Eighty-six times in the book of Ezekiel we find a reference to God acting so that his holy name may be honoured, for example, 'What I am going to do is not for the sake of you Israelites but for the sake of my holy name When I demonstrate to the nations the holiness of my great name then they will know that I am the LORD.  . . I will use you to show the nations that I am holy' (Ezekiel 36:22-23). Ezekiel's teaching about why God will restore his people has a different emphasis from that of the earlier prophets. Israel has sinned and must be punished but she must also be saved so that God is seen by the nations to honour his pro¬mises which he made to his own people. Like other prophets before him, Ezekiel teaches that it is God who takes the initiative in approaching man and offering him his love. The restoration of Israel will be God's act of grace, unmerited in any way by Israel. In Ezekiel's understanding, nothing that man can do can make him fit to expect anything from the transcendent God whose presence overwhelmed Ezekiel in the vision which accompanied his call to be a prophet. What God does is what God chooses to do for his own purposes. God restores his people while they are still sinners.

When other nations mock at Israel in exile, they are understood by Ezekiel to be mocking the God of Israel, who is also the God of all nations, even if they do not recognize this. Such mockery is intolerable and therefore God will act to make the nations honour his name.

Although Ezekiel's understanding of the transcendence of God is very important, there is one danger in his teaching about God acting to preserve the honour of his holy name. This teaching can be misunderstood to mean that God uses men in an unfeeling way. The ideas of God's transcendence, power and demands can overshadow the ideas of God's love and patience.