Ezekiel 37:8

The vision is a famous one and is celebrated by being read in all the churches of Christ.

There were at all events many wonderful and great prophets among ourselves who spoke many things about the future, and they in no way used to bid those who asked them to dig up the bones of the departed. Ezekiel standing near the bones themselves was not only not hindered by [the bones] but added flesh, and nerves and skin to them and brought them back to life again.

But why, my beloved, was it that those dead did not rise because of the one word [spoken] through Ezekiel, and why was not their resurrection, both of bones and spirit, accomplished [through that one word]? For look! By one word the bones were fitted together, and by another the Spirit came. It was in order that full perfection might be left for our Lord Jesus Christ, who with one utterance and one word will raise up at the last day every human body. For it was not the word that was insufficient but its bearer was inferior.

The hope of resurrection is the root of every kind of good work, for the expectation of reward braces the soul to productive toil. And whereas every worker is ready to sustain his toil if he can look forward to being repaid for his labors, where toil has no recompense the soul is soon discouraged and the body flags with it. A soldier who expects his share of the spoils is ready for war. But no one is prepared to die serving a king so undiscerning that he does not provide rewards for labors. In the same way, any soul that believes in resurrection takes care for itself, as is right, but any soul that disbelieves the resurrection abandons itself to destruction. A person who believes that the body survives to rise again is careful of this garment and does not soil it by fornicating. But a person who does not believe in the resurrection gives himself up to fornication, abusing his own body as if it were nothing to him. A mighty message and teaching of the holy Catholic church is belief about the resurrection of the dead; mighty and most indispensable. While many deny it, the truth claims credence for it. Greeks deny it, Samaritans disbelieve, while heretics tear away the half. Truth never appears but in one shape, while contradiction assumes a hundred.

(Chapter 37, verses 1 onwards) The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. And He led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And He said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered, 'O Lord God, you know.'

Note how the prophet shows that there was hearing and movement in the bones before the Spirit of life was poured on them. For, above, both the dry bones are bidden to hear, as if they had the sense of hearing, and that on this each of them came to its own joint is pointed out by the words of the prophet.…Great is the lovingkindness of the Lord, that the prophet is taken as a witness of the future resurrection, that we, too, might see it with his eyes. For all could not be taken as witnesses, but in that one all we are witnesses, for neither does lying come on a holy person or error on so great a prophet.

If there is some excellent glory in the eye, it is particularly in this: that either it is the leader of the body or it is not abandoned by the functions of the other members. I think this is what is taught to us through that vision of the prophet Ezekiel.

But we call in vain, still they are dead, still they are very dry; we must therefore be earnest with God in prayer for the working of the Spirit with the word: Come, O breath! and breathe upon them. God's grace can save souls without our preaching, but our preaching cannot save them without God's grace, and that grace must be sought by prayer.

And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them,....

This was fulfilled when the captives got their effects about them, and the men of their place helped them with silver, and gold, and whatever they needed for their remove, Ezra i.

THIS vision has been used, from the time of Jerome onwards, as a description of the resurrection and certainly it may be so accommodated with much effect. What a vision of the great day the words picture before the mind's eye! The great army of the quick, who once were dead, seem to start up as we read. Here, too, we have a very fit and appropriate question to be asked in a tomb—"Son of man, can these bones live?"

So far, they were only cohering in order as unsightly skeletons. The next step, that of covering them successively with sinews, skin, and flesh, gives them beauty; but still "no breath" of life in them. This may imply that Israel hereafter, as at the restoration from Babylon was the case in part, shall return to Judea unconverted at first (Zec 13:8, 9).

THIS vision has been used, from the time of Jerome onwards, as a description of the resurrection and certainly it may be so accommodated with much effect. What a vision of the great day the words picture before the mind's eye! The great army of the quick, who once were dead, seem to start up as we read. Here, too, we have a very fit and appropriate question to be asked in a tomb—"Son of man, can these bones live?" Looking down into the dark grave, or watching the sexton as he throws up the moldering relics, once infused with life, well may unbelief suggest the enquiry—"Can these bones live?" Faith cannot at all times give a more satisfactory answer than this—"O Lord God, You know." But while this interpretation of the vision may be very proper as an accommodation, it must be quite evident to any thinking person that this is not the meaning of the passage. There is no allusion made by Ezekiel to the resurrection and such a topic would have been quite apart from the design of the Prophet's speech. I believe he was no more thinking of the resurrection of the dead than of the building of St. Peter's at Rome, or the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers! That topic is altogether foreign to the subject at hand and could not by any possibility have crept into the Prophet's mind. He was talking about the people of Israel and prophesying concerning them. And evidently the vision, according to God's own interpretation of it, was concerning them and them alone, for, "these bones are the whole house of Israel." It was not a vision concerning all men, nor, indeed, concerning any men as to the resurrection of the dead—it had a direct and special bearing upon the Jewish people. This passage, again, has been very frequently and I dare say very properly, used to describe the revival of a decayed Church.