But I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols: I am the Lord your God; walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God. Notwithstanding the children rebelled against me: they walked not in my statutes, neither kept my judgments to do them, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; they polluted my sabbaths: then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness. Nevertheless I withdrew mine hand, and wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted in the sight of the heathen, in whose sight I brought them forth. I lifted up mine hand unto them also in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them through the countries; 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. Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord (verses 18-26). And now the record of the second generation in the wilderness is brought to their notice. They were just as rebellious as their fathers, who fell in the wilderness. They also were worshippers of idols in the wilderness, besides offering sacrifices and offerings unto Jehovah (Amos v:25-27). The statement in verse 25 "wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live," has been explained in different ways. It cannot mean the law, for that is holy, just and good. "The solution is due to the simple principle that God in His government chastens His guilty people retributively and calls the scourges His own, even when the instruments may be wholly foreign to His mind and heart." They were disobedient to His statutes and then in punishment for their sins He let them go into the terrible worship of Moloch, in casting their first-born into the fire as a sacrifice to the idol-god. It is the same principle here as in Romans i:26-28. God gave them up in every way after they had turned away from Him. It was a punishment for their sins. II. Their Sins in the Land.