Charles Ellicott Commentary Ezekiel 11:19-20

"And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God." — Ezekiel 11:19-20 (ASV)

Here follows one of those germinant and ever-developing prophetic promises which, in an ever-fuller measure, have formed from the very beginning, and still form, the hope of the future. True religion and a service acceptable to God must spring from a submission of the heart's affections to His will. Accordingly, the promise to Israel of old was: “The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 30:6).

This, too, had been the prayer of the devout penitent, “Create in me a clean heart” (Psalms 51:10). But this change is necessarily the most difficult to effect in humankind, and consequently the promise, though with some degree of accomplishment as the ages roll by, still looks forward to the future. Ezekiel here, and with greater fullness in Ezekiel 36:26-27, speaks of it as a part of the blessing of the restoration.

A marked progress was then made towards it in the wholehearted abandonment of idolatry and the better appreciation of religion as a matter of internal service of the heart; but the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:33, given about the same time, shows that it looked forward to the Messianic days for a more complete realisation. And certainly under the Christian dispensation a great advance has been made in this respect; but even the closing Book of Revelation still points forward to the future state of existence, when this promise shall attain its full realisation (Revelation 21:3).

It is remarkable that this closing prophecy of the inspired volume follows exactly the plan laid out here, of adding to this glorious promise the warning to “the fearful and unbelieving”. What Ezekiel foretells of the time of the restoration must therefore be considered as not expected then to receive its ultimate and complete fulfilment, but only a fulfilment to a degree, to be increasingly realised ever after, until it shall reach its consummation in the heavenly state.