Ezekiel 20:18

"And I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their ordinances, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I am Jehovah your God: walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them; hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am Jehovah your God. But the children rebelled against me; they walked not in my statutes, neither kept mine ordinances to do them, which, if a man do, he shall live in them; they profaned my sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness. Nevertheless I withdrew my hand, and wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I brought them forth. Moreover I sware unto them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the nations, and disperse them through the countries; because they had not executed mine ordinances, but had rejected my statutes, and had profaned my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers' idols. Moreover also I gave them statutes that were not good, and ordinances wherein they should not live; 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 Jehovah."

THE APOSTASY OF THE SECOND WILDERNESS GENERATION

"And I said unto their children ..." (Ezekiel 20:18) This appears to be the second generation of the wilderness wanderers. They did not respond, but after the manner of their fathers, "rebelled against God" (Ezekiel 20:21). Baal-Peor is the only proof that is needed to demonstrate their total apostasy. In fact, God would have totally destroyed them at that time, except for the consideration that His holy name would have been profaned by the nations. Instead, he made another covenant with Israel, the wicked children of the first generation, and under Joshua, led them into Canaan.

"Scatter them among the nations ..." (Ezekiel 20:23). "Nine centuries were to pass before this threatened scattering took place; but that God actually did as he promised is evidenced today in the Jewish community in every city on the earth."[12]

"I gave them statutes that were not good ..." (Ezekiel 20:25). This is a reference to the judicial hardening that came to Israel, similar to that which Paul mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:11, "God sends them a strong delusion that they all might be damned, etc." There is even a hint here as to the mechanics of the deception that came upon them. God's law had indeed commanded that "The first-born of both man and beast were sacred unto God and were to be offered as a burnt-offering to God" (Exodus 13:12). However, there was an exception made in the case of human beings, as every student of the scripture knows. The ordinance was perverted to allow the sacrifice of children who were passed through the fire to Molech!. "It is perfectly self-evident here that we must not understand that these `ordinances which were no good' is a reference to anything whatever in the Mosaic Law; because the reference here is not to God's holy law at all, but to the wicked Israel's perversion of it."[13]

We must not suppose that Israel was innocent in this perversion of God's Word. "Ezekiel gives us to understand that it was, "Due to judicial blindness inflicted by God Himself."[14]