Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Ezekiel 16:50

AND WE SHALL KNOW THEM. Their intention was to stop people from coming among them, as our Rabbis have said,¹⁷⁴Sanhedrin 109a. for they thought that because of the excellence of their land, which was as the garden of the Eternal,¹⁷⁵Above, 13:10. many will come there, and they despised charity. Lot, however, came to them with his riches and wealth [and was given permission to live in Sodom because] he either asked permission of them, or that they accepted him in honor of Abraham.
Now Scripture testifies that this was the intent of the people of Sodom, as it is said, Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and careless ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.¹⁷⁶Ezekiel 16:49. The verse stating, And the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against the Eternal exceedingly,¹⁷⁷Above, 13:13. This would seem to indicate that they sinned only against G-d but not against their fellow man. really means that they continued provoking and rebelling against Him with their ease and the oppression of the poor. It is this thought which Scripture expresses by saying, And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.¹⁷⁸Ezekiel 16:50.
In the opinion of our Rabbis,¹⁷⁹Sanhedrin 109a. all evil practices¹⁸⁰Such as blasphemy, bloodshed, etc. (Ibid.) were rampant among them. Yet their fate was sealed because of this sin — i.e., they did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy — since this sin represented their usual behavior more than any other. Besides, since all peoples act righteously towards their friends and their poor, there was none among all the nations who matched Sodom in cruelty.
Know that the judgment of Sodom was due to the superiority of the Land of Israel since Sodom is part of the inheritance of the Eternal,¹⁸¹II Samuel 20:19. and it does not suffer men of abominations. And just as it later vomited out a whole nation on account of their abominations,¹⁸²See Leviticus 18:25. so it now anticipated and saw that this entire people behaved worse than all nations towards Heaven and mankind. It thus laid waste heaven and earth for them, and the land was destroyed forever, never to be restored, since they became haughty on account of the goodness that was bestowed on them. The Holy One, blessed be He, thus made Sodom a token against the rebellious children,¹⁸³Numbers 17:25. that is, against the children of Israel who were destined to inherit it, even as He warned them: The whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and a burning… like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Eternal overthrew in His anger, and in His wrath.¹⁸⁴Deuteronomy 29:22. For there have been among nations those who were evil and exceedingly sinful, and yet He did not do to them as He did to Sodom. However it was all on account of the superiority of this land for there is the temple of the Eternal.¹⁸⁵Jeremiah 7:4. I plan to explain this in Seder Achrei Moth,¹⁸⁶Leviticus 18:24. if He Who taketh life and giveth life will sustain me in life.

וכל ערל לא יאכל בו, “and no uncircumcised male must eat of it” (the Passover lamb). This verse proves that Moses circumcised all the Israelites before they left Egypt. Concerning this circumcision our sages (Mechilta 8) state that G’d gave the Jewish people two commandments by the merit of which they were redeemed. They were the blood of circumcision and the blood of the Passover. Ezekiel immortalised this when he wrote: ואעבור עליך ואראך מתבוססת בדמיך ואמר לך בדמיך חיי, ואומר לך בדמיך חיי, “then I saw you wallowing in your blood; I said to you: “live because of your blood!” I said to you: “live through your blood!” (Ezekiel 16,6) This is why the Torah writes immediately after the prohibition of uncircumcised males participating in the eating of the Passover that “all the Israelites did as Hashem had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did” (verse 50). Earlier, in verse 28 when the Torah had also stated that the Israelites did what they had been commanded by Moses and Aaron, the word “all” could not be written as many of them at the time were ritually unclean and could not have eaten the Passover on that account. We have further evidence that the Israelites who participated in the Exodus had all been circumcised in Joshua 5,5 “for all the Israelites who left Egypt had been circumcised.”