Ezekiel 20:24
Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols. Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols.
Ezekiel 20:24 names four distinct acts of disobedience as the ground of condemnation: failure to carry out God's judgments, rejection and contempt of His statutes, profanation and pollution of His Sabbaths, and fixing the eyes and affections upon the idols of the fathers. The polluting of the Sabbaths took place through the forty years in the wilderness, even though Israel was reminded every week of the sacred obligation of the Sabbath by the miracle of the manna. That Sabbath pollution stands among the reasons the first generation was shut out of Canaan. Their children did not learn the lesson but continued the same laxness and neglect of the fourth commandment, and although the second generation was permitted to enter Canaan, God declared that for this unfaithfulness they would afterward be scattered among the heathen following settlement in the land of promise.
Because of that continual rebellion and disobedience, God annexed to transgression of His law added penalties that were not good for the transgressor, judgments whereby the rebel should not live in his rebellion, bringing death. Those added statutes described as not good and judgments whereby they should not live mean penalties not good for the transgressor and whereby he should not live on in rebellion. The statutes and judgments themselves were good for the obedient, who would live by them and live in them.
To transgress the law given in unapproachable majesty and glory was to show open contempt for the great Lawgiver, and death was the penalty. In the civil law punishment was to be inflicted upon the transgressor so that others would be restrained by fear.