A Heart of Flesh Instead of a Heart of Stone: An Old Testament Heart Transplant?

In the aftermath of Pope Francis’s encyclical Dilexit nos on the cult of the Sacred Heart, the paper explores the significance of the biblical notion of the heart. It focuses on the prophetic words in Ezekiel 36:26-27 on YHWH replacing Israel’s heart of stone with a heart of flesh as a form of metaphoric speech. It examines the notion of the heart in the Hebrew Bible as the core and essence of the human person, within the cultural Near Eastern context of the Bible. The author argues that the heart of stone in Ezekiel refers to idolatry. The heart of Israel was petrified when it turned away from the life-giving God to idols. God removes and breaks this heart of stone just as the idols, and replaces it with a new heart, a heart of flesh. The words of the prophet remind believers of the need to move away from contemporary idols to the living God.