How would the returning exiles do away with idolatry which had been practiced for centuries (Ezekiel 11:18-20)?
18 And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. 19 w And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 21 But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God."
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Tim Maas
Supporter
Interpretations of Ezekiel 11:18 from multiple Biblical commentators, as noted at biblehub.com: Ellicott: "Chastened and purified by their chastisement, they should return to the land to do away utterly with the abominations which had caused their exile. Historically, this was fully realised in the abomination in which idolatry, the great sin of the people, was ever after held among the Jews. The change of person from you to they, though so common as not necessarily to call for remark, may yet here possibly indicate that what is foretold was to belong rather to their children than to themselves." Jamieson-Fausset-Brown: "They have eschewed every vestige of idolatry ever since their return from Babylon. But still the Shekinah glory had departed, the ark was not restored, nor was the second temple strictly inhabited by God until He [that is, Jesus] came who made it more glorious than the first temple (Hag 2:9); even then His stay was short, and ended in His being rejected; so that the full realization of the promise must still be future." Gill: "[T]his had its accomplishment under Zerubbabel, Ezra, Haggai, &c. when the worship of God was restored, and there was a reformation of many abuses in religion; and again in the times of the Maccabees; and will have a greater fulfilment at the time of the conversion of the Jews; when everything that is detestable and abominable among that people will be removed; of which conversion the following words are a prophecy."
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