Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 36:16-24
When God promised the poor captives a glorious return, in due time, to their own land, it was a great discouragement to their hopes that they were unworthy, utterly unworthy, of such a favour; therefore, to remove that discouragement, God here shows them that he would do it for them purely for his own name's sake, that he might be glorified in them and by them, that he might manifest and magnify his mercy and goodness, that attribute which of all others is most his glory. And, the restoration of that people being typical of our redemption by Christ, this is intended further to show that the ultimate end aimed at in our salvation, to which all the steps of it were made subservient, was the gl…
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The reason for their removal was their sin, which God's holiness could not let pass unpunished; just as a woman's legal uncleanness was the reason for her being separated from the congregation.
Adam Clarke on Ezekiel 36:17
When the house of Israel dwelt in their own land - Had they continued faithful to me, they had never been removed from it: but they polluted it with their crimes; and I abhorred the land on that account, and gave both them and it up to the destroyers.
John Gill on Ezekiel 36:18
Wherefore I poured my fury on them,.... Like a mighty flood that carries all before it, in just retaliation
for the blood they had shed upon the land; the innocent blood, as the Targum; the blood of righteous men, that opposed and reproved them for their sinful ways; the blood of the prophets, that were sent to warn them of them; and especially the blood of the Son of God; for this prophecy reaches further than to the times of the Babylonish captivity:
and for their idols wherewith they had polluted it; or, "for their dung" (m); their dunghill gods; not only for their idols, and their idolatry, before the Babylonish captivity, which they after that were free from; but for the traditions of…
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