Ezekiel 36:17-19 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

When the house of Israel dwelt in their own land In fulness of bread, ease, and security, as they did in days past; they defiled it Rendered it abominable before God, and uncomfortable to themselves; by their own way and by their doings By the way of their own choice, their wicked way, forsaking my law, despising my counsel, deserting my worship and temple; and by their unholy conversation and unrighteous practices. Their way was before me as the uncleanness of a removed woman As a woman under a legal pollution was forbidden to come within the courts of the temple, or to attend upon God's worship there; so the defilements which the Jews had contracted by their idolatries, adulteries, murders, and other heinous sins, rendered them unfit to be acknowledged as God's people, or to offer up any religious service to him. Wherefore I poured my fury upon them These and their other sins were the true causes of the desolation of their country, and of all the miseries which they underwent, and not any thing in the land itself, as the heathen said, Ezekiel 36:13. According to their doings I judged them God frequently repeats that his judgments upon the Jews were no more than what their own ways or doings obliged him to inflict. There was in his dealings with them no arbitrary exercise of sovereignty, but they were dealt with according to their own conduct. And thus God deals with mankind in general: his actions, in regard to them, are not founded in an arbitrary exercise of his absolute sovereignty over them, but in impartial justice, wisdom, and goodness, and he judges them according to their own ways, and not according to the dictates of an arbitrary will.