I scattered them [the Israelites] among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries; in accordance with their conduct and their deeds I judged them. But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that it was said of them, “These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of his land.” But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
In this text, which summarizes the expectation of salvation throughout the whole book of Ezekiel, there are five series of statements:
First series: Israel dwelt in the Land God had given it. But it did not live according to Torah, the social order given by God. It did not serve the God who had chosen it but other gods. Thus it despised the Land and profaned the Name of God. It filled the Land with envy, hatred, and rivalry. So it spoiled the Land and destroyed the brilliance that ought to emanate from it.
Second series: God could not endure this profanation and despising of the Land. He had to drive Israel out of the Land and disperse it among the pagan nations. But why did God have to drive out his people? People today resist such an image of God. Must God punish? Must God deport people? What the Bible means is more obvious if we formulate such statements consistently in human terms: a society that constantly lives contrary to God’s order of creation destroys itself. That is true in particular of the people of God with its special calling for the sake of the other nations. If it stubbornly acts contrary to its calling, it destroys the ground on which it stands. It destroys its basis. It deprives itself of its land and of its very existence.
Third series: The scattering of Israel among the nations, which it has brought on itself, makes things still worse, since the result of this dispersion is that the Name of God is profaned still further. Now all the world ridicules Israel and its God. The nations say: what a miserable, powerless god this YHWH is! He is a god who does not care for his own people. He is a god without a people. He is a god without a country.
Fourth series: God has to put an end to this profanation of his Name. He cannot allow his Name to continue to be made a laughingstock because of Israel’s dispersal among the nations. Therefore God himself will now hallow his Name before all the nations. The fact that he intervenes is not at all due to Israel’s deserving.
Fifth series: How does God put an end to this unbearable state of things? How does he hallow his Name? He does so by gathering his people from the dispersion and bringing them back into the Land. He hallows his Name by freeing the Israelites from their idols and giving them a new heart and a new spirit. He takes the hearts of stone out of their breasts and gives them hearts of flesh. So it becomes possible for Israel to live according to the social order God has ordained.
The first petition of the Our Father summarizes this whole text from Ezekiel 36 in a single sentence. The petition “hallowed be Thy Name” begs God to gather his people from the dispersion, to make them one people again, give them a new heart, and fill them with the Holy Spirit. To put it another way: the first petition of the Our Father implores that there once again be a place in the world where the glory and honor of God are visible—a place because of which God’s name can be honored, and also called upon, even by the nations.
But it is true that the Our Father does not speak of the people of God in the same way as, for example, the Shemoneh Esrei does. Nothing is said about the house of David. The city of Jerusalem is not mentioned, nor are Zion and the temple, because in the time of Jesus all that could have been misunderstood as political, and particularly by the Zealot movement with which Jesus was constantly confronted, and by many others as well. Jesus’ whole concern is with the honor of God, with God’s good name. God’s only honor is his people, but not a people understood in nationalistic terms; instead, this people is an Israel such as Ezekiel had in mind.
Result: the first petition of the Our Father, which, because it is placed first of all, Jesus apparently regarded as the most important and most urgent in the prayer of his disciples, has a precise meaning, its content clearly outlined: it is a plea for the eschatological gathering and restoration of the people of God. That is exactly the way in which the Name of God will be hallowed.
The Choice of the Twelve
Thus Jesus has his disciples pray in the Our Father for the eschatological gathering of Israel. But he not only asks them to pray for it. He acts. Jesus chooses for himself—probably from out of a larger group of disciples—twelve whom he will send out in pairs to proclaim the reign of God throughout the land. They represent the gathering of Israeclass="underline"
[And he goes] up the mountain and [calls] to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he [created] twelve to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. [And he created] the Twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. (Mark 3:13-19)
“He created” points to a unique event at a particular place and a particular time. Jesus, with a demonstrative gesture that must have impressed, constituted a circle of twelve disciples. The number twelve can only refer to the twelve tribes of Israel.
But reference to the twelve tribes touches a central point of Israel’s eschatological hope, for although the system of twelve tribes had long ceased to exist, people hoped that in the eschatological time of salvation the people of the twelve tribes would be fully restored. The end of the book of Ezekiel describes, in broad strokes, how the twelve tribes, brought back to life in the end time, will receive their definitive shares in the Land (Ezek 47–48). Against the background of this living hope Jesus’ creation of the Twelve can only be seen as a deliberate sign of eschatological fulfillment. The Twelve exemplify the gathering and restoration of Israel as the eschatological people of the twelve tribes that is now beginning with Jesus. They thus embody the growth center of eschatological Israel.
Places of Jesus’ Activity
The theological program revealed in the call to decision in Matthew 12:30 (“whoever is not with me”), then in the lament in Matthew 23:37 (“Jerusalem, Jerusalem”), then in the first petition of the Our Father, but above all in the creation of the Twelve, corresponds precisely to Jesus’ actual presence on the scene. He restricted his activity to Jewish territory. Nazareth, Nain, Cana, Capernaum, Chorazin, Magdala, and Bethsaida were places long occupied by a Jewish population.