Now because of your sins and those of your fathers God charged you to keep the sabbath as a sign, as I said already, and has also given you His other ordinances. He also signifies that because of the Gentiles — lest His name should be profaned among them — He allowed some of you at least to remain alive. All this can be clearly proved to you by these His own utterances.
Now they have been spoken by Ezekiel as follows: I am the Lord your God. Walk in my ordinances, and keep my judgments, and do not mingle yourselves with the customs of Egypt, and hallow my sabbaths, and they shall be for a sign between Me and you, to know that I am the Lord your God. And ye provoked Me, and your children did not go in My ordinances, and did not keep My judgments to do them, which if a man do he shall live in them, but they profaned My sabbaths.
And I said that I would pour out Mine anger upon them in the wilderness, to accomplish my wrath upon them, and I did not, in order that my name should not be at all profaned before the nations, in whose sight I brought them out. And I lifted up my hand against them in the wilderness, to scatter them among the nations, and to sow them broadcast in the countries, because they did not do my judgments, and rejected my ordinances, and profaned my sabbaths, and their eyes were after the imaginations of their fathers.
And I gave them ordinances that were not good, and judgments in which they shall not live; and I will defile them in their houses, when I pass through to destroy everything that openeth the womb.Ezekiel 20:19-26