Ezekiel 20:18-20

God's Dealings with the Second Generation in the Wilderness.

So His people had proved themselves unfaithful in Egypt, even when He was working mighty things for them, and again on their journey to freedom, when again He had worked for them. But now came the new generation who should have learned their lesson from what had happened, but they too rebelled against Him. Israel's history was one of constant rebellion.

“And I said to their children in the wilderness, ‘Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with idols. I am Yahweh your God. Walk in my statutes and keep my judgments and do them, and hallow my Sabbaths, and they will be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am Yahweh your God.”

Yahweh had renewed His covenant with the children of those who had been disobedient. To them too He had said in the regular renewal ceremonies, ‘I am Yahweh your God, walk in My statutes and keep My judgments', and had warned them against following the ways of their fathers. To them too He had stressed the need to observe His Sabbaths as the sign of the covenant. These were a gracious sign of His own creation rest, taken because all was ‘very good'. They too should have entered into rest as His obedient people.