Therefore, son of man, speak unto the house of Israel, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah In this moreover have your fathers blasphemed me, in that they have wrought unfaithfulness against me.
Elders of Israel came to ask God a question. Instead of an answer, He gives them their whole history, down to the land itself — where they wronged the God who had just given it to them.
These elders came to the prophet to ask God a question. One writer explains why He refuses to answer them.
God will not allow any more inquiry from them. What right do they have to inquire? He had fully set before them the terms on which He alone can be with them. The prophets He raised up pressed those terms on them again and again, and they broke them the whole time. Their own consciences would witness that their hearts were untrue in the inquiry itself. There was no need, then, but to remind them of their fathers' abominations: they would find in them a mirror of their own.
This verse is not a new subject. It is the third stage of one long charge, and the chapter's layout shows it.
They soon brought on themselves an even deeper reproach, which the prophet Ezekiel describes in detail in chapter 20. First, in the land of Egypt (Ezek. 20:5-9); second, in the wilderness (Ezek. 20:10-26); third, in the land (Ezek. 20:27-32).
God had brought them into a good land, and its hills and its fruitfulness became the sites of the sin.
Fresh privileges would be only fresh opportunity for evil. The high hills of the land He now brought them to, and the trees that showed its fertility, became their places of idol worship. There they lifted up offerings they claimed were for Him — offerings that provoked Him. Or they would have been glad to hide among the trees the sin they could not be parted from. Their sweet aroma was for others than Himself.
The treachery here is aimed at God Himself. One writer, explaining the law's trespass offering, shows why a wrong always had to be settled with God and not only with the person harmed.
Of course every trespass was a sin, though every sin was not a trespass. The law demanded a payment, which showed that the rights of the one sinned against were not to be ignored. It also demanded a sacrifice, which showed that a wrong against one's neighbour could not be hushed up or settled quietly, without acknowledging the guilt before God… So the Lord would teach His people that their acts of sin had to be seen in connection with their responsibility to Him, and not merely as they might affect the one sinned against on earth.
Every nation around them worshipped idols. What made Israel's idolatry an insult to God's name was who they were and what He had given them.
How much more guilty were those who knew far better! They stood in national relationship with God as His own special and favoured people, and they had the very tent of the testimony, a witness for Him and against their ways. They carried it not only in the wilderness from father to son, but into the good land. God had driven out the pagan nations living there by the hand of Joshua, so that Israel could have it. In this way they added gross hypocrisy to their greedy idolatry. There is no corruption so grievous as that of God's people, and so His chastenings match it: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2).
Later in the book the same prophet returns to this charge. There the outcome turns not on Israel's record but on God's own name.
Such was Israel's way in the land and out of it, everywhere a shame to Him who chose them as His own — idolatrous corruption and murderous violence in Canaan, profaning His name among the nations. And what did He do, the One against whom they had sinned? He is Jehovah and does not change, so He did not destroy them. Instead, He had pity for the name which they had outraged, and He would sanctify it and be sanctified in them.
One writer turns this history on later readers, and finds the same heart still at work.
The history of the Church on earth has been a viler history still. Think of the higher privileges perverted, and the sweeter communications of God's grace — a grace now fully declared. As a whole, we are today just where Ezekiel was in his day, though we may hide it from ourselves, as they would have been glad to hide it too… We may still worship silver and gold, even though we do not shape it into the hideous forms once made.
- Gift. The charge starts with what God did: He brought them into the land. Their sin stands against that goodness.
- Treachery. A wrong done to a neighbour still had to be settled with God. Here the treachery is aimed at God Himself.
- Blasphemy. Idolatry from His own favoured people was not just failure but insult. No corruption is more serious than that of God's people.
- Mirror. God sets the fathers' record before the sons so they will see themselves in it. Later readers should look into the same mirror.
- Name. The name they profaned is the very thing God acts to vindicate, and that, not their record, is where hope for them lies.
When I had brought them into the land which I had lifted up my hand to give unto them, then they saw every high hill and all the thick trees, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering; and there they placed their sweet savour, and there poured out their drink-offerings.
Ezekiel 20 reviews Israel's whole history, and one sin runs through it: idolatry, starting back in Egypt. This verse reaches the moment the story should have turned happy. Israel is in the land God swore to give them. The first thing they do is turn its hills and trees into places of worship for other gods.
The charge in this chapter starts long before the land.
Here the Spirit retraces the sin, and especially the idolatry of Israel — that is, of the people as a people — from the time of their stay in Egypt. Already there they had begun with their idolatry. For His own name's sake God had brought them up from there, and given them His statutes and His sabbaths... They had polluted the sabbaths of Jehovah and gone after the idols of their fathers, so they would be polluted in their own gifts... God brought them into the promised land, and there they forsook Jehovah for the high places.
Notice what they used: the hills and trees that proved how good the land was.
There is only a glance at their history in the land... Fresh privileges would be only fresh opportunity for evil. The high hills of the land they were now brought into, and the trees that showed how rich it was, became their places of idol worship. There they lifted up offerings that provoked Him, and claimed they were for Him. Or they would gladly have hidden among the trees the sin they could not get rid of. Their sweet savour was for others than Himself. Their drink-offerings of joy became nothing but drunken revels in honour of their many gods.
A hilltop and a shaded wood work on the imagination. People mistake the feeling for the reality.
In Israel, turning away from God showed itself outwardly in making "high places." It was only a pagan habit. It played on the imagination with a worship that had no heart in it... On the mountain-tops a man could imagine himself nearer to God than in the valleys. Deep woods and forests helped too, along with the beauty of nature, to make him think he was nearer to the God of nature than he really was. There is indeed a witness to God in all these things: who would wish to deny it?... Still, it is just here that man so often makes the fatal mistake. He puts what is merely natural in the place of what is spiritual, and so deceives himself.
These sites were not new. Israel took over the places it was sent to clear away.
To prepare for proper worship in the land, Israel had to completely destroy every place where the nations before them served their idols. The nations usually did this on high hills and mountains and in lovely wooded areas. Many people today say the same kind of thing: they need no gathering of saints to the name of the Lord Jesus to worship, but feel closer to God when they are outside enjoying the beauties of nature.
The prophets come back to this one detail again and again.
Almost every direct reference to the drink offering in the prophets has to do with idol worship. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all speak of the children of Israel and Judah pouring out drink offerings to the gods of the nations. This provoked Jehovah to judge His disobedient people... Every blessing that God has ever given to man, man has corrupted. This is true of the drink offering also. We must make sure that all our worship — indeed all our thoughts, words and actions — gives joy to God. Anything else that aims at pleasing ourselves is like offering drink offerings to false gods. They are an abomination to God.
The chapter does not end at the ruined altars. Later God promises to accept the offering He here calls a provocation. The quote below keeps the older wording "sweet savour" for what the ESV calls a "pleasing aroma."
"I will accept you with your sweet savour when I bring you out from the people, and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the nations"... God will then accept them, and they will know Jehovah. The promises to the fathers will come true — not only in us who now believe and go to heaven at Christ's coming, but in the children of Israel on the earth. They will then truly repent, and only because of His mercy. He acts freely, above the evil of the creatures, for His own sake. If He did not, to be a sinner would be to be ruined without remedy or hope.
- Gift. God brought them into the land He had sworn to give — the verse opens with grace, not with sin.
- Corruption. The hills and leafy trees that showed how rich the land was became sites of idol worship. Fresh privileges only gave fresh opportunity for evil.
- Counterfeit. Israel kept the sacrifice, the sweet savour and the drink offering. It only changed the God they were meant for, and worship turned into self-pleasing.
- Warning. These were the very high places Israel was sent to destroy. Feeling nearer to God in nature can still replace what is spiritual.
- Restoration. In verse 41 God promises to accept the sweet savour that provoked Him here, when He gathers His people again. That is mercy acting above human evil, for His own name's sake.