Ezekiel 16:20
Read Ezekiel 16:20 Using Other Translations
What does Ezekiel 16:20 mean?
Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy
daughters
Their own flesh and blood; which were more than to take their
clothes, and cover their idols with them, and their food, and set
it before them to part with them was much, but to part with
these, and that in such a shocking manner as after mentioned, was
so irrational and unnatural, as well as impious and wicked, as is
not to be paralleled; and what increased their wickedness was,
that these were not only their own, but the Lord's: whom
thou hast borne unto me;
for, though they were born of them, they were born unto the Lord,
the Creator of them, the Father of their spirits, and God of
their lives, and who had the sole right to dispose of them; nor
was it in the power of their parents to take away their life at
pleasure; for the Lord only has the sovereign power of life and
death: and these hast thou sacrificed unto
them:
the male images before mentioned; one of which was Molech, who is
here particularly designed: to be devoured;
in the arms of that image; or to be consumed by fire, in which
they were burnt, when sacrificed unto it. The Targum is,
``for oblation and worship;''[is this] of thy whoredoms a small matter;
which was so dreadfully heinous and inhuman, yet by some reckoned a small matter; this was not the least of their idolatries, but, of all, the most shocking, and the most aggravated: or the sense is, is it a small thing that thou shouldest play the harlot, or worship idols? is it not enough for thee to do so, but thou must sacrifice thy children also to them? and which are not only thine, but mine, as follows:
