But I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols:
After God has shown that the obstinate wickedness of the people was such that they profited by neither rigor nor clemency, he now says that the sons were altogether like their fathers. For when he says that he turned his discourse to their sons, he obliquely indicates that he was so broken down by their disgust, that he is unwilling to address the deaf.
The wilderness shows the great struggle between Israel's sins pulling them toward ruin and God's mercies pulling them toward salvation. He brought them to freedom in the desert rather than leave them enslaved in Egypt, yet many of them despised liberty and longed to return to their chains.
AI summary
Commenting on Ezekiel 20:10-26
But I said unto their children in the wilderness,.... Or, "then I said" (k); his judgments and statutes being neglected and despised by them, and good instructions and kind providences being of no use unto them, the Lord turns to their posterity while yet in the wilderness: what follows seems to refer to those directions, instructions, and exhortations given in the book of Deuteronomy by...