gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Leviticus 18:3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, s…
Ezekiel 20:8 But they rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me: they did not every man cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did th…
Leviticus 11:44 For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves…
Deuteronomy 29:16-18 (For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;
Ezekiel 18:31 Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O…
Exodus 16:12 I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be f…
Exodus 20:2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Exodus 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or th…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 20:5-9
The history of the ingratitude and rebellion of the people of Israel here begins as early as their beginning; so does the history of man's apostasy from his Maker. No sooner have we read the story of our first parents' creation than we immediately meet with that of their rebellion; so we see here it was with Israel, a people designed to represent the body of mankind both in their dealings with God and in his with them. Here is,
I. The gracious purposes of God's law concerning Israel in Egypt, where they were bond-slaves to Pharaoh. Be it spoken, be it written, to the immortal honour of free grace, that then and there, 1. He chose Israel to be a peculiar people to himself, though their condit…
Moses gives no formal statement of idolatries practised by Israel in Egypt. But it is implied in their readiness to worship the golden calf (resembling the Egyptian ox, Apis) (Exo 32:4), which makes it likely they had worshipped such idols in Egypt. Also, in Lev 17:7, "They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils (literally, seirim, 'he-goats,' the symbol of the false god, Pan), after whom they have gone awhoring." The call of God by Moses was as much to them to separate from idols and follow Jehovah, as it was to Pharaoh to let them go forth. Exo 6:6-7 and Jos 24:14, expressly mention their idolatry "in Egypt." Hence the need of their being removed out of the contagion of Egyptian…
Cast ye away - the abominations - Put away all your idols; those incentives to idolatry that ye have looked on with delight.
John Gill on Ezekiel 20:7
Then I said unto them,.... Having promised and swore to do such great and good things for them; which must lay them under an obligation to regard what he should command them: promises and blessings of goodness are great incentives to duty, and lay under great obligation to it:
cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes; which should be so, meaning idols; but which his eyes were taken with, and were lifted up unto, as his gods; though they ought to have been rejected with the utmost abhorrence, as abominable:
and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt; their "dunghill gods", as the word (f) signifies; which to worship, as it was an abomination to God, was defiling to themsel…
The Church Fathers
(Version 7) And I said to them: Let each one cast away the offenses of their eyes, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. LXX: And I said to them: Let each one cast away the abominations of their eyes, and do not be polluted with the inventions of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Regarding the offenses, which are called 'Secuse' in Hebrew, Symmachus interpreted them as nausea, the second edition of Aquila as excisions, to signify that they should be cast away like the blemishes that hinder vision and create a sense of vomiting for those who see them. The word 'gelule' is also a Hebrew term, which the LXX invented. The first edition of Aquila was defiled; the second edition of Symmachus and Theodotion interpreted as idols, whom we also follow at present. However, he commands those who are leaving Egypt to forget the idols they have served for a long time, and indeed to cast them away from their eyes so that they do not even regard them with their sight. And those who have been defiled for a long time should no longer consent to them. I, he says, am the Lord your God; not the Egyptian portents, not the figments of various monsters. But even to us, when we come out of Egypt, it is commanded that we cast off the offenses of our eyes: lest we be delighted by those things with which we were previously delighted in the world, lest we be polluted by the idols of Egypt, namely, the inventions of philosophers and heretics, which are rightly called idols. Let us also remove our eyes from the spectacles, or rather offenses, of Egypt: the arenas, the circuses, the theaters, and all things that contaminate the purity of the soul and enter through the senses into the mind; and let what is written be fulfilled: Death has entered through your windows (Jeremiah 9:21).
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Idolatry — Image-worship or divine honour paid to any created object. Paul describes the origin of idolatry in Rom. 1:21-25: men forsook God, and sank into ignorance and moral corruption (1:28). The forms of…
Egypt · .Idols of — .Idols of
Idolatry · Described as: Defiling — Described as: Defiling
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Ezekiel 20:5-8
5. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up mine hand unto them, saying, I am the LORD your God;
5. Et dices illis, Sic dicit Dominator Iehovah, Die quo elegi Israelem, et sustuli manum meam ad semen domus Iacob, et cognitus fui illis in terrae ?gypti, et sustuli manum meam illis dicendo, Ego Iehovah Deus vester;
6. In the day that I lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands:
6. D…
Election of Israel in Egypt. Its resistance to the commandments of God. - Eze 20:5. And say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, In the day that I chose Israel, and lifted my hand to the seed of Jacob, and made myself known to them in the land of Egypt, and lifted my hand to them, saying, I am Jehovah, your God: Eze 20:6. In that day I lifted my hand to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into the land which I sought out for them, which floweth with milk and honey - it is an ornament of all lands: Eze 20:7. And said to them, Cast away every man the abominations of his eyes, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am Jehovah, your God. Eze 20:8. But they were rebelli…
That the Lord would not answer their inquiry did not mean that he had nothing to say to them. Ezekiel would parade the detestable character of their ancestors before their eyes.
Rashi on Ezekiel 20:7
And I said to them Aaron proclaimed this prophecy to them before the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to Moses in the thorn bush. This is what was said to Eli (I Sam. 2:27): “Did I appear to the house of your father when they were in Egypt, etc.?”
