Bible Strands
Ezekiel 20:24
For they did not practice My ordinances, but they rejected My statutes and profaned My Sabbaths, fixing their eyes on the idols of their fathers.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks through Ezekiel to the house of Israel, recounting their wilderness rebellion at the moment He explains the basis for His oath to scatter them among the nations. The declaration follows His sworn judgment in the preceding verse and precedes His statement about giving them statutes that were not good.
The words — The text centers on מָאָ֔סוּ (ma.'A.su), literally "they had rejected," and שַׁבְּתוֹתַ֖/י (sha.be.to.Ta/i), literally "My Sabbaths." These terms record Israel's active refusal of divine law and their desecration of holy time.
The thread — The same pattern of rejecting ordinances, refusing statutes, and profaning Sabbaths appears in Ezekiel 20:13 and 20:16, where Israel's wilderness rebellion is repeatedly cataloged. The link between idolatry, statutory rejection, and dispersion also connects to Ezekiel 6:9, which notes how survivors in the nations will remember God's grief over their actions.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to acknowledge that communal judgment stems directly from repeated statutory disregard and idolatrous fixation, not from arbitrary divine action. It asks the reader to trace the causal line between rejecting sacred time and ordinances and the resulting historical dispersion.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 20:16 because they kept rejecting My ordinances, refusing to walk in My statutes, and profaning My Sabbaths; for their hearts continually went after their idols.
- Ezekiel 6:9 Then in the nations to which they have been carried captive, your survivors will remember Me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts that turned away from Me, and by their eyes that lusted after idols. So they will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their abominations.
- Ezekiel 20:13 Yet the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness. They did not follow My statutes and they rejected My ordinances—though the man who does these things will live by them—and they utterly profaned My Sabbaths. Then I resolved to pour out My wrath upon them and put an end to them in the wilderness.
- Amos 2:4 This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of Judah, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they reject the Law of the LORD and fail to keep His statutes; they are led astray by the lies in which their fathers walked.
- Deuteronomy 4:19 When you look to the heavens and see the sun and moon and stars—all the host of heaven—do not be enticed to bow down and worship what the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.
- Job 31:26 if I have beheld the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor,
- Ezekiel 18:6 He does not eat at the mountain or look to the idols of the house of Israel. He does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman during her period.
- Ezekiel 18:12 He oppresses the poor and needy; he commits robbery and does not restore a pledge. He lifts his eyes to idols; he commits abominations.
- Ezekiel 18:15 He does not eat at the mountain or look to the idols of the house of Israel. He does not defile his neighbor’s wife.