Ezekiel 36:11

Ezekiel predicted the desolation of the land in chapter 6 of his book. In chapter 36:1-15 he announces its returning fertility, which prepares the way for the nation's restoration. In the days of Joshua God brought them into the land with everything ready for them to occupy at once. So it will be in the future… This has always been God's way. He planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there He put the man He had formed. The One who did this has gone to prepare a place for His own in His Father's house. The place, the land, is prepared beforehand, and then God brings His people into it. The returning fertility of the land is the forerunner of full national blessing.

It is to be, as the faithfulness of God is pledged to make it, a land that shall be "the glory of all lands," a land on which His eye rests continually… So God has pledged Himself; and, as in other cases, if He restores, it is not merely to the old fruitfulness, to the condition at the beginning, but to one far better than at the beginning.

In vain do men apply such glowing words to the return from Babylon, which was only a foretaste of what is coming for the entire people. Did the Lord multiply men on the mountains of Israel, "all the house of Israel, even all of it"? (v. 10) No one who respects Scripture and knows the facts can pretend that He did. Such words seem written expressly to guard souls from views so thin and misleading. Did the Lord settle the returned remnant as in their former times, and do more good to them than at their beginnings? (v. 11)

No! The fulfilment of the prophecy is still to come, but come it will, as surely as the Lord lives and has sworn in this way through His prophet concerning the land of Israel. To suppose that the gospel or the church is meant by such language is very far from simplicity or intelligence.

You remember when the spies went up to the land. All except Joshua and Caleb said it was "a land that devours its inhabitants" — so barren that people could not live on it… Many cannot live there. They do not yet get "the first and the latter rain," and until that comes the land cannot feed the people. But the Scripture says, "I will give you the rain of your land in its due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil." It will yet bring forth abundantly, for the curse will be removed, and Jesus will be there.

It will be through judgment that all the nations shall know that the Lord is God. But when God has carried out the judgment and all the earth rejoices in blessing, Edom will have judgment only… We may see the two ways of making the Lord known in the case of Israel (Ezek. 24:24-27; 28:26; 34:27; 36:11). In the other cases it is by judgment.

Finally comes His restoring grace, with its effects on the heart and ways of Israel, and His power in renewing their land to more than its former prosperity and fruitfulness. Through all this the Lord is sanctified before the nations.