The prophet Ezekiel is a key figure in the Biblical understanding of God. The tradition until his time had been that the chosen people knew they were God’s people because they were given the promised land, because they had been established as a royal nation, because of God’s presence in the temple, because God preserved them from their enemies. But Ezekiel writes when all of that had been taken away for God’s people — no more land, nation, temple, security. All they had left was their awareness of themselves as God’s own. Where were the Chosen People to find God in exile? Within. “I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you.”
