Nevertheless, my eye spared them, and I did not destroy them or make a full end of them in the wilderness.
This is added, because God often afflicted the people with heavy punishments, but he restrained himself, that he should not utterly destroy both their persons and their name. He says, then, that he spared them through respect for his own name, as he formerly said, that he should not execute consumption on them; that is, that he should not utterly blot out the memory of them.
The history of the struggle between the sins of Israel, by which they endeavoured to ruin themselves, and the mercies of God, by which he endeavoured to save them and make them happy, is here continued: and the instances of that struggle in these verses have reference to what passed between God and them in the wilderness, in which God honoured himself and they shamed themselves.
Commenting on Ezekiel 20:10-26
Nevertheless, mine eye spared them from destroying them,.... Utterly, so as to leave neither root nor branch; for though the whole generation died excepting two, either by the immediate hand of God in wrath, or else by ordinary deaths; yet there was a generation raised up in their stead, to whom mercy was shown: neither did I make an end of them in the wilderness...