---
title: Ezekiel 36:25
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/ezekiel-36-25/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/ezekiel-36-25.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Ezekiel 36:25
testament: OT
section: Prophets
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Ezekiel 36:25

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will become clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your disgusting idols."

## JW Usage

Read as cleansing from false religious practices — the sprinkling of clean water understood as the effect of accurate knowledge and of leaving behind idolatry, which in Watchtower framing includes Christendom's teachings and practices.

## Protestant Usage

This is the opening of the promise that runs through verse 27, and the grammar is set here: I will sprinkle, I will cleanse. The person being cleansed is the object throughout, never the subject. That matters because the passage is describing the thing the New Testament calls being born again. Jesus tells Nicodemus at John 3:5 that one must be born of water and spirit — water and spirit, in that order, which is the order of Ezekiel 36:25-27. Nicodemus is then rebuked for not knowing this as a teacher of Israel, which suggests Jesus expected him to recognise the passage. So the cleansing, the new heart and the caused obedience are one act of God, described by a prophet and then claimed by Jesus as something that must happen to a person. Read all three verses aloud with a Witness and count the times God says "I will." It is the simplest way to show that the passage describes something done to a person rather than achieved by them. Compare Ezekiel 36:26, Ezekiel 36:27, 2 Corinthians 3:3.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [A Heart of Flesh — God Does the Changing, Not the Watchtower](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/ezekiel36-heart-of-flesh.md) — Ezekiel 36:26-27 [Salvation]