20:10-12 So the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness. At Mount Sinai He gave them statutes and ordinances that would result in their welfare if they obeyed them, namely, the Mosaic Law. He also gave them the Sabbath Day as a sign of the special relationship and blessing that they enjoyed because He had chosen them. By observing the Sabbath the Israelites demonstrated their uniqueness among the nations, their sanctification unto Yahweh (Exod. 20:8-11; 31:13, 17). The Sabbath was a dual sign to the Israelites: it reminded them of Yahweh's creation of the cosmos (Exod. 20:11) and of His creation of their nation (Deut. 5:14-15). It was the central sign of the Old Covenant (Isa. 56:2, 4).
20:13 Nevertheless the Israelites rebelled against their God in the wilderness by disobeying His commands, which God intended to result in their blessing (Lev. 18:5). They also made the Sabbath common by failing to observe it as a special day of the week even though God intended it to be a day of rest and remembrance for them. Consequently, Yahweh decided to annihilate them in the wilderness.
20:14 However again His reputation as Israel's God moved Him to have mercy on them. Annihilating them would have made it appear to the other nations that He was unable to sustain them and to fulfill His promises to them.
20:15-16 Notwithstanding, He swore to them that He would not bring that generation of them into the Promised Land because they had rebelled against Him and had worshipped idols.
20:17 So the Lord spared His people. (He did this in response to Moses' intercession for the people; cf. Num. 14:13-19; Deut. 1:26-40; Ps. 106:23-25.)
20:18-20 The Lord then instructed the children of the generation that He had liberated from Egyptian bondage not to follow the bad example of their fathers. Since He was Yahweh their God they should remain faithful to the terms of the covenant that He had made with their nation.
20:21 However, they also rebelled against the Lord, as their fathers had done, so He resolved to punish them in the wilderness.
20:22-24 Again the Lord withheld punishment for the sake of His reputation (cf. Num. 16:21-22; 25:1-9), but He swore to them that He would scatter them among the other nations and disperse them in other lands because of their covenant unfaithfulness (Lev. 26:33; Deut. 28:64; Ps. 106:26-27).
20:25-26 The Lord also gave them statutes that were not good for them in the sense that He allowed them to choose to live by worldly rules that caused them misery and death (cf. Lev. 26; Deut. 28:15-29:19; 2 Kings 17:26-41). He also gave them ordinances that were too difficult for them to keep in that He did not lighten the burden of responsibility that the Mosaic Law imposed. When the people offered their children up as burnt offerings to the idols, the loss of their children was God's punishment for this sin (cf. Exod. 13:12; Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10; 2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chron. 28:3). He had commanded that they offer their first-born to Him or redeem those children (Exod. 22:29; Num. 18:15-19), but He had not told them to offer their children to Him as burnt offerings.
"A sacrifice as understood by Israel's pagan neighbors was a way of giving desirable things to the gods. . . . How about really impressing a god with your dedication and sincerity by sending that god something more precious to you than anything else--your own firstborn child? Thinking themselves likely to gain the lifetime favor of the gods in this way, the Israelites borrowed child sacrifice, too, from their neighbors and began killing their firstborn infants and burning them on altars as a means of sending them to the false gods they were worshiping [sic]. It is evident that such people really wanted the gods to love them and were willing to give their all' to gain such love."284
