Therefore I poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they had poured out on the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols.
Parallel Translations
-
Therefore I poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they had poured out on the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols.
-
Wherefore I poured my fury upon them for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and for their idols wherewith they had polluted it:
-
Wherefore I poured out My fury upon them for the blood which they had shed upon the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols;
Cross-references (15)
Passages linked to Ezekiel 36:18 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 2 Chronicles 34:21 “Go inquire of Yahweh for me, and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found; for great is Yahweh’s wrath that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept Yahweh’s word, to do according to all that is written in this book.”
- Ezekiel 7:8 Now I will shortly pour out my wrath on you, and accomplish my anger against you, and will judge you according to your ways. I will bring on you all your abominations.
- Lamentations 2:4 He has bent his bow like an enemy. He has stood with his right hand as an adversary. Has killed all that were pleasant to the eye. In the tent of the daughter of Zion, he has poured out his wrath like fire.
- Lamentations 4:11 Yahweh has accomplished his wrath. He has poured out his fierce anger. He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured its foundations.
- 2 Chronicles 34:26 But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of Yahweh, you shall tell him this, ‘Yahweh, the God of Israel says: “About the words which you have heard,
- Isaiah 42:25 Therefore he poured the fierceness of his anger on him, and the strength of battle. It set him on fire all around, but he didn’t know. It burned him, but he didn’t take it to heart.”
- Jeremiah 7:20 Therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on man, on animal, on the trees of the field, and on the fruit of the ground; and it will burn and will not be quenched.”
- Jeremiah 44:6 Therefore my wrath and my anger was poured out, and was kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they are wasted and desolate, as it is today.’
- Ezekiel 14:19 “Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my wrath on it in blood, to cut off from it man and animal;
- Ezekiel 16:36-38 ‘The Lord Yahweh says, “Because your filthiness was poured out, and your nakedness uncovered through your prostitution with your lovers; and because of all the idols of your abominations, and for the blood of your children, that you gave to them; therefore see, I will gather all your lovers, with whom you have taken pleasure, and all those who you have loved, with all those who you have hated. I will even gather them against you on every side, and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. I will judge you, as women who break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will bring on you the blood of wrath and jealousy.
- Ezekiel 21:31 I will pour out my indignation on you. I will blow on you with the fire of my wrath. I will deliver you into the hand of brutish men, skillful to destroy.
- Ezekiel 23:37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols. They have also caused their sons, whom they bore to me, to pass through the fire to them to be devoured.
- Nahum 1:6 Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken apart by him.
- Revelation 14:10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.
- Revelation 16:1-21 I heard a loud voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God on the earth!” The first went, and poured out his bowl into the earth, and it became a harmful and evil sore on the people who had the mark of the beast, and who worshiped his image. The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man. Every living thing in the sea died. The third poured out his bowl into the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. I heard the angel of the waters saying, “You are righteous, who are and who were, O Holy One, because you have judged these things. For they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. They deserve this.” I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.” The fourth poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was given to him to scorch men with fire. People were scorched with great heat, and people blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues. They didn’t repent and give him glory. The fifth poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was darkened. They gnawed their tongues because of the pain, and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores. They didn’t repent of their works. The sixth poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates. Its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings that come from the sunrise. I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits, something like frogs; for they are spirits of demons, performing signs; which go out to the kings of the whole inhabited earth, to gather them together for the war of that great day of God, the Almighty. “Behold, I come like a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his clothes, so that he doesn’t walk naked, and they see his shame.” He gathered them together into the place which is called in Hebrew, “Megiddo”. The seventh poured out his bowl into the air. A loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” There were lightnings, sounds, and thunders; and there was a great earthquake, such as has not happened since there were men on the earth, so great an earthquake, and so mighty. The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. Every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. Great hailstones, about the weight of a talent, came down out of the sky on people. People blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, for this plague is exceedingly severe.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (8 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Eze 36:18 Wherefore I poured my fury upon them…
Eze 36:18 Wherefore I poured my fury upon them for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and for their idols [wherewith] they had polluted it:
Ver. 18. For the blood which they had shed.] These two gross sins are instanced, viz., murder and idolatry, lest they should plead, as in Jer 2:35, "I have not sinned"; or as in Hos 12:8, "In all my works they shall find none iniquity in me; that were sin."
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Wherefore; these and other sins were the true cause…
Wherefore; these and other sins were the true cause that the land was emptied of men, there was no ground for the heathen’s calumny.
I poured my fury; I was angry with them, and the effects of my anger were such as made the land and cities desolate.
Read full note →
For the blood that they had shed; for murders committed in the land, and frequently charged on them, Eze 22:3,6,9,12,27; 23:45.
For their idols: idolatry was another of their sins, which brought desolation on them.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Wherefore I poured my fury on them,.... Like a…
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:
Read full note →
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 their elders, they set up against and above the word of God; and their own legal righteousness, their idols, the works of their hands, which wore as dung; and through their attachment to which they rejected Christ and his righteousness; and which brought wrath upon them, and them into their present captivity.
(m) "stercoreis diis suis", Junius & Tremellius, Polanus; "stercoribus suis", Cocceius, Starckius.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Blood of their own children, and of the innocent,…
Blood of their own children, and of the innocent, chap. xvi. 36., and xxii. 2., and xxxiii. 25.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain The reason for their removal was their sin, which…
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.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 18. The effect of these sins was to awaken…
18. The effect of these sins was to awaken the fury of Jehovah. The “blood” may be murder from violence or judicial murder, so often reprobated in the earlier prophets, or it may be the sacrifice of children, Eze_16:36, Eze_23:37.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Wherefore I poured My fury upon them.
Eze_36:18-19
Wherefore I poured My fury upon them.
Read full note →
Man suffering
I. God is slow to punish. He does punish; He shall punish; with reverent be it spoken, He must punish. Yet no hand of clock goes so slowly as His hand of vengeance. He does pour out His fury; but His indignation is the volcano that groans loud and long before it discharges the elements of destruction, and pours its fiery lavas on the vineyards at its feet. Where, when Gods anger has burned hottest, was it ever known that judgment trod on the heels of sin? A period always intervenes; room is given for remonstrance on His part, and for repentance upon ours. The stroke of judgment is like the lightning flash, irresistible, fatal; it kills,--kills in the twinkling of an eye. But the clouds from which it leaps are slow to gather; they thicken by degrees: and he must be intensely engaged with the pleasures, or engrossed in the business of the world, whom the flash and peal surprise. The mustering clouds, the deepening gloom, the still and sultry air, the awful silence, the big pattering raindrops, these reveal his danger to the traveller; and warn him away from river, road, or hill to the nearest shelter. And, heeded or unheeded, many are the warnings you get from God. As these prove, He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Let us do the same justice to our Father in heaven that we would render to an earthly parent. Would it be doing a father justice to look at him only when the rod is raised in his hand, and, though the trembling lip and weeping eyes and choked utterance of his culprit boy, and a fond mothers intercession, all plead with him to spare, he refuses, firmly refuses? In this, how stern he looks! But before you can know that father, or judge his heart aright, you should know how often ere this the offence had been forgiven; you should have heard with what tender affection he had warned that child; above all, you should have stood at his closet door, and listened when he pleaded with God on behalf of an erring son. Justice to him also requires that you should have seen with what slow and lingering steps he went for the rod, the trembling of his trend, and how, with tears streaming from his eyes, he raised them to heaven and sought strength to inflict a punishment which, could it serve the purpose, he would a hundred times rather bear than inflict.
II. How He punished His ancient people. These were the children of Abraham, beloved for the fathers sake, the honoured custodiers of Divine truth; Gods chosen people, through whose line and lineage His Son was to appear. How solemn, then, and how appropriate, the question, If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? Look at Judah sitting amid the ruins of Jerusalem, her temple without a worshipper, her silent streets choked with the dead: look at that bound, weeping, bleeding remnant of a nation toiling on its way to Babylon: look at these peeled and riven boughs; may I not warn you with the Apostle, If God spaced not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee. If we speak thus, it is for your good. We arm ourselves with these thunders only, in the words of Paul, to persuade you by the terrors of the Lord. We have no faith in terror dissociated from tenderness. And as we trust more to drawing than to driving men to Jesus, we entreat you to observe that He who is the good is also a most tender Shepherd. Among the hills of our native land I have met a shepherd far from the flock and folds, driving home a lost sheep, one which had gone astray, a creature panting for breath, amazed, alarmed, foot-sore; and when the rocks around rang loud to the baying of the dogs, I have seen them--whenever it offered to turn from the path, with open mouth dash fiercely at its sides, and so hound it home. How differently Jesus brings back His lost ones! The lost sheep sought and found, He lifts it up tenderly, lays it on His shoulder, and, retracing His steps, returns homeward with joy, and invites His neighbours to rejoice with Him. Catching grace from His lips, and kindness from His looks, I desire to address you as becomes the servant of such a gentle, lowly, loving Master. Yet, shall I conceal Gods verity, and ruin mens souls to spare their feelings? If any are living without God and Christ and hope and prayer, I implore them to look here: turn to this dreadful pit. With what fire it burns! How it resounds with moaning wail and woeful groans 1 Now, while we stand together on its margin, or rather draw back with horror, ponder, I pray you, the solemn question, Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? It is alleged by travellers that the ostrich, when hard pressed by the hunters, will thrust its head into a bush, and, without further attempt either at flight or resistance, quietly submit to the stroke of death. Men say that, having thus succeeded in shutting the pursuers out of its own sight, the bird is stupid enough to fancy that it has shut itself out of theirs, and that the danger which it has ceased to see has ceased to exist. We doubt that. This poor bird, which has thrust its head into the bush, and stands quietly to receive the shot, has been hunted to death. For hours the cry of staunch pursuers has rung in its startled ear; for hours their feet have been on its weary track; it has exhausted strength, and breath, and craft, and cunning, to escape; and even yet, give it time to breathe, grant it but another chance, and it is away with the wind; with wings outspread and rapid feet it spurns the burning sand. It is because escape is hopeless and death is certain that it has buried its head in that bush, and closed its eyes to a fate which it cannot avert. To man belongs the folly of closing his eyes to a fate which he can avert. He thrusts his head into the bush while escape is possible; and, because he can put death and judgment and eternity out of mind, lives as if time had no bed of death, and eternity no bar of judgment. Be wise. Be men. Look your danger in the face. Flee to Jesus now. Escape from the wrath to come. To come? In a sense wrath has already come. The fire has caught, it has seized your garments; delay, and you are wrapt in flames. Oh! haste away, and throw yourselves into the fountain which has power to quench these fires, and cleanse you from all your sins. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Gods punitive justice
Does man ask, Why am I born with a bias to sin? why has anothers hand been permitted to sow germs of evil in me? why should I, who was no party to the first covenant, be buried in its ruins? To these questions this is my reply: I shrink from sitting in judgment upon my judge. Clouds and darkness are round about Jehovah now; but I feel confident that, when the veil of this present economy shall be rent, and expiring Time, echoing the cry of the cross, exclaims, It is finished, it shall be seen that righteousness and judgment are the pillars of Jehovahs throne, that there is no unrighteousness with God. But although the permission of sin is a mystery, the fact of its punishment is no mystery at all; and, while every answer to the question, How did God allow sin? leaves us unsatisfied, to my mind nothing is plainer than this, that, whatever was His reason for permitting it to exist, He could not permit it to exist unpunished.
I. The truth of God requires the punishment of sin. Some have fancied that they honour God most when, sinking all other attributes in mercy--indiscriminating mercy--they represent Him as embracing the whole world in His arms, and receiving to His bosom with equal affection the sinners that hate and the saints that love Him. They cannot claim originality for this idea. Its authorship belongs to the father of lies. Satan said so before them. It is the identical doctrine that damned this world. The serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die. Are your hopes of salvation resting on such a baseless fancy? If so, you cannot have considered in what aspect this theory presents that God for whose honour you profess such tender regard. We almost shrink from explaining it. You save the creature, but save him at a price more costly than was paid for sinners upon the Cross of Calvary. Your scheme exalts man; but far more than man is exalted, God is degraded. By it no man is lost; but there is a greater Joss. The truth of God is lost; and in that loss His crown is spoiled of its topmost jewel, His kingdom totters, and the throne of the universe is shaken to its deepest foundations. It is as manifest as daylight that Gods truth and your scheme cannot stand together. Liar stands against either God or you; and, in the words of the Apostle, you make God a liar. Nor is that all; my faith has lost the very rock on which it stood, as I flattered myself, steadfast and unmovable. For however awful the threatenings in His word may be, if God is not true to them, what security have I that He will prove true to its gracious promises?
II. The love of God requires that sin should be punished. Let me at once prove and illustrate the point by a piece of plain analogy. This city, its neighbourhood, nay, the whole land, is shaken by the news of some most cruel, bloody, monstrous crime. Fear seizes the public mind; pale horror sits on all mens faces; doors are double barred; and justice lets loose the hounds of law on the track of the criminal. At length, to the relief and satisfaction of all honest citizens, he is caught. He is tried, condemned, laid in irons, and waits but the sentence to be signed. To save or slay, to hang or pardon, is now the question with him whose prerogative it is to do either. And the law is left to take its course. Now, by what motive is the sovereign impelled to shut up his bowels of mercy, and sign the warrant for execution? Is it want of pity? No; the fatal pen is taken with reluctance; it trembles in his hand; and tears of compassion for this guilty wretch drop upon the page. It is not so much abhorrence of the guilty, as love of the innocent, and regard for their lives, peace, purity, and honour, that dooms the man to death. If he were pardoned, and his crime allowed to go unpunished, neither mans life nor womans virtue were safe. Unless this felon dies, the peace of a thousand happy families lies open to foul attack. Love for those who have the highest claim on a sovereigns protection requires that justice be satisfied, and the guilty die. There are scenes of domestic suffering which present another, no less convincing, and more touching analogy. It has happened that, from love and regard to the interests of his other children, to save them from a brothers contamination, a kind parent has felt constrained to pronounce sentence on his son, and banish him from his house. How sad to think that he may be lost! The dread of that goes like a knife to the heart; yet, bitter truth! painful conclusion! it is better that one child be lost than a whole family be lost. These lambs claim protection from the wolf; he must be driven forth from the fold. Love herself, while she weeps, demands this sacrifice; and, just because it is most lacerating, most excruciating, to a parents heart, it is in such a case the highest and holiest exercise of parental love to bar the door against a child. There have been parents so weak and foolish as to peril the morals, the fortunes, the souls of all their other children, rather than punish one; and in consequence of this I have seen sin, like a plague, infect every member of the family, and vice ferment and spread till it had leavened the whole lump. Divine love, however, is no blind Divinity: and God, being as wise as He is tender, sinners may rest assured, that out of mere pity to them He will neither sacrifice the interest nor peril the happiness of His people. Bleeding, dying, redeeming Love shall bolt the gates of heaven with her own hand, and from its happy, holy precincts exclude all that could hurt or defile.
III. Unless sin is to be awfully punished, the language of scripture appears extravagant. The sufferings and misery which await the impenitent and unbelieving have been painted by God in most appalling colours. They are such that, for our salvation, His Son descended from the heavens and expired upon a Cross. They are such that, when Paul thought of the lost, he wept like a woman. They are such that, though a dauntless man, who shook his chain in the face of kings, whose spirit no sufferings could subdue, and whose heart no dangers could appall, who stood as unmoved amid a thousand perils as ever sea rock amid the roaring billows, he could not contemplate the fate of the wicked without the deepest emotion. What horror did David feel at the sight and fate of sinners! With his face turned up to heaven, you see a blind man approach the edge of an awful precipice; every step brings him nearer, nearer still, to the brink, Now he reaches it; he stands on the grassy edge. Oh, for an arm to reach him, a voice to warn him, a blow to send him staggering back upon the ground. He has lifted his foot; it is projected beyond the brink; another moment, a breath of wind, the least change of balance, and he is whirling twenty fathoms down. You stop your ears; shut your eyes; turn away your head; horror takes hold of you. Such were Davids feelings when he contemplated the fate of the wicked. The wrath of God is the key to the Psalmists sorrow, to an Apostles tears, to the bloody mysteries of the Cross. That was the necessity which drew the Saviour down. God certainly is not willing that you should perish; and by these terrors He would persuade you to accept salvation. Meditate on these words: pray over them--Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Still, it is not terror which is the power, the mighty power of God. The Gospel, like most medicines for the body, is of a compound nature; but whatever else enters into its composition, its curative property is love. God, indeed, tells us of hell, but it is to persuade us to fly to heaven; and, as a skilful painter fills the background of his picture with his darker colours, God introduces the smoke of torment and the black thunder clouds of Sinai to give brighter prominence to the Cross, to Jesus, and His love to the chief of sinners. His voice of terror is like the scream of the mother bird when the hawk is in the sky. She alarms her brood that they may run and hide beneath her feathers; and as I believe that God had left that mother dumb unless He had given her wings to cover them, I am sure that He, who is very pitiful, and has no pleasure in the meanest creatures pain, had never turned our eyes on the horrible gulf unless for the voice that cries, Deliver him from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 36:18 Israel had made the land unfit for God’s…
36:18 Israel had made the land unfit for God’s presence through murder and the worship of idols. As a result of their covenant breaking, they were expelled from the land and scattered among the nations (see Deut 29:22-28).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.