9 Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. 10 Therefore in your midst fathers will eat their children, and children will eat their fathers. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds. 11 Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD , because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will withdraw my favor; I will not look on you with pity or spare you.
- Ezekiel 5:9-11
God is talking about sending the Israelites into captivity in Babylon. In the middle, however, He makes an off hand sort of promise that He will never do it again.
Having watched the telemovie Anne Frank on TV the other night, images of the holocaust are still fairly fresh in my mind. So far as I'm concerned, if there was ever a time when the Jews were without God's favour, it was during the second world war.
Does that mean that God broke His promise, by withdrawing His favour a second time? Perhaps He simply changed His mind, like He did at the end of Ezekiel 4 (and in other places). Maybe the Jews are no longer heirs of such promises, since they are branches broken off so that we could be grafted in (cf. Romans 11).
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