23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. 24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29 And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. 30 I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. 31 Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. 32 It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.
33 “Thus says the Lord God: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. 34 And the land that was desolate shall be tilled, instead of being the desolation that it was in the sight of all who passed by. 35 And they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.’36 Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the Lord; I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.
37 “Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their people like a flock. 38 Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of people. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”
We cannot leave this passage, wonderful as it is, without saying something about the questions that it inevitably raises with regard to its interpretation. Are we to spiritualise it, and apply it to the Church? Are we to say that these words were fulfilled in the first advent of Christ, as Peter, quoting Joel, seems to suggest in Acts 2? They must surely have had application to the Jews of Ezekiel's day, in reference to their return to the land, but can it really be said that the new covenant was instituted then, in that return? And is there any application to the Jews of our own day, as some schools of prophetic teaching maintain? Has Paul's teaching in Romans 11 about the place of Israel as a nation in the economy of God anything to say in our understanding of these words? It is clear that a whole host of questions arise here, that must be looked at. There are two diametrically opposed views held on this issue: one is the classical view, held within the Reformed faith, in which all the promises of renewal are referred to the Church, as the new Israel of God; the other is the 'dispensational' view, by which everything said here is referred literally to the Jews, and therefore, since these promises were not fulfilled when the Jews returned from their exile in Babylon to the land, the passage must be regarded as futuristic, and as yet to be fulfilled in the end-time. We shall look at these opposing interpretations in more detail in the next Note.