Ezekiel — Chapter 36
The mountains of Israel will flourish again; God will restore Israel for the sake of His holy name. Chapter 36 contains the second great new-heart promise (vv. 26-27) and the first explicit mention of sprinkling with clean water (v. 25) — both interpreted by Lapide as sacramental types: baptism and the new creation in the Holy Spirit.
Verse 3
Because they have made you desolate and crushed you from all sides: Lapide reads Israel's suffering among the nations as educative divine discipline, drawing on the Stoic-Christian synthesis of suffering as purification developed by Origen's Contra Celsum and Cyprian's De mortalitate.
Verse 8
But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people Israel, for they will soon come home: the natural world's participation in Israel's restoration. Lapide develops a theology of the restoration of natural goods as accompanying supernatural restoration — grace heals nature. He cites Romans 8:19-22 on creation's groaning for the revelation of the sons of God.
Verse 25
'Et effundam super vos aquam mundam, et mundabimini' — I will pour clean water over you and you shall be clean: Lapide gives an extended sacramental commentary, reading this as a type of baptism affirmed by the Fathers (Cyril of Jerusalem's Mystagogical Catecheses, Ambrose's De Sacramentis). The cleansing from idols prefigures baptismal renunciation of Satan.
Verse 26
'Et dabo vobis cor novum, et spiritum novum ponam in medio vestri' — I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you: Lapide's fullest treatment of the theology of grace — the new heart is the will transformed by sanctifying grace; the new spirit is the Holy Spirit Himself dwelling in the baptized soul. He cites Thomas Aquinas's Summa (I-II, qq. 109-114) throughout.
Verse 27
'Spiritum meum ponam in medio vestri' — I will place my Spirit in your midst: Lapide argues this is the clearest Old Testament promise of the Pentecostal gift, fulfilled in Acts 2. The indwelling Spirit is distinct from the common divine omnipresence and constitutes the proper gift of the New Covenant.
Verse 31
Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations: Lapide reads the self-loathing of the restored sinner not as despair but as the healthy fruit of genuine compunction. The greater the grace received, the deeper the understanding of the evil that grace has overcome — and thus the greater the humility.