Ezekiel 20:17

17. Nevertheless mine eye spared them So identified were Israel and Jehovah in the eyes of the nations that he could not have utterly annihilated the nation, as justice seemed to demand, without bringing dishonor upon his own name (Deuteronomy 9:28-29). Therefore, and because of his own special love and pity for them (Numbers 14:20; Psalms 78:38), he did not wholly cut them off, root and branch, in the wilderness; but, while he executed judgment upon that generation (Ezekiel 20:15; Numbers 14:28), he spared the children and exhorted them to do better than their fathers (Ezekiel 20:18). It is worthy of notice that Ezekiel knew the Hebrew history well and gave the same interpretation of it that orthodoxy has always given.