Ezekiel 20:26

And I polluted them, &c.— The common interpretation, says Bishop Warburton, is this: "I permitted them to fall into that wicked inhumanity, whereby they were polluted and contaminated, in making their children pass through the fire to Moloch, in order to root them out, and utterly destroy them." But this explanation hath already been exposed in the note on the preceding verse; and there is another, which so exactly quadrates with the sense given to that verse, that it completes the narrative. To understand then what this formidable text aims at, we must consider the context as it has been explained above. The 21st and 22nd verses contain God's purposes of judgment and of mercy in general. The 23rd, 24th, and 25th explain in what the intended judgment would have consisted, and how the prevailing mercy was qualified. The Israelites were to be pardoned [as a nation], but to be kept under by the yoke of a ritual law described only in general by the title of Statutes not good. The 26th verse opens the matter still farther, and explains the nature and genius of that yoke, together with its effects, both salutary and baleful: the salutary, as it was a barrier to idolatry, the most enormous part of which was that whereof he gives a specimen, "the causing their children to pass through the fire to Moloch;" the baleful, as it brought on their desolation when they became deprived of the temple-worship. But to be more particular,—I polluted them in their own gifts: by gifts we may understand, that homage (universally expressed in the ancient world by rites of sacrifice) which a people owed to their God. And how were these gifts polluted? By a multifarious ritual, which, being opposed to the idolatries of the nations, was prescribed in reference to those idolatries; and consequently was incumbered with a thousand ceremonies respecting the choice of the animal; the qualities and purifications of the sacrificers; and the direction and efficacy of each specific offering. This account of their pollution by such a ritual, exactly answers to the character given of that ritual [statutes not good, &c.] in the verse before. Then follows the reason of God's thus polluting them in their own gifts—in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb; that is, the polluting ritual was imposed as a punishment for, as well as a barrier to their idolatries, characterised under this most enormous and horrid of them all, the causing of their children to pass through the fire to Moloch. Then follows the humiliating circumstance of this ritual yoke:—that I might make them desolate; that is to say, that they should, even when they most wanted it, be deprived of their most solemn means of intercourse with their God and King. A real state of desolation! To understand which, we are to consider, that at the time this prophesy was delivered, the Jews, by their accumulated iniquities, were accelerating their punishment of the seventy years' captivity; which doubtless the prophet had in his eye. Now, by the peculiar constitution of the ritual law, their religion was become, as it were, local: all sacrifices being to be offered in Jerusalem: so that when they were led captive into a foreign land, the most solemn means of intercourse at that time between God and man, the morning and evening sacrifice, was entirely cut off: and thus, by means of the ritual law, they were emphatically said to be made desolate. The verse concludes with telling us for what end this punishment was inflicted,—That they might know that I am the Lord. How would this appear from the premises? very evidently. For if, while they were in captivity, they were under an interdict, and their religion in a state of suspension, and yet they were to continue God's select people, (for the scope of the whole prophesy is to shew, that notwithstanding all these provocations, God still worked for his name's sake,) then, in order to be restored to their religion, they were to be restored to their own land; which work prophesy always describes as one of the greatest manifestations of God's power; their redemption from the Assyrian captivity particularly, being frequently compared by the prophets to that of the Egyptian. From hence, therefore, all men might know and collect, that the God of Israel was the Lord. This famous text then may be thus aptly paraphrased, "And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord:" that is to say, I loaded the religious worship due to me as their God, with a number of operose ceremonies, to punish their past, and to oppose their future idolatries; the most abominable of which was, their making their children to pass through the fire to Moloch. And farther, that I might have the ceremonial law always at hand, as an instrument of still more severe punishments, when the full measure of their iniquities should bring them into captivity in a strange land, I so contrived by the constitution of their religion, that it should then remain under an interdict, and all stated intercourse be cut off between me and them; from which evil would necessarily arise this advantage,—an occasion to manifest my power to the Gentiles, in bringing my people again, after a fixed time of punishment, into their own land. Here we see the text, thus interpreted, connects and completes the whole relation, concerning the imposition of the ritual law, and its nature and consequences, from Ezekiel 20:21 inclusively; and opens the history of it by due degrees, which those just and elegant compositions require. We are first informed of the threatened judgment, and of the prevailing mercy in general: we are then told the specific nature of that judgment, and the circumstance attending the accorded mercy: and lastly, the prophet explains the nature and genius of that attendant circumstance, together with its adverse, as well as benignant effects. See Div. Leg. vol. 3: p. 401.