has been for a long time despised by them, he at length appears as a judge, and draws them against their will to his tribunal, and executes his vengeance, so that they cannot escape. It follows — <\/p>\n (280) Supply “the fire,” as in the authorized version. <\/p>\n (26) To pass through the fire.<\/strong>The word fire here, as in Eze. 16:21<\/span>; Eze. 23:37<\/span>, is not in the original, but is rightly supplied from Eze. 20:31<\/span>. The custom referred to was probably that of consecrating their seed to Moloch, expressly forbidden in Lev. 20:1-5<\/span>. (Comp. also Act. 7:43<\/span>.) The causing children to pass through the fire continued a common sin even to the later days of the monarchy (2Ki. 17:17<\/span>; 2Ki. 21:6<\/span>).<\/p>\n 26<\/strong>. <\/strong> I polluted them in their own gifts <\/strong> From these words certain expositors (Kuenen, Wellhausen, Smend, Toy, etc.) have drawn the conclusion that one of the statutes which were “not good,” and which Jehovah gave in the early days to Israel, was that of child sacrifice. Renan plainly says that Jehovah commanded this evil thing, “in order to avenge himself and punish the nation by prescribing detestable rites” ( History, <\/em> iii, p. 260). This suggestion is a horrible one, and is opposed not only to God’s righteousness and to all that we know of the Mosaic legislation, but is in direct contradiction to the explicit declaration of Jehovah himself (Jer 7:31<\/span>; Jer 19:5<\/span>; see also arguments of A. von Hoonacker and Kamphausen). Bertholet, with his customary confidence that Smend and Duhm are far greater authorities than Jeremiah or Ezekiel as to the moral conditions of their times and as to Hebrew history in general, bluntly affirms that these were human sacrifices to Jehovah; adding “and the fact that Jeremiah is of a different opinion is of no importance to the decision!” But the fact is that Jehovah never asked this heathenish gift of human blood (Num 18:15<\/span>). The so-called sacrifice of Isaac was to teach the great truth that, unlike some heathen deities, Jehovah wanted only the devotion of the heart and preferred their living rather than their dead children. It is, indeed, somewhat doubtful whether this verse refers at all to human sacrifice. Dr. Konig believes that it has sole reference to the sin of the people in failing to obey the Levitical distinctions between clean and unclean animals in sacrifice ( Religious History, <\/em> 1885, p. 137, etc.). But granting that human sacrifice is referred to, which seems on the whole probable, there is no proof whatever that this was an original commandment of the God who said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and who was by nature “merciful and gracious.” Rather, in harmony with our interpretation of Eze 20:25<\/span>, we conceive the meaning to be that, having given up the service of Jehovah for the service of idols, the people found (in accordance with God’s eternal decree) that with such service came self-degradation and doubled hardship. The man who chose lustful idol worship instead of the pure worship of a holy God became brutal as the gods he worshiped and the idols required at his hands more awful sacrifices than Jehovah had ever asked. It was God’s ordainment that sin should be the punishment of sin, and that he who refused obedience to the good statutes of a good God should be controlled by the statutes of his own deities, which were “not good.” He who gave up faith in Jehovah and put Molech in his stead was soon called upon to offer his son as a burnt offering. This gift was never asked of him by Jehovah; rather, because of this gift did Jehovah count him “polluted,” literally, profane. <\/em> (See Lev 18:21<\/span>; Deu 12:31<\/span>; Deu 18:10<\/span>; compare also Orelli, in loco.<\/em>) <\/p>\n Openeth <\/strong> Or, first openeth. <\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n That I might make them desolate <\/strong> Or, amazed, <\/em> or horrified <\/em> (Eze 32:10<\/span>). Jehovah’s purpose in permitting the people to go into these depths of bestiality was that they might be shocked into an appreciation of their own folly and sin and thus be led to repentance.<\/p>\n Eze 20:26<\/span><\/em><\/strong>. <\/strong>And I polluted them, <\/em><\/strong>&c.<\/strong> The common interpretation, says Bishop Warburton, is this: “I permitted them to fall into that wicked inhumanity, whereby they were polluted and contaminated, in making their children pass through the fire to Moloch, in order to root them out, and utterly destroy them.” But this explanation hath already been exposed in the note on the preceding verse; and there is another, which so exactly quadrates with the sense given to that verse, that it completes the narrative. To understand then what this formidable text aims at, we must consider the context as it has been explained above. The 21st and 22nd verses contain God’s purposes of judgment <\/em>and of mercy in general. The 23rd, 24th, and 25th explain in what the intended judgment <\/em>would have consisted, and how the prevailing mercy <\/em>was qualified. The Israelites were to be pardoned [as a nation], but to be kept under by the yoke of a ritual law described only in general by the title of Statutes not good. <\/em>The 26th verse opens the matter still farther, and explains the nature and genius of that yoke, together with its effects, both salutary and baleful: the salutary, <\/em>as it was a barrier to idolatry, the most enormous part of which was that whereof he gives a specimen, “the causing their children to pass through the fire to Moloch;” the baleful, <\/em>as it brought on their desolation when they became deprived of the temple-worship. But to be more particular,I polluted them in their own gifts: <\/em>by gifts <\/em>we may understand, that homage (universally expressed in the ancient world by rites of sacrifice) which a people owed to their God. And how were these gifts polluted? <\/em>By a multifarious ritual, which, being opposed to the idolatries of the nations, was prescribed in reference to those idolatries; and consequently was incumbered with a thousand ceremonies respecting the choice of the animal; the qualities and purifications of the sacrificers; and the direction and efficacy of each specific offering. This account of their pollution <\/em>by such a ritual, exactly answers to the character given of that ritual [statutes not good, <\/em>&c.] in the verse before. Then follows the reason of God’s thus polluting them in their own giftsin that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb; <\/em>that is, the polluting <\/em>ritual was imposed as a punishment for, as well as a barrier to their idolatries, characterised under this most enormous and horrid of them all, the causing of their children to pass through the fire to Moloch. Then follows the humiliating circumstance of this ritual yoke:that I might make them desolate; <\/em>that is to say, that they should, even when they most wanted it, be deprived of their most solemn means of intercourse with their God and King. A real state of desolation! <\/em>To understand which, we are to consider, that at the time this prophesy was delivered, the Jews, by their accumulated iniquities, were accelerating their punishment of the seventy years’ captivity; which doubtless the prophet had in his eye. Now, by the peculiar constitution of the ritual law, their religion was become, as it were, local: all sacrifices being to be offered in Jerusalem: so that when they were led captive into a foreign land, the most solemn means of intercourse at that time between God and man, the morning and evening sacrifice, <\/em>was entirely cut off: and thus, by means of the ritual law, they were emphatically said to be made desolate. <\/em>The verse concludes with telling us for what end this punishment was inflicted,That they might know that I am the Lord. <\/em>How would this appear from the premises? very evidently. For if, while they were in captivity, they were under an interdict, and their religion in a state of suspension, and yet they were to continue God’s select people, (for the scope of the whole prophesy is to shew, that notwithstanding all these provocations, God still worked for his name’s sake,<\/em>) then, in order to be restored to their religion, they were to be restored to their own land; which work prophesy always describes as one of the greatest manifestations of God’s power; their redemption from the Assyrian captivity particularly, being frequently compared by the prophets to that of the Egyptian. From hence, therefore, all men might <\/em>know and collect, that the God of Israel was the Lord. <\/em>This famous text then may be thus aptly paraphrased, “And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord:” that is to say, I loaded the religious worship due to me as their God, with a number of operose ceremonies, to punish their past, and to oppose their future idolatries; the most abominable of which was, their making their children to pass through the fire to Moloch. And farther, that I might have the ceremonial law always at hand, as an instrument of still more severe punishments, when the full measure of their iniquities should bring them into captivity in a strange land, I so contrived by the constitution of their religion, that it should then remain under an interdict, and all stated intercourse be cut off between me and them; from which evil would necessarily arise this advantage,an occasion to manifest my power to the Gentiles, in bringing my people again, after a fixed time of punishment, into their own land. Here we see the text, thus interpreted, connects and completes the whole relation, concerning the imposition of the ritual law, and its nature and consequences, from Eze 20:21-26<\/span> inclusively; and opens the history of it by due degrees, which those just and elegant compositions require. We are first informed of the threatened judgment, and of the prevailing mercy in general: we are then told the specific nature of that judgment, and the circumstance attending the accorded mercy: and lastly, the prophet explains the nature and genius of that attendant circumstance, together with its adverse, as well as benignant effects. See Div. Leg. vol. 3: p. 401. <\/p>\n Eze 20:26 And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through [the fire] all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I [am] the LORD.<\/p>\n Ver. 26. And I polluted them in their own gifts,<\/strong> ] i.e., <\/em> I rejected both their persons and presents as unclean. So God would do our best performances (wherein there would not else be so much as truth and sincerity found), were they not wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, and perfumed with Christ’s sweet odours poured into them.<\/p>\n polluted: Eze 20:31, Isa 63:17, Rom 11:7-10 <\/p>\n in that: Eze 16:20, Eze 16:21, Lev 18:21, 2Ki 17:17, 2Ki 21:6, 2Ch 28:3, 2Ch 33:6, Jer 32:35 <\/p>\n all that: Exo 13:12, Luk 2:23 <\/p>\n to the end: Eze 6:7 <\/p>\n Reciprocal: Exo 10:2 – that ye Lev 20:2 – giveth 2Sa 12:11 – I will take 2Ki 16:3 – made his son 2Ki 23:10 – might make Psa 106:37 – they sacrificed Isa 57:5 – slaying Jer 19:5 – to burn Eze 20:25 – I gave Eze 20:39 – Go ye Eze 23:37 – have also<\/p>\n Eze 20:26. I polluted them denotes that God pronounced his people as a polluted group because Of their idola trous practices. They had stooped to the most abominable form of the heathen worship, that of offering human sacrifices.<\/p>\n 20:26 And I polluted them in their own {m} gifts, in that they caused to pass through [the fire] all the firstborn, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I [am] the LORD.<\/p>\n (m) I condemned those things, and counted them as abominable, which they thought had been excellent and to have declared most zeal, Lu 16:15 for that which God required as most excellent they gave to their idols.<\/p>\n And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through [the fire] all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I [am] the LORD. 26. might make them desolate ] Or, destroy them; less probably: horrify them (ch. Eze … Continue reading “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 20:26”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible <\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"