Ezekiel 36:18

18 They polluted the land with murder and the worship of idols, so I poured out my fury on them.

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 Then this further message came to me from the LORD :
17 “Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by the evil way they lived. To me their conduct was as unclean as a woman’s menstrual cloth.
18 They polluted the land with murder and the worship of idols, so I poured out my fury on them.
19 I scattered them to many lands to punish them for the evil way they had lived.
20 But when they were scattered among the nations, they brought shame on my holy name. For the nations said, ‘These are the people of the LORD, but he couldn’t keep them safe in his own land!’

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. The Hebrew term (literally round things ) probably alludes to dung; also in 36:25 .
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