And the Heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into
captivity for their iniquity
Before this they thought the captivity of the Jews, and all their distresses, were owing to their own weakness, and the weakness of the God they served, and to the superior strength of their enemies, and the power of their gods; but now, by this strange and amazing destruction of Gog and his army, they will see that it was not owing to those things, but to the sins and transgressions of the people of the Jews: because they transgressed against me;
prevaricated with him, acted a perfidious and treacherous part to him, as the word F9 signifies; which they did, when they delivered Jesus of Nazareth, the true Messiah, into the hands of the Gentiles, to be crucified; it is their disbelief of Christ, and rejection of him, and maltreatment of him, that is here more especially pointed at; and which is the cause of their present long captivity and exile, and of all the afflictions and troubles they have since met with: so the Targum renders it,
``they dealt falsely with my Word;''the Word made flesh, the incarnate Saviour: therefore hid I my face from them;
``I caused my Shechaniah (or majesty) to remove from them;''and thus it has been ever since, and now is: and gave them into the hand of their enemies;