^{Ezekiel 20:18} But I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the ordinances of your fathers, neither observe their manners, nor defile yourselves with their idols.

¹⁹ I am the Lord your God: walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments and do them,

²⁰ And sanctify my Sabbaths, and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.

²¹ Notwithstanding the children rebelled against me: they walked not in my statutes, nor kept my judgments to do them, which if a man do, he shall live in them, but they polluted my Sabbaths: then I thought to pour out mine indignation upon them, and to accomplish my wrath against them in the wilderness.

²² Nevertheless, I withdrew mine hand and had respect to my Name, that it should not be polluted before the heathen, in whose sight I brought them forth.

²³ Yet I lifted up mine hand unto them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them through the countries,

²⁴ Because they had not executed my judgments, but had cast away my statutes, and had polluted my Sabbaths, and their eyes were after ^[j]their fathers’ idols.

²⁵ Wherefore I gave  them also statutes that were not good, and judgments, wherein they should not live.

²⁶ And I polluted them in their own  gifts in that they caused to pass by the fire all that  first  openeth the womb, that I might destroy them, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord.