Ezekiel 20:39

39 But to you, house of Israel, the LORD God proclaims: Go ahead and serve your idols, all of you! But afterward, if any of you are left to listen to me, you will no longer make my holy name impure with your gifts or your idols!

Ezekiel 20:39 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 20:39

As for you, O house of Israel
The then present house of Israel, and the elders of it, who were upon the spot with the prophet: go ye, serve ye everyone his idols;
or dunghill gods; since they liked not to serve the true God: this is not giving them leave to serve idols, or approving their idolatrous practices; but is said "ironically", as Kimchi and Ben Melech observe, who compare it with ( Ecclesiastes 11:9 ) : and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto me;
not only serve them now, but for the future; seeing ye choose not to hearken to my voice, to obey my laws, and to worship me, and me only; for it suggests, that it was better to attend to the service of the one, or of the other, and not halt between two opinions; but either, if the God of Israel was the true God, then serve him, and him only; but if Baal, or any other Heathen deity, was so, then serve them, and keep serving them: but pollute ye my holy name no more with your gifts and with your
idols;
to worship him along with them, and them along with him; to pretend they worshipped him in them, and offered their gifts and sacrifices to him through them; and so made use of his name as a cover to their idolatrous practices: this was a polluting his name, and was abominable to him.

Ezekiel 20:39 In-Context

37 I will make you walk under the rod, and I will bring you into the covenant bond.
38 I will remove from among you those who rebel and transgress against me. I will lead them out from the land where they lived as immigrants, but they won't enter Israel's fertile land. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
39 But to you, house of Israel, the LORD God proclaims: Go ahead and serve your idols, all of you! But afterward, if any of you are left to listen to me, you will no longer make my holy name impure with your gifts or your idols!
40 On my holy mountain, on the high mountain in Israel, the whole house of Israel will serve me there—every one of them in the land! This is what the LORD God says. There I will accept them, and there I will ask for their offerings, their finest gifts, and all their holy things.
41 When I bring you out from the nations and gather you from the countries where you are scattered, I will accept you as a pleasing aroma. Through you I will be made holy in the sight of the nations.

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