Ezekiel37chapter 37

Ezekiel 37:1-3

full of bones: The hand of the Lord sets the prophet down in a valley full of bones and walks him through them, very many, and very dry: an unburied army long past any human help, which the commentators read against the battlefield dead of the fall. The question is put to the prophet before any promise, son of man, can these bones live?, and his answer is the exact posture the book has been teaching, O Lord God, thou knowest, neither presuming nor despairing. Keil notes that the vision's force depends on the honest hopelessness first: nothing here is sick or dying; everything is dead.

Ezekiel 37:4-8

The means of the miracle is the point of it: prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord, preaching commanded to an audience that cannot hear. As the prophet obeys there is a noise and a shaking, bone to his bone, sinews and flesh and skin, and then the verse's deliberate halt: but there was no breath in them. The bench draws the two-stage shape as the text draws it, structure without life first, which guards the vision from meaning mere reorganization, as Fairbairn puts it: a nation can be reassembled and still be a corpse.

Ezekiel 37:9-10

The second word is to the breath itself: come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. The Hebrew ruach runs through the whole vision as wind, breath and Spirit in one word, the philology every careful commentator carries, and Genesis 2:7 stands behind the shape, dust formed first and breath breathed after. The breath comes, they live, and they stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army: the valley of the slain ends as a muster.

Ezekiel 37:11-14

these bones are the whole house of Israel: The vision interprets itself, and the exposition keeps the text's own referent at full strength: these bones are the whole house of Israel, the exiles who say our bones are dried, and our hope is lost. The promise answers with graves opened, a return to the land of Israel named twice, and my spirit put in you, the same order as the vision, regathering and then life. The church's readings are carried as the readings they are, with holders named: the fathers and many since heard the general resurrection here, and Jerome records the passage read at funerals; the site's ruling stands with the text, the promise is to named Israel, and the larger hearings stand beside it rather than in its place.

Ezekiel 37:15-20

The second sign of the chapter is done in wood: one stick written for Judah, another for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, joined one to another into one stick, and they shall become one in thine hand. The schism that began when ten tribes followed Jeroboam is healed in the prophet's fist before it is promised in the oracle, the sign preceding the sermon as Ezekiel's signs do. The people's question, wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?, is built into the sign itself, and the bench notes the method: an enacted riddle that makes the audience ask for the interpretation they would not sit still to hear.

Ezekiel 37:21-24

The interpretation gathers the scattered from every side into one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, with one king over them all and the division into two kingdoms ended any more at all, cleansing joined to regathering, so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. Then the king is named: David my servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one shepherd, the promise of 34:23 returned word for word. The readings on David are named with their holders, the Messiah of David's line, so the Targum and the older writers together with the church reading John 10's shepherd here; a literal David raised, so a few; and the exposition states the positions and stops.

Ezekiel 37:25-28

The chapter ends in permanence stacked clause on clause: the land given to Jacob dwelt in by children and children's children for ever, my servant David their prince for ever, a covenant of peace that is an everlasting covenant, and the sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them carries the vocabulary John's Gospel and the Revelation take up, the word dwelt among us and the tabernacle of God is with men, which the bench names as the trajectory it is. The last verse widens the audience, the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel: the recognition formula's fifty-first landing makes the nations learn God from what he does with this people, which is the book's argument in one sentence.