Ezekiel 36:35

36:25-38 Water is an emblem of the cleansing our polluted souls from sin. But no water can do more than take away the filth of the flesh. Water seems in general the sacramental sign of the sanctifying influences of the Holy Ghost; yet this is always connected with the atoning blood of Christ. When the latter is applied by faith to the conscience, to cleanse it from evil works, the former is always applied to the powers of the soul, to purify it from the pollution of sin. All that have an interest in the new covenant, have a new heart and a new spirit, in order to their walking in newness of life. God would give a heart of flesh, a soft and tender heart, complying with his holy will. Renewing grace works as great a change in the soul, as the turning a dead stone into living flesh. God will put his Spirit within, as a Teacher, Guide, and Sanctifier. The promise of God's grace to fit us for our duty, should quicken our constant care and endeavour to do our duty. These are promises to be pleaded by, and will be fulfilled to, all true believers in every age.

And they shall say,.... Either the neighbouring nations that lived round about the land of Israel, Ezekiel 36:36 , or rather the travellers, as before, who having as they passed by observed what it had been, and now see what it is; these shall say to one another: this land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; for delight and fruitfulness: this may well be applied to the flourishing and fruitful state of the church of God, consisting of converted Jews, in the latter day: and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited; which, as it will be true of cities in a literal sense, so of the churches of Christ in Judea in a spiritual sense; which will be rebuilt by the grace of God, fenced and fortified by his almighty power, and inhabited by true believers.

(35) Like the garden of Eden.— This may be meant merely to describe the exceeding excellence and prosperity of the land; but, in connection with what has been previously said, it seems rather to point forward to that state in which man shall again be entirely freed from sin, which has been the state for which the Church in all ages has been preparing.

Verse 35. - This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden. (For the reverse picture, see Joel 2:3 .) The thought of the first Paradise ( Genesis 2:8 ), in the historicity of which clearly Ezekiel believed, was one on which his mind often dwelt ( Ezekiel 28:13 ; Ezekiel 31:9 ) as an ideal of earthly beauty and fertility which should recur in the closing age of the world - a hope which appears to have been shared by Isaiah ( Isaiah 51:3 ), and taken up by John ( Revelation 2:7 ; Revelation 22:1-3 ). In the day when that hope should be realized for Israel, the waste, desolate, and ruined cities , on which the passers-by who visited Palestine gazed, should be fenced and inhabited ; literally, inhabited as fortresses . The three predicates, "waste," "desolate," and" ruined," have been distinguished as signifying "stripped of its inhabitants," "untilled in its lands," and "broken down in its buildings;" in contrast with which, in the golden era of the future, the towns should be inhabited, the fields tilled, and the ruined fortresses built. Ezekiel 36:35

Ye shall be my people - (Compare 2 Corinthians 6:16-18 ; Hebrews 8:10 . The writers of the New Testament appropriated these and similar phrases of the Old Testament to the Church of Christ. Between the restoration of the Jews (the first step) there are many steps toward the end - the spread of Christ's Church throughout the world, the conversion of the Gentiles, and the acknowledgment of the true God - which justify men in looking forward to a time when the Gospel shall be preached in all the world, and the earth become the kingdom of God in a fuller sense than it has ever yet been. But all these are "steps." Our prophecies look beyond all this to a new heaven to a new earth, and to a new Jerusalem Revelation 21:3 .

They shall say; strangers or foreigners, who had heard or seen the sad wastes, and now either hear or see the replanting of it, and how it succeedeth. Like the garden of Eden; see the phrase Ezekiel 28:13 ; most fruitful, pleasant, and desirable. This is true of the church of Christ without an hyperbole, but here it is to be accommodated by a comparative, thus; that good state the Jews are now in, compared with what they were in, is as an Eden to a wilderness. Fenced ; not only built for habitation, but fortified for defence.

35. they shall say—The heathen, who once made Israel's desolation a ground of reproach against the name of Jehovah Himself (Eze 36:20, 21); but now He so vindicates its sanctity (Eze 36:22, 23) that these same heathen are constrained to acknowledge Israel's more than renewed blessedness to be God's own work, and a ground for glorifying His name (Eze 36:36). Eden—as Tyre (the type of the world powers in general: so Assyria, a cedar "in the garden of God, Eden," Eze 31:8, 9), in original advantages, had been compared to "Eden, the garden of God" (Eze 28:13), from which she had fallen irrecoverably; so Israel, once desolate, is to be as "the garden of Eden" (Isa 51:3), and is to be so unchangeably.

The Lord will richly bless, multiply, and glorify His people, when thus renewed and sanctified. - Ezekiel 36:29 . And I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and will call the corn, and multiply it, and no more bring famine upon you; Ezekiel 36:30 . But I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, so that ye will no more bear the reproach of famine among the nations. Ezekiel 36:31 . But ye will remember your evil ways, and your deeds which were not good, and will loathe yourselves on account of your iniquities and your abominations. Ezekiel 36:32 . Not for your sake do I this, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, be this known to you; be ye ashamed and blush for your ways, O house of Israel! Ezekiel 36:33 . Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, In the day when I shall cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will make the cities inhabited, and the ruins shall be built, Ezekiel 36:34 . And the devastated land shall be tilled instead of being a desert before the eyes of every one who passed by. Ezekiel 36:35 . And men will say, This land, which was laid waste, has become like the garden of Eden, and the desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited. Ezekiel 36:36 . And the nations, which have been left round about you, shall know that I Jehovah build up that which is destroyed, and plant that which is laid waste. I, Jehovah, have said it, and do it. Ezekiel 36:37 .

Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will still let myself be sought by the house of Israel in this, to do it for them; I will multiply them, like a flock, in men; Ezekiel 36:38 . Like a flock of holy sacrifices, like the flock of Jerusalem on its feast-days, so shall the desolate cities be full of flocks of men; and they shall know that I am Jehovah. - The words 'הושׁעתּי , I help or save you from all your uncleannesses, cannot be understood as relating to their purification from the former uncleannesses; for they have already been cleansed from these, according to Ezekiel 36:25 . The טמאות can only be such defilements as are still possible even after the renewing of the people; and הושׁע, to help, means to guard them against any further recurrence of such defilements (cf. Ezekiel 37:23 ), and not to deliver them from the consequences of their former pollutions. But if God preserves His people from these, there is no longer any occasion for a fresh suspension of judgments over them, and God can bestow His blessing upon the sanctified nation without reserve. It is in this way that the further promises are appended; and, first of all, in Ezekiel 36:29 and Ezekiel 36:30 , a promise that He will bless them with an abundant crop of fruits, both of the orchard and the field. "I call to the corn," i.e., I cause it to come or grow, so that famine will occur no more (for the fact, compare Ezekiel 34:29 ).