Eze 20:25f  “I also gave them decrees which were not good and regulations by which they could not live.  I declared them to be defiled because of their sacrifices—they caused all their first born to pass through the fire—so that I would devastate them, so that they will know that I am the LORD.”

How can it be that the Lord would give his people ‘decrees which were not good’?  And what ‘decrees’ are being referred to here?

Blenkinsopp: This is ‘perhaps theologically the most problematic statement in the book.’

Taylor (TOTC): This presents ‘an acute problem of interpretation’.

English translations

Majority translation: “I gave them…” – ESV, NASB, NIV, RV, RSV, NRSV, AV, GNB.

A minority translation ‘softens’ this to: “I gave them over to…” – NIV84, NLT; “I gave them up to…” – NKJV; “I allowed them to…” God’s Word; “I permitted” NET (in a translation note).

The Complete Jewish Bible:

“I also gave them laws which did them no good and rulings by which they did not live.”

A reference back to Exodus 22:29f?

Ex 22:29 “Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give me the firstborn of your sons. 22:30 You must also do this for your oxen and for your sheep; seven days they may remain with their mothers, but give them to me on the eighth day.”

Some think that Eze 20:25 refers back to this command, now declaring it to be ‘not good’.

Christopher Hays (The Widening of God’s Mercy): Eze 20:25-26 ‘clearly’ refers back to the Exodus passage, appealing to this as evidence that God changes his mind (on this occasion on child sacrifice).

Harper’s Bible Commentary: ‘Ezekiel held that God had once established the ordinance requiring child sacrifice but now finds it odious.’

Paul Redditt (Introduction to the Prophets): Ezekiel may have been aware that some laws required child sacrifice, while others required substitution.  He used the latter as a basis for condemning the former.  God did not really desire human sacrifice, but made the demand as a way of driving his people from him.

Tuell (UBCS): Ezekiel is horrified by Ex 22:29f with its requirement for child sacrifice.  But he is not willing to set it aside.  His understanding of these ‘statutes that were not good’ is comparable to Jesus’ reading of the teaching on divorce (Deut 24:1): ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8; also Mark 10:5).’

Evaluation: The claim that Ex 22:29f mandates child sacrifice is open to serious doubt, as I have argued elsewhere.

A good law twisted?

It is possible that the text means, ‘not good’ in the sense of a good law (Ex 22:29f) being misinterpreted, bringing it into line with pagan practices and leading to evil consequences.  The misinterpretation would involve ignoring those other texts that speak of redemption and substitution.

Harper’s Bible Commentary: Ex 22:29 was ambiguous, capable of being understood to mandate child sacrifice.  Later laws allowed for first-born sons to be redeemed through animal sacrifice (Ex 13:11–13; 34:20).  But in Ezekiel’s day people would appeal to the earlier law to justify their participation in the cult of Molech in the Valley of Hinnonm, where children were sacrificed to pagan deities.

Hard Sayings of the Bible: Ezekiel is not referring to the Mosaic law at all.  The following verse clarifies that v25 is referring to the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice.  The Israelites had perverted the laws pertaining to the giving of the firstborn to the Lord (e.g. Ex 13:13; 22:29) by offering children to Molech.

Taylor (TOTC): Child-sacrifice would never be condoned by God.  The Israelites had tragically misinterpreted the ordinance relating to the offering of the firstborn, as modified by the law of redemption (Ex 22:29; Num 18:15ff.).  The continuation of child-sacrifice would then be due to a tragic misinterpretation of this law.

God ‘gave them over to’ the practices of the surrounding pagan nations?

As a variation on the above, some interpreters maintain that Ezekiel is not referring to any of the Mosaic laws, but to the practices of the surrounding Canaanite nations.

In this case, the usual English translation (God gave them statutes…’) would be understood to mean, ‘God gave them over to…’

McGregor (NBC) paraphrases:

‘I handed them over to unjust statutes and intolerable laws (25). I let them defile themselves with such practices as the sacrifice of every first-born child. This I did so that in their horror they would come to know that I am the LORD (26).’

McGregor: the term translated ‘statutes’, which is normally feminine, is masculine here.  And they are not ‘my’ statutes, as in vv 11 and 13, suggesting that Ezekiel is not referring to the same statutes.  The prophet is probably not referring now to the Mosaic law but to Canaanite practice.

The CSB Study Bible: these decrees and ordinances were not God’s own, but those of the pagan nations.  God sometimes punishes sin by abandoning people it and suffering its consequences.

Tuell: The thought here as similar to that of Rom 1:24, 28f, where Paul says that God ‘gave them over’, or ‘gave them up’ to ungodly practices.

Lest it be thought invalid to ‘import’ this New Testament teaching back into the Old Testament, the OT itself entertains the possibility that something can simultaneously be ‘of God’ and ‘not of God’.  I am thinking of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (he harded his own heart, but also God hardened it) and David’s numbering of the people (he was incited by the Lord, and also by Satan).

Mark Rooker: God punished their sin by abandoning them to the evil laws of pagan nations (Eze 16:20f), so that they might suffer the consequences, Deut 4:28; Rom 1:21-27.  This is paralleled in the hardening of Pharoah’s heart and the command in Isa 6:9-10.  Unlike the good statutes they had rejected, vv11,19,24, these ‘not good’ statutes are not referred to by the Lord as ‘my decrees and laws’.  Thus, ‘sin becomes its own punishment’, Ps 81:12; Ezek 14:9; Acts 7:42; Rom 1:24–25; 2 Thess 2:11.

Statutes ‘good’ in content and purpose, but ‘not good’ in results?

Schreiner: The text does not mean that the content of the law was not good.  Rather it was not good for Israel because Israel did not obey it and so did not gain life.  Repentance is possible, Ezek 18:9, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 32, but Israel’s evil heart can only be remedied by the enabling Spirit of God, Ezek 11:19–20; 36:26–27.  (40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law, p60)

Geisler and Howe (When Critics Ask): The law itself can be said to be ‘not good’ in in its purpose, but in its results, in that disobedience to it disaster.  See Rom 7:7f.

Hard Sayings of the Bible: ‘God sent them “a powerful delusion” (2 Thess 2:11) and “gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies” (Acts 7:42).  They failed to renounce idolatry, and were given up to its evil effects.  Note the statement: “that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD.”

Leslie C. Allen (WBC): The vocabulary of v26 echoes that of the law of redemption in Ex 13:12f.  However, the language also recalls that of pagan practices of child sacrifice in Eze 16:20f and elsewhere.  Ezekiel therefore seems to be answering claims that in the law of the firstborn the Lord had authorised child sacrifice as practiced in pagan cults.

An ‘ironic polemic’?

R.E. Watts, Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, art. ‘Exodus Imagery’: This may be ‘an ironic polemic’ against a perversion of what God had actually commanded.  In allowing them to do this, the Lord determined that what should have led to life would, instead lead to destruction and death.

Wright (BST): It is a mistake to argue, with some early Christian interpretation, that these verses constitute some kind of anti-Jewish polemic.  It is also a mistake to argue, with some modern critics, that child sacrifice was once mandated within the Mosaic law.  Rather, Ezekiel is being deliberately controversial, giving a parody of Israel’s history in this chapter.  The present verse is to be understood in this context of sarcasm and irony.  The prophet has too high a view of God’s laws to regard any of them as ‘not good’ in essence or purpose.  The people had turned those laws upside down, engaging in child sacrifice as if God had commanded it, perhaps teaching that God had commanded it.  So Ezekiel represents God as letting them have their own way, giving them up to the consequences of their own sinful actions.

Block: Ezekiel’s statement ‘resists all attempts at domestication’ (Ellen Davis).  The prophet’s purpses are rhetorical, to show to the exiles that their rebellion is of a piece with Israel’s behaviour down the ages.  These ‘not-good’ laws are not to be identified with the laws of the firstborn, for: (a) they are given to the second generation of freed Israelites; (b) Ezekiel treats them separately from the life-giving laws; (c) the contradiction to the Mosaic and Sinaitic laws is to marked as to have been obvious to any of the original hearers; (d) Ezekiel signals his rhetorical intent by using the masculine, rather than the feminine, form of his term for the decrees.

Given that Ezekiel is speaking rhetorically, this giving of ‘bad laws’ that would lead to death is similar to:

‘Yahweh’s dispersal of his people in the desert (v. 23);

his dispatching of sword, famine, plague, and bloodshed as expressions of his wrath (5:13–17);

his commissioning of agents to slaughter the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to burn the city (chs. 9–11); and

his placement of his sword in Nebuchadrezzar’s hand (21:6–22 [Eng. 1–17]).’ (Paragraphing added)

All these actions have as their goal the devastation of the nation and the removal of all false theological props, paradoxically, that they might know that I am Yahweh (20:26). The force of Ezekiel’s rhetorical strategy lies precisely in its nonconformity with human reason. This nonconformity applies here, where the issue is the condemnation and judgment of the nation, and it will do so in vv. 42–43, where the issue will be Israel’s restoration, despite acknowledged sinfulness. Although Israel must carry the responsibility for its own fate, Yahweh retains full authority to determine its destiny, and to achieve that goal by whatever means he chooses.’ (Some paragraphing added)

Walther Eichrodt:

(a) The prophet was thinking of Ex 34:19f.  The law of redemption was always in force, and the Israelites never routinely sacrificed the first-born son.  Their most ancient documents indicate the joy expressed over the first-born son, e.g. Gen 49.3.  The command of Ex 22:28 seems to be absolute, and seemed to permit the Canaanite practice of the sacrifice of the first-born son, 1 Kings 16:34; 2 Kings 3:27.  This syncretic approach to propitiating a wrathful deity is reflected in the mockery of Mic 6:6f.  Ahaz and Manasseh appear to have offered child sacrifices, 2 Kings 16.3; 21.6.  There was a place of such sacrifice to Molech in the vally on Hinnom.

(b) Remarkably, Ezekiel does not oppose this horrific misinterpretation of the Mosaic law.  Rather, he attributes it to the will of God, who thereby executes punishment by giving his people a form calculated to cause them to fall.  This divine hardening of the hearts of unrepentant sinners is also reflected in Psa 18:26; Isa 6:10, and 1 Kings 22:22f.

(c) ‘That they might know that I am Yahweh’ – This is the ultimate purpose.  Israel had to experience the shock of finding herself wrong in her overconfident assumption of how God would behave, before she could be touched by any awareness of the mysterious holiness of God.’