Ezekiel 37

for the future. But insight helps us better understand ourselves and those around us, and what we must do to become better men and women who do the will of God. In these chapters, Ezekiel exercises all three gifts as he exposes sin, analyzes history, and gives promises for the future. He deals with the sins of the Jewish people (chap. 33), the sins of their leaders (chap. 34), and the sins of the neighboring land of Edom (chap. 35).

Our hope is lost!” That’s what the Jewish exiles were saying to each other as they “pined away” in

Babylon (37:11; 33:10), and from the human point of view, the statement was true. But if they had listened to their prophets, they would have had hope in the Lord and looked forward with anticipation. Jeremiah had written to them that they would be in Babylon for seventy years, and that God’s thoughts toward them were of peace and not of evil (Jer. 29:10). Ezekiel had given them God’s promise that He would gather His people and take them back to their land (Ezek. 11:17; 20:34, 41–42; 28:25). A Latin proverb says, “Where there is life, there is hope,” but the reverse is also true: where there is hope, we find reason to live. Swiss theologian Emil Brunner wrote, “What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of life.”

In his previous messages, Ezekiel looked back and reproved the people because of their sins. Now he looks ahead and encourages the people by telling them what the Lord will do for Israel in the future. These promises go beyond the ending of the Babylonian captivity and anticipate the end times. The Jewish people will be gathered to their land, the land will be cleansed and restored, and the nation will have a new temple and the presence of the glory of the Lord. The future of Israel can be summarized in four words: restoration, regeneration, resurrection, and reunion.

Ezekiel has told the people the Lord’s promise to restore the land and regenerate His people. But what about the nation itself, a nation divided (Israel and Judah) and without a king or a temple? The remnant would return to the ravaged land and rebuild the temple and the city, but none of the blessings Ezekiel promised would come to them at that time. No, the prophet Ezekiel was looking far down the corridor of time to the end of the age when Jesus the Messiah would return and claim His people. Ezekiel told the people that the dead nation would one day be raised to life, and the divided nation would be united!

The dry bones (vv. 1–3). At the beginning of Ezekiel’s ministry, the Spirit transported him to sit among the discouraged exiles by the canal (3:14ff.). Later, the Spirit took him in visions to Jerusalem (8:3ff.), to the temple gate and then back to Babylon (11:1, 24). Now the Spirit brought him in a vision to a valley filled with many bleached bones scattered on the ground, the skeletons of corpses long ago decomposed and devoured by carrion-eating birds and animals. These people were slain (37:9), and they may have been soldiers in the Jewish army (v. 10).

It was a humiliating thing for the body of a dead Jew not to be washed, wrapped, and buried with dignity in a grave or a tomb. These bodies were left on the battlefield to become food for the vultures to eat and objects for the sun to bleach. But the Lord had warned Israel in the covenant He made with them that their sins would lead to just that kind of shameful experience. “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. … Your carcasses shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one shall frighten them away” (Deut. 28:25–26 nkjv). Jeremiah was preaching this same message in Jerusalem: “I [the Lord] will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies shall be for meat for the birds of the heaven and the beasts of the earth” (Jer. 34: nkjv).

The Lord told Ezekiel to walk around among the bones so he could appreciate their vast number and see how dry they were. As a priest, Ezekiel was never to be defiled by the dead, but this was a vision and the bones were not toxic. The prophet must have been wondering why the Lord gave him this vision, but the Lord’s question gave him the answer: “Can these bones live?” From the human point of view, the answer is no, but from the divine point of view, nothing is impossible. It is God who “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Rom. 4:17). Ezekiel’s reply didn’t question the power of God; it only expressed the prophet’s conviction that God knew what He was going to do and was able to do it.

The dead army (vv. 4–8). Ezekiel had prophesied to the mountains (6:2; 36:1) and to the forests (20:47), and now he is commanded to prophesy to the dead bones. The Word of the Lord is “living and powerful” (Heb. 4:12); it not only has life but it imparts life (1 Peter 1:23). “The words that I speak to you, are spirit, and they are life” (John 6: nkjv). God’s word of command in Ezekiel 37: is followed by His word of promise in verses 5 and 6. Ezekiel believed the promise and obeyed the command, and the bones came together. Then the skeletons were covered with flesh and skin so that what was lying there in the valley looked like a sleeping army. The bodies lacked only one thing: life.

The living army (vv. 9–14). God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy to the wind and told him what to say. In the Hebrew language, the word ruah can mean wind, breath, spirit, or Spirit. Jesus made use of this when He spoke to Nicodemus about the blowing of the wind and the new birth through the Spirit (John 3:5–8). There’s also a reference here to the creation of Adam in Genesis 2. At his creation, Adam was complete physically, but he had no life until the breath of God entered into him (v. 7). When Ezekiel spoke the living word of God, the breath from God entered the dead bodies and they lived and stood to their feet.

The Lord then explained the meaning of the vision. The dead dry bones represent the whole Jewish nation, both Israel and Judah, a divided nation and a dead nation, like bleached bones on a battlefield. Israel’s situation seemed hopeless, but “with God, all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). There will come a day when God’s living Word of command will go forth and call His people from their “graves,” the nations to which they have been scattered across the world (Ezek. 37:21; Jer. 31:8; Matt. 24:31). The children of Israel will come together, but the nation will not have spiritual life until they see their Messiah, believe on Him, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit of life (Ezek. 39:29; Zech. 12:9–13:1). The nation will be born—and born again—“in a day” (Isa. 66:7–9).

Of course, there’s a spiritual application in this vision for any individual or ministry that is in need of new life from God. Too often God’s people are like that standing army, lifelike but not alive. How does the life come? Through the Holy Spirit using the faithful proclamation of the Word of God. Said Charles Spurgeon, “Decayed churches can most certainly be revived by the preaching of the Word, accompanied by the coming of the heavenly breath from the four winds.” From time to time, in response to His people’s prayers, the Lord has seen fit to send a new “breath of life” to His church and His servants, and for that blessing we should be praying today.

The nation of Israel was a united people until after the death of Solomon. His son’s unwise and arrogant policies divided the kingdom in 931 BC, with ten tribes forming the northern kingdom of Israel (also called Ephraim or Samaria) and the tribes of Judah and Benjamin forming the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom soon went into idolatry and apostasy and in 722 BC was taken by Assyria, but Judah had some good kings and maintained the Davidic line and the ministry at the temple. However, toward the end of Israel’s political history, some very weak kings reigned, and the nation drifted into idolatry and unbelief. The Lord finally brought the Babylonians to chasten His people. There is a political Israel today, but the majority of the Jewish people are scattered around the world.

This is the last of Ezekiel’s “action sermons.” He took two sticks, each one to represent one of the divisions of the Jewish nation. One he labeled “For Judah” and the other “For Joseph.” Like a performer before an audience, the prophet announced that the two sticks would become one in his hands—and they did! The people saw what he did, but they didn’t understand what he meant by it. He explained that the Lord would gather the people together to one place, their own land of Israel. He would make them one nation, obedient to one king, and (most important) worshipping one God. There would be no more idols or disobedience to the law of the Lord.

But what would maintain the unity of the people? For one thing, the Lord would cleanse them and renew spiritual life within them so that they no longer had any ambitions to compete with one another. Old jealousies and enmities would be gone (Isa. 11:13), and Israel and Judah would together humble themselves and seek the Lord (Jer. 50:4; Hos. 11:1). Another factor is that their one king would be the Messiah, and He would shepherd them with love and grace. He would be their “prince forever” (Ezek. 37:25) and serve as the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).

Third, the Lord would so order and bless the land that the nation would be one (Ezek. 37:25). This will be further explained in chapter 45. The nation would be governed by a “covenant of peace” (37:26; 34:22–25), which is the “new covenant” that Jeremiah wrote about in Jeremiah 31:31–34. But central to the nation’s unity will be the new temple (Ezek. 37:26–28), where the glory of God will dwell. In their wilderness days, Israel had the tabernacle to unite the camp of Israel, with each tribe assigned a specific place to pitch their tents. The temple in Jerusalem was also a source of unity, for three times a year the men had to go to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts, and the people were allowed to offer sacrifices only at the temple.

In chapters 40—48, Ezekiel will go into detail describing this future temple and its ministries. God called it “my tabernacle” (37:27) because the Hebrew word means “a dwelling place.” God’s presence with His people will sanctify the land, the temple, and the nation, just as He promised in His covenant (Lev. 26:11–12). The nations of the earth will come to worship the Lord with His people Israel (Isa. 2:1–5) and “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).

Whether it’s the children of Israel or the saints in the church today, the Lord wants His people to be united. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Ps. 133:1). Paul appealed to the believers in Corinth to cultivate unity in the church (1 Cor. 1:10), and he exhorted the Ephesian believers to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4: niv). Sometimes it takes prayer, sacrifice, and patience to maintain the unity of God’s people, but it’s important that we do so. Jesus prayed that His people might be one and manifest to the lost world the living unity between Christ and His church and among believers and local churches (John 17:20–23). A divided church is not a strong church or a church bearing witness to the grace and glory of God. God’s people today need the fresh wind of the Spirit to give us new life from God and new love for one another.