Ezekiel 20. The Wicked Past and the Blessed Future.
Ezekiel 20:1-32. A Sketch of Israel's Early Idolatries. It is now 590 B.C. Almost a year has elapsed since the last incident that was dated (Ezekiel 8:1): and as the doom draws nearer, the prophet grows fiercer. This lurid sketch of Israel's ancient sins, which partly recalls ch. 16, was occasioned by a visit of some elders (cf. Ezekiel 8:1, Ezekiel 14:1), who put to him a question which though not recorded, may perhaps be inferred from Ezekiel 20:32. It seems probable that, in disgust and despair, the exiles may have been on the point of throwing over their allegiance to Yahweh who seemed so impotent, and adopting the worship and gods of the Babylonians. This gives Ezekiel the chance to denounce the wickedness and folly of Israel's idolatry, so ancient, so persistent, and so ruinous in its consequences (Ezekiel 20:1-4).
Israel's idolatry is as old as Yahweh's choice of her. It goes back to Egypt. There He gave them a revelation, made gracious promises, and in return only asked them to abstain from Egyptian idolatry: but they refused, and, but for His name's sake (i.e. regard for His reputation, which would have suffered had His people been annihilated) He would have destroyed them (Ezekiel 20:5-9). When Israel left Egypt and entered the wilderness, the same melancholy story was repeated. At Sinai Yahweh showed His favour by giving them certain laws (such as we find in Dt. or in the smaller Book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23), obedience to which would have meant life and prosperity. The Sabbath is singled out for special mention significant of the high place it received in exilic and post-exilic times. But Sabbath and laws were alike despised, and it was only Yahweh's pity and regard for His name that kept Him from destroying them (Ezekiel 20:10-17). The second generation was no better than the first (Ezekiel 20:18-27). They too profaned the Sabbath, spurned the laws, and indulged in idolatry, so that Yahweh, though He would not destroy them, determined to scatter them one day throughout the world (an allusion to exile). The strangest and most difficult utterance is in Ezekiel 20:25 f. where Yahweh is represented as giving them statutes which were not good. The allusion appears to be to some such law as that of Exodus 13:12; Exodus 22:29, that the first-born must be offered to Yahweh, interpreted as a demand for child sacrifice (in spite of the provision that the first-born of man was to be redeemed). Elsewhere Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:20) speaks with horror of the practice, and he cannot, any more than Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:31 *, cf. Leviticus 8:21 *), have regarded it as prescribed by Yahweh, but, at the most, as permitted by Him, on the principle that the sin of idolatry involves such frightful misconceptions of the Divine nature, and carries such awful consequences in its train, and that behind all development, law, incident, is Yahweh (Amos 3:6). When the people emerged from the wilderness upon the promised land, the idolatries of Egypt and the wilderness were succeeded by the cruel and immoral idolatries upon the high places of Canaan. Such a people, idolatrous now as then, does not deserve and will not receive an answer from Yahweh through His prophet (Ezekiel 20:28-32). (Ezekiel 20:29 involves an unimportant play upon Hebrew words.)