34‐38) may only be meant as an ideal picture of spiritual processes to be effected by ordinary providential agencies. But certain it is that what Ezekiel is chiefly convinced of is the necessity for further acts of judgment—judgment which shall be decisive, because discriminating, and issuing in the annihilation of all who cling to the evil traditions of the past. This idea, indeed, of further chastisement in store for the exiles is a fixed element of Ezekiel’s prophecy. It appears in his earliest public utterance (ch. v.), although it is perhaps only in this chapter that we perceive its full significance. The scene of God’s final dealings with Israel’s sin is to be the “desert of the nations.” That great barren plateau which stretches between the Jordan and the Euphrates valley, round which lay the nations chiefly concerned in Israel’s history, occupies a place in the restoration analogous to that of the wilderness of Sinai (here called the “wilderness of Egypt”) at the time of the Exodus. Into that vast solitude Jehovah will gather His people from the lands of their exile, and there He will once more judge them face to face. This judgment will be conducted on the principle laid down in ch. xviii. Each individual shall be dealt with according to his own character as a righteous man or a wicked. They shall be made to “pass under the rod,” like sheep when they are counted by the shepherd.(56) The rebels and transgressors shall perish in the wilderness; for “out of the land of their sojournings will I bring them, and into the land of Israel they shall not come” (ver. 38). Those that emerge from the trial are the righteous remnant, who are to be brought into the land by number:(57) these constitute the new Israel, for whom is reserved the glory of the latter days.