Page 185 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXVI. 179

you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within
you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall
keep my judgments, and do [them]. And ye shall dwell
in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall
be my ^people, and I will be your God.” (Ver. 25—28.)
Was the Jew, not to speak of Israel, then cleansed
from all his filthiness? Malachi tells a different tale;
and so in fact did our Lord prove in person. Here
when fulfilled we have no less a blessing promised than
the new birth of the Jewish people. God will give
them a new heart and a new spirit, take away the heart
of stone, and give a heart of flesh. He will put His
Spirit within them, and cause that they shall walk in
holy obedience, they His people, and He their God.
It is the grossest exaggeration to assume that this has
ever yet been accomplished, though in addition to this
is an allusion to these verses in our Lord’s words in
John iii. 5: most real, yet wholly distinct from its
predicted application.
But there is more. For the prophet proceeds to say
that this blessedness in store for Israel will include
outward favour and earthly abundance in a way never
known before. “ I will also save you from all your
tmcleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will
increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And I will
multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the
field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine
among the heathen.”
It is in vain to fritter away this prediction of restored
and increased fertility, or to treat it as either incredible or
not an effect of Divine power extraordinarily shewn, as
being beneath the attention of God. The New Testament