I detain the Reader at this passage purposely to beg of him to remark with me, the vast difference in scripture between rebels and rebellious. If the Reader will look, carefully over the whole Book of God, I believe that he will find, that while the Lord calls His children rebellious, and frequently complains of their rebellion, he never once calls them rebels. And though we find a woe pronounced upon the church, Isaiah 30:1-8. and a dreadful woe in deed followed, when the Church was sent into Babylon, yet the sorrow was wholly temporal, not an everlasting woe, of being cut off from the Lord. So far from it, that in Isaiah 30:18 and following verses of that same chapter, the Lord declares that He waits to be gracious, and His people shall weep no more; so that though in many scriptures we find the children of God declared to be rebellious, yet never once are they called rebels. See Psalms 78:8; Isaiah 65:2; Ezekiel 2:3-5. Hence therefore, rebels, in scripture language, means the seed of the serpent, of whom the Lord saith, as in this chapter, He will purge them out from among His people. So He did, by Korah and his company. See Numbers 17:10. And though Moses did once in his haste call the people of God rebels, Numbers 20:10 as David did, upon another occasion, call the Lord's people, as well as the ungodly, liars, Psalms 116:11 yet it should seem by the history that the Lord was displeased for his doing so.
Related Commentaries of Ezekiel 20:38
Ezekiel 20:38-39
38 And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
39 As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord GOD; Go ye, serve ye every one his idols, and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto me: but pollute ye my holy name no more with your gifts, and with your idols.