Ezekiel 20:27-29

D. Israel in Canaan 20:27-29

TRANSLATION

(27) Therefore speak unto the house of Israel, son of man, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Yet in this your fathers have blasphemed Me, in that they have dealt treacherously with Me. (28) For when I brought them to the land which I lifted up My hand to give unto them, then they saw every high hill, and every leafy tree, and they made sacrifices there, and gave there the provocation of their offering, and placed there their sweet savor, and they poured out their drink offerings. (29) Then I said unto them: What is the high place to which you are going? So its name is called Bamah (high place) unto this day.

COMMENTS

In addition to their wickedness in Egypt and in the wilderness, the fathers had continued their sinning when they were in their own land. In fact they blasphemed, i.e., committed a cardinal sin against the Lord; they dealt treacherously with him, i.e., broke the most solemn kind of commitment to Him (Ezekiel 20:27). No sooner had they, by God's mercy, entered the land of Canaan, they promptly appropriated to themselves the heathen hill-top shrines and adopted the Canaanite ways of worship. The leafy trees were desirable for the sinful orgies which accompanied sacrifices to Baal. Their offerings which should have been a sweet savor to the Lord were in reality an irritation or provocation which only engendered the divine anger (Ezekiel 20:28).

Some day the Jews would have to give an account of their worship conduct. What is the high place to which you are going? Ezekiel asks in Ezekiel 20:29. Who authorized you to go there? What business do you have there? In spite of the repeated condemnation of high place worship still those shrines existed throughout the land. The bamah or high place was still very much a part of the worship scene in Judah, These prostitution chapels had not yet been abolished in the land.