NOTES for Eze 36:1-38
Today's reading brings us back once more to the theme of the covenant and its significance in the destiny of God's people. What first catches the eye is the inadequacy of the human assessment of events: individuals and whole nations alike view what is happening through the prism of their own passing interests and therefore take the temporary for the unchangeable, believing that the established order of things will forever remain as it has become. Thus Judah's neighbors regarded its defeat as something not only natural and desirable for themselves, but also final. Yet God has His own plans both for Judah and for its neighbors—plans that neither victors nor vanquished yet even suspect (vv. 2–15).
These plans, however, are based least of all on the selfish interests of particular tribes and nations. God places His own plan at the center, and in it His people come first. This is by no means because they surpass everyone in spiritual or moral qualities: in Ezekiel's time, as before, the situation in Judah was very sad in this respect, and it was this that led the people to catastrophe (vv. 17–19). God's people became part of God's grand design for the salvation of humanity and the transfiguration of all creation, and this design must not and cannot remain unfulfilled. Therefore God Himself does what His people are unable to do. Had Jewish history ended in captivity and subsequent assimilation, it would have become a counter-witness that God could not allow (vv. 20–21). Yet the life the people had led in the land of their fathers before the captivity was also a counter-witness (vv. 17–19), for apart from certain religious attributes, their life differed in no way from that of the nations surrounding Israel.
True witness requires a new people, but only God Himself can renew the human person, and He is ready to do this with His people if only they consent to such a renewal of their life (vv. 22–32). Clearly, the people have no merit here, and righteousness proves to be not a merit but a gift from God: no one can obtain for himself a new heart, which can only be received from God (vv. 26–27). Received freely, in return for nothing more than consent to take part in the fulfillment of God's great design for the world and for oneself.