Ezekiel 36:18

18 I let them feel the force of my anger because of the murders they had committed in the land and because of the idols by which they had defiled it.

Ezekiel 36:18 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 36:18

Wherefore I poured my fury on them
Like a mighty flood that carries all before it, in just retaliation for the blood they had shed upon the land;
the innocent blood, as the Targum; the blood of righteous men, that opposed and reproved them for their sinful ways; the blood of the prophets, that were sent to warn them of them; and especially the blood of the Son of God; for this prophecy reaches further than to the times of the Babylonish captivity: and for their idols wherewith they had polluted it;
or, "for their dung" F13; their dunghill gods; not only for their idols, and their idolatry, before the Babylonish captivity, which they after that were free from; but for the traditions of their elders, they set up against and above the word of God; and their own legal righteousness, their idols, the works of their hands, which wore as dung; and through their attachment to which they rejected Christ and his righteousness; and which brought wrath upon them, and them into their present captivity.


FOOTNOTES:

F13 (Mhylwlgb) "stercoreis diis suis", Junius & Tremellius, Polanus; "stercoribus suis", Cocceius, Starckius.

Ezekiel 36:18 In-Context

16 The Lord spoke to me.
17 "Mortal man," he said, "when the Israelites were living in their land, they defiled it by the way they lived and acted. I regarded their behavior as being as ritually unclean as a woman is during her monthly period.
18 I let them feel the force of my anger because of the murders they had committed in the land and because of the idols by which they had defiled it.
19 I condemned them for the way they lived and acted, and I scattered them through foreign countries.
20 Wherever they went, they brought disgrace on my holy name, because people would say, "These are the people of the Lord, but they had to leave his land.'
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.