Ezekiel 20:23

I lifted up … also Moreover I lifted up, lit. And I on my part, so Ezekiel 20:25.

scatter … among the heathen The people entered Canaan laden with this heavy threat for their sins in the wilderness. Such threats were always conditional, Jeremiah 18, Jonah. This conditional character is expressed in other passages where a similar idea occurs, Leviticus 26:33; Deuteronomy 28:64. The prophet hardly means that the exile was due to the people's sins in the wilderness, except in so far as the moral character of the people remained the same throughout down to the generation then living. But cf. Exodus 32:34.