“Wherefore say to them, Thus says the Lord Yahweh, ‘You eat with the blood and lift up your eyes to idols, and shed blood. And shall you possess the land? You stand on your sword, you work abomination, and you each defile his neighbour's wife, and shall you possess the land?”
But they were not faithful to the covenant. They ignored the ban on eating the blood of slain beasts, they worshipped idols, they brought violence and death to the land. To ‘stand on the sword' probably meant that they relied on it and resorted to it. To work abomination was to engage in the sins described in Ezekiel 18:10-13. And they especially engaged in illicit sex, probably connected with Canaanite religious rites. All these things meant that God would not allow them to possess the land, which in the end explains why they found refuge in Egypt against God's express command after a short civil war (Jeremiah 41-43).