n my
statutes, and violated my sabbaths: for their heart went after idols.

20:17. Yet my eye spared them, so that I destroyed them not: neither did
I consume them in the desert.

20:18. And I said to their children in the wilderness: Walk not in the
statutes of your fathers, and observe not their judgments, nor be ye
defiled with their idols:

20:19. I am the Lord your God: walk ye in my statutes, and observe my
judgments, and do them.

20:20. And sanctify my sabbaths, that they may be a sign between me and
you: and that you may know that I am the Lord your God.

20:21. But their children provoked me, they walked not in my
commandments, nor observed my judgments to do them: which if a man do,
he shall live in them: and they violated my sabbaths: and I threatened
to pour out my indignation upon them, and to accomplish my wrath in them
in the desert.

20:22. But I turned away my hand, and wrought for my name's sake, that
it might not be violated before the nations, out of which I brought them
forth in their sight.

20:23. Again I lifted up my hand upon them in the wilderness, to
disperse them among the nations, and scatter them through the countries:

20:24. Because they had not done my judgments, and had cast off my
statutes, and had violated my sabbaths, and their eyes had been after
the idols of their fathers.

20:25. Therefore I also gave them statutes that were not good, and
judgments, in which they shall not live.

Statutes that were not good, etc... Viz., the laws and ordinances of
their enemies; or those imposes upon them by that cruel tyrant the
devil, to whose power they were delivered up for their sins.

20:26. And I polluted them in their own gifts, when they offered all
that opened the womb, for their offences: and they shall know that I am
the Lord.

I polluted them, etc... That is, I gave them up to such blindness in
punishment of their offences, as to pollute themselves with the blood of
all their firstborn, whom they offered up to their idols in compliance
with their wicked devices.

20:27. Wherefore speak to the house of Israel, O son of man, and say to
them: Thus saith the Lord God: Moreover in this also your fathers
blaspheme me, when they had despised and contemned me;

20:28. And I had brought them into the land, for which I lifted up my
hand to give it them: they saw every high hill, and every shady tree,
and there they sacrificed their victims: and there they presented the
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