Ezekiel 20:33-36 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Surely with a mighty hand, &c. I will no longer try to reclaim you by the gentle methods of patience and forbearance, but will govern you, as masters do bad servants, by stripes and corrections; and by this means cure you of your inclinations to the heathen customs and idolatries. And I will bring you out from the people With whom you now live mixed, and whose manners and customs you follow. The Moabites, Ammonites, and other neighbouring nations, seem to be intended, into whose countries many of the Jews were carried captive, or went as voluntary exiles, before the general captivity by the Chaldeans. God here declares he will bring them thence, and carry them to Babylon. And I will bring you into the wilderness Between Judea and Babylon, through which ye shall pass into captivity. Or, as some think, the barren lands in which the Babylonians planted these captives are meant. “The wilderness of the people,” says Michaelis, “is the desert in the neighbourhood of the Chaldeans, and of other nations. And there will I plead with you face to face Convince you of your sins, execute judgments on you, and thereby most plainly manifest my justice to you. “I will punish you in the face of the world, and fill you with conviction that my punishments are just.” Bishop Newcome. Like as I pleaded with your fathers Punished them for their sins; in the wilderness of the land of Egypt That is, the wilderness bordering upon Egypt. As I there set the crimes of your fathers before their eyes, so that they were not able to deny their guilt, nor to say any thing against the justice of the punishment inflicted on them, so will I deal with you.