A Glimmer of Hope. The people who, at the first deportation (597 B.C.), were allowed to remain in the land, clearly thought themselves superior to those who, like Ezekiel, had been taken to Babylon far from Yahweh's land and therefore far from Yahweh (Ezekiel 11:15, read they are far). Ezekiel undeceives them: the future lies with the exiles, not with them. True, Yahweh had been (see mg.) to the exiles but little of a sanctuary i.e. their religious privileges had been inevitably curtailed but some day they would come back to the land, and establish upon it the true worship of Yahweh. First they would sweep it clean of every idolatrous thing, and then for their callous obstinate hearts God would give them soft impressionable hearts on which His laws would be easily written (Ezekiel 36:25-27). (It is worth noting here how great prophetic thought is crossed by ritual interests.) In Ezekiel 11:19 for one read, with LXX, another.
Then, in good earnest, the Divine chariot begins to move (Ezekiel 11:22-25): it passes away from the guilty city across the Kidron to the Mount of Olives, away we are not told where; and we hear no more of it till we reach the reconstruction sketched at the end of the book (Ezekiel 44:1-3). Then Ezekiel awoke from his trance.