Ezekiel Chapter 20 verse 23 Holy Bible
Moreover I sware unto them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the nations, and disperse them through the countries;
read chapter 20 in ASV
Further, I gave my oath to them in the waste land that I would send them wandering among the nations, driving them out among the countries;
read chapter 20 in BBE
I lifted up my hand also unto them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the nations, and disperse them through the countries;
read chapter 20 in DARBY
I lifted up mine hand unto them also in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them through the countries;
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read chapter 20 in WBT
Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the nations, and disperse them through the countries;
read chapter 20 in WEB
I also, I have lifted up My hand to them in the wilderness, To scatter them among nations, And to spread them through lands.
read chapter 20 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 23. - That I would scatter them among the heathen. The words seem to refer to the generation that had grown up in the wilderness, and, so taken, do not correspond with the history of the conquest of Canaan. What Ezekiel contemplates, however, as the resolve of Jehovah, is the commutation of the sentence of destruction for that of the dispersion of the people, leaving the time and manner of that dispersion to be determined by his own will. Possibly even in the time of the judges, with its many conquests and long periods of oppression, there were instances of such dispersion, and these, with others that would naturally accompany an invasion like that of Shishak (2 Chronicles 12:2-9), not to speak of frequent attacks from Moabites, Ammonites, Philistines, Edomites, and Syrians, may have seemed to the prophet the working out, step by step, of the dispersion which culminated in the deportation of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser, and of Judah and Benjamin by Nebuchadnezzar. Traces of such dispersions before Ezekiel's time meet us in Psalm 78:59-64; Isaiah 11:11, 12; Zephaniah 3:10, 20.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(23) I would scatter them among the heathen.--This threatening was not designed to be fulfilled in that immediate generation, as abundantly appears from Leviticus 26:33; Deuteronomy 4:27, Deut. 27:64, and the other passages in which it is given, especially Deuteronomy 29, 30. It was given to that generation as representing the nation, but was only to be carried out when, by a long course of obdurate sin, it should be shown to be imperatively required. The threat had now been already realised in part, and was on the eve of being fully accomplished. It was important that the people should be made to understand that this had been the Divine warning from the beginning, and that in its fulfilment they were only receiving that punishment which had always been designed for such sin as they had committed.
