The promise of Final Hope. The New Everlasting Covenant.
Once again Ezekiel surprises us by introducing hope in the midst of gloom. He reminds us that God's purpose behind all that is to come is the final restoration of His people. This is a trait of the book, the shining of a light in the midst of almost unrelieved gloom. Jerusalem must indeed fall, the Temple must indeed be destroyed, the people must indeed go though much turmoil and suffering, hope must almost seem gone, but in the end God's longsuffering and unmerited love towards His people will be revealed in complete restoration.
“Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish to you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways, and be ashamed, when you will receive your sisters, your elder sisters and your younger, and I will give them to you for daughters, but not by your treaty-making (covenant). And I will establish my covenant with you and you will know that I am Yahweh.”
God will never forget His covenant with His people, made at the very beginning. His love and His promises made there still stand, hindered only by their intransigence. So one day He will establish with them a new covenant, an everlasting covenant.
When this takes place they will think back on their behaviour and be ashamed (compare Ezekiel 20:43; Ezekiel 36:31; Zechariah 12:10-14), and this covenant will not only include them, but also many ‘sisters' both older and younger. God's covenant will not only be for them, but for the world. And it will be none of their doing, nor will it be the result of their political manoeuvrings.
These verses are remarkable in what they reveal. Firstly they indicate that the first covenant, the covenant of Sinai, was insufficient because of man's weakness and because it was not all inclusive.
Secondly it indicates that the new covenant will be everlasting. There will be no way of annulling it, for it will be brought about by God's activity and not man's, and will therefore succeed in its aims. It will thus never cease. We can compare here the words of Jeremiah where he speaks of the new covenant which will be written in men's hearts, ‘I will put My law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart, and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And they will no more teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying “Know Yahweh”, for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, says Yahweh, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more' (Jeremiah 31:33-34). See also Ezekiel 36:25-32; Ezekiel 11:18-20; Ezekiel 37:26-28; Isaiah 59:21; Isaiah 61:8. It promises full, total, and permanent restoration through the powerful working of God by His Spirit in men's hearts.
Thirdly it excludes man having any part in it except as the recipient. It will not be by man's treaty-making.
Fourthly it promises that at the last men will be ashamed of what they have been, as they respond with others to the grace of God.
Fifthly it reaches far beyond God's original people to the whole world, to both old and new nations (the elder sisters and the younger sisters in their plurality go far beyond Sodom and Samaria), in the same way as His covenant with Abraham, for this covenant is the final outworking of that one (Genesis 12:3). That covenant, unsought, unmerited, and unconditional, began it all, this one, unsought, unmerited, and unconditional, will be its final realisation.
“And I will establish my covenant with you and you will know that I am Yahweh.” All the way through these past Chapter s we have had the refrain ‘and you will know that I am Yahweh', and it has always seemed like a threat, for the point was always that they would know it through judgment on their sins, but now the promise is again given, and the idea is more personal and joyous (I will not say ‘more positive' because all that God does is positive). Like a wife coming to know her husband whom she hardly knew, so will His people come to know Him in an everlasting relationship.