Page 10 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

4 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.

which my covenant they brake, although I was a
husband unto them, saith Jehovah ! But this shall
be the covenant that I make with the house of Israel:
After those days, saith Jehovah, I will put my law in
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts: and
will be their God, and they shall be my people. And
they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and
every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah: for
they shall all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will forgive
their iniquity and will remember their sins no more.”
No doubt this is true of the Christian meanwhile, for
the blood of the new covenant is already shed and
ours by faith ; but it will be applied to Israel and
Judah as such through divine mercy in that day, as
the verses of Jeremiah which follow (35—40) most
clearly shew.
In vain then do Rabbins reason on the unchange-
ablenes8 of the law given by Moses : their own
prophets refute them. And so the famous D. Kimchi
owns in his comment on our prophet, as Albo and
Nachmanides acknowledge also against the absolute
claim of immutability. Indeed Albo expressly refutes
the use Maimonides makes of Deuteronomy xii. 22 to
the contrary, shewing that the real bearing of Moses’
warning is to restrain the Israelites from arbitrarily or
in self-will presuming to add to or take from the law.*
In no way did Moses mean to deny the authority of
a prophet to do so, especially in view of the vast
change to be introduced by the presence of a reign­

* See especially Sepher Ikkarim., p. iii. c. 16.