20:18 But I said to their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the statutes of your {i} fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols:
(i) By which the Holy Spirit confuses them that say that they will follow the religion and example of their fathers, and not measure their doings by God's word whether they are approved by it or not.
20:18 Walk ye not - Live not as your fathers did.
20:10-26. The history of Israel in the wilderness is referred to in the new Testament as well as in the Old, for warning. God did great things for them. He gave them the law, and revived the ancient keeping of the sabbath day. Sabbaths are privileges; they are signs of our being his people. If we do the duty of the day, we shall find, to our comfort, it is the Lord that makes us holy, that is, truly happy, here; and prepares us to be happy, that is, perfectly holy, hereafter. The Israelites rebelled, and were left to the judgments they brought upon themselves. God sometimes makes sin to be its own punishment, yet he is not the Author of sin: there needs no more to make men miserable, than to give them up to their own evil desires and passions.
