Ezekiel 11:14 - Meaning and Application

Prophecy was meant to lift up the low places as well as bring down the proud mountains and hills (Isaiah 40:4). So prophets were not only to warn the confident and careless, but also to comfort those who felt crushed and trembled at God’s word. In the earlier part of this chapter, Ezekiel was given words to shake the people who felt safe in Zion. Now he is given words of comfort for the mourners in Babylon, who sat by the rivers and wept when they remembered Zion.

The pious captives were trampled on and mocked by those who stayed in Jerusalem. God tells Ezekiel what the people in Jerusalem were saying about him and the others who had already been taken to Babylon. God had called them good figs and said it was for their good that he had sent them into Babylon. But the people in Jerusalem looked down on them, as if the best saints were the worst sinners in Jerusalem.

God describes them as Ezekiel’s brothers, the people he should care about and love. They are also called the men of his kindred, a word that can mean next of kin, the one who has the right to redeem family property. Yet they were not able to redeem anything, because they themselves had gone into captivity. They are called the whole house of Israel, because God counted them as the true remnant, the ones who had kept their integrity and were improved by their suffering. They were of the same family and nation as Ezekiel, and also of the same spirit. They had heard him, shared in holy worship with him, and likely for that reason they are called his brothers and kindred.

The people in Jerusalem disowned them and said, “Get away from the Lord.” Those who were proud and comfortable scorned their humbled brothers under God’s hand. First, they cut them off from the church. Because these captives had separated from their rulers and, in obedience to God, had surrendered to the king of Babylon, the people in Jerusalem excommunicated them and said they wanted nothing to do with them. Superstitious people are often quick to cast off those who are careful to obey God, and to judge them as if the Lord had forsaken them.

Second, they cut them off from the nation as well, as if they had no share left in the land. They said, “This land belongs to us, and you have lost your estates by surrendering to the king of Babylon.” God notices this contempt, and he is deeply displeased when the prosperous look down on suffering brothers and sisters.

In response, God gives gracious promises to these captives because of the insulting way their brethren treated them. Those who hated them and cast them out said, “Let the Lord be glorified,” but God would show himself to their joy (Isaiah 66:5). God admits that his hand had gone out against them, and that is why their brethren triumphed over them (Ezekiel 11:16). It is true, he says, that he had scattered them among the nations and left them far away from home. They looked like a people abandoned and lost among the nations. Yet mercy was stored up for them.

God often uses the contempt shown to his people as a reason to speak comfort to them. David hoped that God would reward him with good for Shimei’s cursing. God’s time to steady his people’s hope is often when enemies are trying to push them toward despair. Here he promises, first, that he himself will make up for the loss of the temple and its privileges. “I will be a little sanctuary to them,” he says, “in the countries where they go” (Ezekiel 11:16). Those in Jerusalem have the temple but not God. Those in Babylon have God, though they do not have the temple.

God will be a sanctuary to them, a place of safety. They will flee to him and be safe in him, as the man who held tightly to the altar horns was safe. More than that, they will enjoy fellowship with God in exile in a way that was once thought possible only in the temple. They will see his power and glory there, just as they did in the sanctuary. They will have the signs of his presence, and his grace in their hearts will make their prayers and praises holy. In that way, they will please the Lord more than sacrifices of oxen and bulls.

He also calls himself a little sanctuary, hidden from the eye of enemies who looked with envy on the large and glorious house at Jerusalem (1 Kings 9:8). His people were few and lowly, so a little sanctuary was fitting for them. God pays attention to their humble condition and fits his gifts to their situation. This is a gracious act: the great God becomes a little sanctuary to his people. Those who are deprived of public worship, if it is no fault of their own, may find the lack richly supplied by God’s direct grace and comfort.

God also promises that he will end their suffering in due time, bring them out of captivity, and settle them again in their own land, either themselves or their children (Ezekiel 11:17). “I will gather even you,” he says, meaning those who have been scattered, despised, and treated as lost by their own countrymen. He will gather them from among the nations, set them apart from the people among whom they were mixed, rescue them from their captors, and bring them together as one body from the countries where they were scattered. They will not return one by one, but all together, which will make the return more honorable, safer, and more joyful. Then he will give them the land of Israel, the land their brethren now think is shut to them forever.

It is a comfort to know that people’s harsh judgments cannot shut us out from God’s gracious promises. Many who are counted out by unkind men will still have a place in the holy land. “I will give you the land of Israel,” God says, giving it again by a fresh grant, and “they shall come there.” If the wording shifts from “you” to “they,” it may point to their children after them. The promise belongs to them by title, as it did to the patriarchs, and their descendants will have the actual possession.

God also promises, by his grace, to separate them from their sins, especially their idolatry (Ezekiel 11:18). Their captivity will truly cure them of that evil. When they come back to their own land, they will remove all the detestable things from it.

Their idols had once been their delight, but now they would hate them. This would include not only the idols of Babylon, where they were captives, but also the idols of Canaan, where they had been born. They would not merely stop worshiping them, as they had before, but would also remove every trace of them. “They shall take all the abominations thereof thence.” The note is plain: it is mercy when we return to a peaceful and prosperous life, if we do not return to the sins and foolishness of that former life. “What do I have to do with idols anymore?”

4. God would also powerfully bend them toward their duty. They would not only stop doing evil, but learn to do good, because their troubles would end and their peace would return. God would plant good principles in them, and so make the tree good (Ezekiel 11:19). This is a gospel promise, and it is fulfilled in all whom God prepares for the heavenly Canaan. God prepares all for heaven whom he has prepared heaven for.

It is promised, first, that God will give them one heart, a heart wholly for the true God and not divided among many gods. It will be a heart firmly fixed on God, not wavering, steady, and not changing from one mood to another. One heart is a sincere and honest heart, where what a person means is the same as what they say.

Second, he will put a new spirit within them, a frame of mind fit for the new situation into which his providence would bring them. All who are made holy have a new spirit, completely different from what they once had. They act from new principles, walk by new rules, and aim at new goals. A new name or a new face will not help without a new spirit. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Third, he will take the stony heart out of their flesh, out of their corrupt nature. Their hearts would no longer be dead, dry, hard, and heavy like stone. They would no longer be unable to bear good fruit, so that the good seed is lost on them, as it was on the rocky ground.

Fourth, he will give them a heart of flesh, not dead flesh or proud flesh, but living flesh. He will make their hearts feel spiritual pain and spiritual joy. He will make them tender and ready to receive good impressions. This is God’s work, his gift, promised by him. It is a wonderful and happy change, from death to life. This promise was given to those whom God would bring back to their own land, because then a change in their condition would truly be good only if it came with a change in their hearts. The same change must happen in all who are brought to the better country, the heavenly one.

Their actions would match these new principles. “I will give them a new spirit” does not mean they may merely speak well about religion or argue for it, but that they may walk in my statutes in all their conduct and keep my ordinances in all acts of worship (Ezekiel 11:20). These two must go together. Those to whom God gives a new heart and a new spirit will take both seriously. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. The old covenant, which seemed broken and forgotten, would be renewed. By their idolatry, it seemed they had cast God off. By their captivity, it seemed God had cast them off. But when they were cured of their idolatry and brought out of captivity, God and his Israel would own one another again. By his work in them, God would make them his people. By his kindness toward them, he would show that he is their God.

III. Here is a warning of wrath against those who hated reform. When judgments are threatened, the righteous are set apart so they do not share in that harm. In the same way, when blessings are promised, the wicked are set apart so they do not share in that comfort. They have no part in it or share in it (Ezekiel 11:21). And what do those who have no grace have to do with peace?

Observe, first, their character. Their heart walks after the heart of their detestable things. They are just as eager to worship devils as devils are to be worshiped. Or, in contrast to the new heart God gives his people, which is a heart after his own heart, they have a heart shaped after their idols. In temper and conduct, they matched the kind of beings they imagined their idols to be, and from them they learned sin and cruelty. Here is the root of all their wickedness, the corruption of the heart. In the same way, the root of reform is the renewing of the heart. The heart has its own path, and a person’s life follows it.

Second, observe their doom. It is both just and frightening: “I will repay their way on their own heads.” God will deal with them as they deserve. Nothing more is needed to show that God is righteous than this, that he gives people what their deeds deserve. And yet sin deserves such a payment that nothing more is needed to show that the sinner is miserable.