Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

In this text, which summarizes the expectation of salvation throughout the whole book of Ezekiel, there are five series of statements:

First series: Israel dwelt in the Land God had given it. But it did not live according to Torah, the social order given by God. It did not serve the God who had chosen it but other gods. Thus it despised the Land and profaned the Name of God. It filled the Land with envy, hatred, and rivalry. So it spoiled the Land and destroyed the brilliance that ought to emanate from it.

Second series: God could not endure this profanation and despising of the Land. He had to drive Israel out of the Land and disperse it among the pagan nations. But why did God have to drive out his people? People today resist such an image of God. Must God punish? Must God deport people? What the Bible means is more obvious if we formulate such statements consistently in human terms: a society that constantly lives contrary to God’s order of creation destroys itself. That is true in particular of the people of God with its special calling for the sake of the other nations. If it stubbornly acts contrary to its calling, it destroys the ground on which it stands. It destroys its basis. It deprives itself of its land and of its very existence.

Third series: The scattering of Israel among the nations, which it has brought on itself, makes things still worse, since the result of this dispersion is that the Name of God is profaned still further. Now all the world ridicules Israel and its God. The nations say: what a miserable, powerless god this YHWH is! He is a god who does not care for his own people. He is a god without a people. He is a god without a country.

Fourth series: God has to put an end to this profanation of his Name. He cannot allow his Name to continue to be made a laughingstock because of Israel’s dispersal among the nations. Therefore God himself will now hallow his Name before all the nations. The fact that he intervenes is not at all due to Israel’s deserving.

Fifth series: How does God put an end to this unbearable state of things? How does he hallow his Name? He does so by gathering his people from the dispersion and bringing them back into the Land. He hallows his Name by freeing the Israelites from their idols and giving them a new heart and a new spirit. He takes the hearts of stone out of their breasts and gives them hearts of flesh. So it becomes possible for Israel to live according to the social order God has ordained.

The first petition of the Our Father summarizes this whole text from Ezekiel 36 in a single sentence. The petition “hallowed be Thy Name” begs God to gather his people from the dispersion, to make them one people again, give them a new heart, and fill them with the Holy Spirit. To put it another way: the first petition of the Our Father implores that there once again be a place in the world where the glory and honor of God are visible—a place because of which God’s name can be honored, and also called upon, even by the nations.

But it is true that the Our Father does not speak of the people of God in the same way as, for example, the Shemoneh Esrei does. Nothing is said about the house of David. The city of Jerusalem is not mentioned, nor are Zion and the temple, because in the time of Jesus all that could have been misunderstood as political, and particularly by the Zealot movement with which Jesus was constantly confronted, and by many others as well. Jesus’ whole concern is with the honor of God, with God’s good name. God’s only honor is his people, but not a people understood in nationalistic terms; instead, this people is an Israel such as Ezekiel had in mind.