Ezekiel 5:7

Therefore thus saith the Lord God ,.... Having observed their sins, and which are still enlarged upon, the Lord proceeds to denounce his judgments against them:

because ye multiplied more than the nations that are round about you ; not in numbers, nor in wealth and riches, or in blessings and privileges, and therefore grew wanton and forgetful; though this was true: but in sins and wickedness, which abounded among them, and in which they exceeded the nations round about them; and so the Targum paraphrases it,

"because that ye have sinned more than the people that are round about you:'

and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments ; which as repeated to show the certainty of fact, and how much the Lord resented it:

neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you . The Syriac version leaves out the negative particle and renders the words thus, "but ye have done the judgments of the nations which are round about you"; and it may be observed, that it is omitted in parallel text, Ezekiel 11:12 ; and this is what the Jews are often reproved for, that they followed the laws and customs of the Gentiles, and worshipped their gods; and the opposition to the preceding clause seems to require this sense; but the retaining the negative particle is confirmed by the Targum, Masora, and the Septuagint and Arabic versions; and also by the Talmud F20 T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 39, 9. , which reconciles the passage with the parallel text before mentioned, thus,

"according to those things which are right among them (the Gentiles) ye have not done; but according to what are corrupt among them ye have done;'

and the meaning is, either that they did not walk according to the law and light of nature, which the Gentiles had, and attended to, Romans 2:14 ; or that they did not follow them in their conduct and behaviour; they were not so zealous for the true God as the Heathens were for their idols; they were not so tenacious of the laws and worship the true God of Israel as the Gentiles were of their superstitious rites and ceremonies; the Gentiles did not change their gods, and manner of worship, but retained what, they received from their ancestors time immemorial; but the Jews changed their glory for that which did not profit, Jeremiah 2:11 .