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25 [a](A)I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

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Footnotes

  1. 36:25–26 God’s initiative to cleanse Israel (cf. 24:13–14) is the first act in the creation of a new people, no longer disposed to repeating Israel’s wicked past (chap. 20). To make this restoration permanent, God replaces Israel’s rebellious and obdurate interiority (“heart of stone”) with an interiority (“heart of flesh”) susceptible to and animated by God’s intentions (“my spirit,” v. 27).

Chapter 13

Oracles Concerning the End of False Prophecy.[a] On that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David[b] and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to purify from sin and uncleanness.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 13:1–6 False prophecy is a major theme of Second Zechariah (chaps. 9–14) and figures in many other passages (10:1–2; 11; 12:10). Problems of idolatry and false prophecy occurred in postexilic Judah as they had in preexilic times. The understanding of the role of the prophet as an intermediary was challenged because (1) there was no king in Jerusalem, and (2) the texts of earlier prophets were beginning to be accorded the authority of prophetic tradition.
  2. 13:1 For the house of David: anticipation that a cleansed leadership will enable the re-established monarchy to be rid of the misdeeds of its past.

14 (A)They replied, “Some say John the Baptist,[a] others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

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Footnotes

  1. 16:14 John the Baptist: see Mt 14:2. Elijah: cf. Mal 3:32–34; Sir 48:10; and see note on Mt 3:4. Jeremiah: an addition of Matthew to the Marcan source.