Ezekiel 20:25

“Wherefore I gave them also statutes [that were] not good, &c.] Yea, were very bad; not the moral law, and the statutes of it; for that is holy, just, and good, though the killing letter and ministration of condemnation and death to the transgressors of it; indeed those laws were both good and bad to different persons, as Abendana observes; good to those that observed them, but not good to those that transgressed them, the issue of which was death: rather these were the statutes and rites of the ceremonial law, which were not in their own nature good; nor did they arise from the nature and holiness of God, but from his will; and though very good and useful under the legal dispensation, until…”

“I gave them . . . statutes . . . not good--Since they would not follow My statutes that were good, "I gave them" their own (Eze 20:18) and their fathers' "which were not good"; statutes spiritually corrupting, and, finally, as the consequence, destroying them. Righteous retribution (Psa 81:12; Hos 8:11; Rom 1:24; Th2 2:11). Eze 20:39 proves this view to be correct (compare Isa 63:17). Thus on the plains of Moab (Num. 25:1-18), in chastisement for the secret unfaithfulness to God in their hearts, He permitted Baal's worshippers to tempt them to idolatry (the ready success of the tempters, moreover, proving the inward unsoundness of the tempted); and this again ended necessarily in punitive…”

“The probation in the wilderness. The promise was forfeited by those to whom it was first conditionally made, but was renewed to their children. Ezekiel 20:11 The “statutes” were given on Mount Sinai, and repeated by Moses before his death (Exodus 20:1 ff; Deuteronomy 4:8). In them - Or, through them: and in Ezekiel 20:13. Ezekiel 20:12 See Exodus 31:13. The Sabbath was a sign of a special people, commemorative of the work of creation, and hallowed to the honor of Yahweh, the covenant-God. As man honored God by keeping the Sabbath holy, so by the Sabbath, God “sanctified” Israel and marked them as a holy people. Therefore to profane the Sabbath was to abjure their Divine Governor. Ezekiel…”

“Wherefore - Because they rejected my good laws and judgments. I gave them - Not by enjoining, but by permitting them to make such for themselves. Not good - That were pernicious to the users. Ezekiel 20:26”

“20:25-26 I gave them over to worthless decrees and regulations . . . I let them pollute themselves: The Lord allowed the people of Israel to exercise their depravity in the complex and corrupting rituals of paganism and to suffer all of its terrible consequences (see Rom 1:18-25).”

“I gave: The simple meaning of this place is, that when the Israelites had rebelled against God, despised his statutes, and polluted his sabbaths, in effect cast him off, and given themselves up wholly to their idols, then He, in a just judgment for their disobedience, abandoned them, "gave them up to a reprobate mind," ( Rom 1:28), and suffered them to walk after the idolatrous, cruel, and impious customs and ordinances of the heathen; by which they were ripened for the destruction which he intended to bring upon them, that they might learn to know God by his judgments, seeing they had despised his mercies. In the same sense God is said judicially to "send a strong delusion, that they should…”