Ezekiel 16:21

Eze 16:21 That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through [the fire] for them?

Ver. 21. That thou hast slain my children.] Note that he yet calleth them his children, though so born, and so murdered. See on Eze 16:20.

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.

Verse 21. To cause them to pass through the fire] Bp. Newcome quotes a very apposite passage from Dionysius Halicarnass. Ant. Rom. lib. i., s. 88, p. 72, and marg. p. 75, Edit. Hudson: Μετα δε τουτο, πυρκαΐας προ των σκηνων γενεσθαι κελευσας, εξαγει τον λεων τας φλογας ὑπερθρωσκοντα,της ὁσιωσεως των μιασματων ἑνεκα. "And after this, having ordered that fires should be made before the tents, he brings out the people to leap over the flames, for the purifying of their pollutions." This example shows that we are not always to take passing through the fire for being entirely consumed by it. Among the Israelites this appears to have been used as a rite of consecration.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

He strengthens the same sentence, and more clearly explains that they offered their sons and daughters by cruelly sacrificing them when they passed them through the fire. This was a kind of purifying, as we have seen elsewhere. When, therefore, they passed their children through the fire, it was a rite of illustration and expiation; and they brought them to the fire, as I have lately explained, in two different ways. Here the Prophet speaks especially of that cruel and brutal offering. We have already mentioned the sense in which God claims a right in the sons of his people, not as members of the Church properly speaking, but as adopted by God. And here again we must hold what Paul says, that all the progeny of Abraham were not lawful sons, since a difference must be made between sons of the flesh and sons of promise. (Romans 9:7, 8.) This is as yet partially obscure, but it may be shortly explained. We may remark that there was a twofold election of God: since speaking generally, he chose the whole family of Abraham. For circumcision was common to all, being the symbol and seal of adoption: since when God wished all the sons of Abraham to be circumcised from the least to the greatest, he at the same time chose them as his sons: this was one kind of adoption or election. But the other was secret, because God took to himself out of that multitude those whom he wished: and these are sons of promise, these are remnants of gratuitous favor, as Paul says. (Romans 11:8.) This distinction, therefore, now takes away all doubt, since the Prophet speaks of the unbelievers and the profane who had departed from the worship of God. For this their unbelief was a complete abdication. It is true, then, that as far as themselves were concerned, they were strangers, and so God’s secret election did not flourish in them, but yet they were God’s people, as far as relates to external profession. If any one objects that this circumcision was useless, and hence their election without the slightest effect, the answer is at hand: God by his singular kindness honored those miserable ones by opening a way of approach for them to the hope of life and salvation by the outward testimonies of adoption. Then as to their being at the same time strangers, that happened through their own fault. Hence we may shortly hold, that the Jews were naturally accursed through being Adam’s seed: but by supernatural and singular privilege, they were exempt and free from the curse: since circumcision was a testimony of the adoption by which God had consecrated them to himself: hence they were holy; and as to their being impure, it could not, as we have said, abolish God’s covenant. The same thing ought at this time to prevail in the Papacy. For we are all born under the curse: and yet God acknowledges supernaturally as his sons all who spring from the faithful, not only in the first or second degree, but even to a thousand generations. And so Paul says that the children of the faithful are holy, since baptism does not lose its efficacy, and the adoption of God remains fixed, (1 Corinthians 7:14,) yet the greater part is without the covenant through their own unbelief. God meanwhile has preserved to himself a remnant in all ages, and at this day he chooses whom he will out of the promiscuous multitude.

Now let us go on. I had omitted at the end of the last verse the phrase, Are thy fornications a small matter? By this question God wishes to press the Jews home, since they had not only violated their conjugal fidelity by prostituting themselves to idols, but had added the cruelty which we have seen in slaying their sons. Lastly, he shows that their impiety was desperate.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

21. hast … delivered them] Or, didst deliver them up, in causing them, as R.V. The child passed into the possession of the deity when consumed in the fire.

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.

And in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms,.... Or idolatries, which were abominable to God, and were many; of which that just mentioned was not one of the least:

thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth; the destitute and forlorn condition then in, and what favours were then bestowed:

when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood; See Gill on Eze 16:6; See Gill on Eze 16:7; which is mentioned to upbraid the Jews with their ingratitude; they forgetting the miserable condition they were in in Egypt, and what great things the Lord had done for them in bringing them out from thence, and the obligations they were laid under to him: and yet, after all this, to commit such abominable iniquities, and in the midst of them all never once call to mind what they had received from him; which might have been a check to their idolatries, but so it was not.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Thy blind superstition called this religion, and accounted it sacrifice, but truth is it was unnatural murder; it is as if thou hadst cut their throat, nay, worse, because it put them to greater torture. The word is used Isa 57:5; Hos 5:2.

My children; sons here are first-born, which peculiarly were devoted to God, he reserved a special right in these, and yet this cruel mother, this perfidious wife, this sacrilegious adulteress, sacrificeth these to her idols.

Delivered them; either gave them to the idol’s priests, or rather with her own hands gave them, i.e. led them through the fire, if lustrated, or put them into the idol’s arms of brass or iron, which grasped them fast whilst they were consumed with fire that made the idol red hot.

For them; for the idol’s worship, or possibly for the parents, who did wickedly imagine this a way to preserve and prosper the rest of their children.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

21. Thou hast slain my children — The divine husband yearns over his innocent ones slain by the heartless mother. Archinard gives the following lurid description of these sacrifices to Moloch: “A fire of aloes, of cedar, and of laurel burned between the knees of the colossus. The unguents with which it was bathed ran like sweat down its limbs of bronze. The children, enveloped with black veils, formed an immovable circle, and toward these the god extended his long arms and lowered his palms as if to bear them into the sky. The king, the chiefs, the women, and all the multitude assembled behind the priests on the parched slopes which border the valley of Hinnom. On the distant walls of the city shine the weapons of angry soldiers. The smoke of incense mounts perpendicularly. An infinite anguish weighs on all bosoms. The people of Jerusalem are absorbed with the great tragedy. Finally, the high priest of Moloch passes his left hand under the veils of the children and cuts from each brow a lock of hair which he throws into the flame. Now men in blood red mantles sound forth the sacred hymn: —

Homage to the sun,

King of two zones; the unbegotten.

Father and mother, father and son,

God and goddess, goddess and god.

The voices of the singers are lost in the burst of instrumental music sounding suddenly to stifle the cries of the victims whom the knife of the priest is about to slay. The sheminith, the kinnor, the nebel sound forth, and the tambourine is beaten with heavy and repeated strokes. The temple slaves with long hooks open various compartments into the body of Baal. Into the highest they introduce flour; into the second, two turtles; into the third, a lamb; into the fourth, a ram; into the fifth, a calf; into the sixth, an ox. The seventh remains yawning open like the mouth of an oven. The instruments are silent, the fire roars, the priests of Moloch march in state before the multitude. The arms of brass lower themselves to the sacrificial victims. Each time that a child is lifted by them the priests place their hands upon it to burden it with the crimes of the people. The air is rent with the cries of the devotees, ‘Baal, eat!’ ‘Lord, eat!’ The victim lifted to the border by the brazen arms disappears like a drop of water on a red-hot plate, and a white smoke ascends into the crimson glow. The hideous idol has already licked with its thousand tongues of fire the most beautiful children of Jerusalem. On a sign from the sovereign pontiff, the priests seize the son of the king and the body of the little prince disappears after the others in the midst of the furnace. A nauseating smoke robs the eyes of the mob of the last horrors.” — Israel et ses voisins Asiatiques, Geneve, 1890, pp. 223-228.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For them - For the idols.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.