Ezekiel 37:12

Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. O MY PEOPLE - in antithesis to "for our parts" (). The hope that is utterly gone, if looking at themselves, is sure for them in God, because He regards them as His people. Their covenant-relation to God ensures His not letting death permanently reign over them. Christ makes the same principle the ground on which the literal resurrection rests. God had said, "I am the God of Abraham," etc.; God, by taking the patriarchs as His, undertook to do for them all that Omnipotence can perform: He, being the ever-living God, is necessarily the God of, not dead, but living persons - i:e., of those whose bodies His covenant-love binds Him to raise...

1-14 No created power could restore human bones to life. God alone could cause them to live. Skin and flesh covered them, and the wind was then told to blow upon these bodies; and they were restored to life. The wind was an emblem of the Spirit of God, and represented his quickening powers. The vision was to encourage the desponding Jews; to predict both their restoration after the captivity, and also their recovery from their present and long-continued dispersion. It was also a clear intimation of the resurrection of the dead; and it represents the power and grace of God, in the conversion of the most hopeless sinners to himself. Let us look to Him who will at last open our graves, and bring us forth to judgment, that He may now deliver us from sin, and put his Spirit within us, and keep us by his power, through faith, unto salvation....

Verse Ezekiel 37:12. _I WILL OPEN YOUR GRAVES_] Here is a pointed allusion to the _general resurrection_; a doctrine properly credited and understood by the Jews, and to which our Lord refers, John 5:25; John 5:28: "The hour is coming when they that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and come forth." _AND CAUSE YOU TO COME UP OUT OF YOUR GRAVES_] I am determined that ye shall be restored; so that were ye even _in your graves_, as mankind at the general resurrection, yet my all-powerful _voice_ shall _call you forth_....

EXPOSITION This chapter embraces, in its earlier section (Ezekiel 37:1), the concluding portion of the "word of God" begun at Ezekiel 36:16; in its later section (Ezekiel 36:15), an additional "word," to which the former naturally leads. The earlier, under the figure of a resurrection of dry bones, beheld by the prophet in vision, describes the political and religious reawakening of Israel; in the later is depicted, by means of a symbolic action, the reunion of its two branches. The first divides itself into two parts—the vision (Ezekiel 36:1) and its interpretation ...

THEREFORE PROPHESY, AND SAY UNTO THEM,.... For their comfort, in order to revive their hope, and encourage their faith, in these distressed circumstances: THUS SAITH THE LORD, BEHOLD, O MY PEOPLE: they were his people still, and he had a covenant interest in them, and they in him, though in such a low estate; and which was the ground of his care of them, and concern for them, and or doing all the good things to them after mentioned; all proceeded from his covenant, and the grace of it, and their relation to him: I WILL OPEN YOUR GRAVES, AND CAUSE YOU TO COME OUT OF YOUR GRAVES; the cities and prisons in Chaldea and other places; where they were confined and held captives, and out of which they could no more deliver themselves than a dead man of himself can rise up out of his grave: this is both an emblem of the resurrection of the dead at the last day z, when they shall come forth out...

Ezekiel 37:1. _The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD,_ God's servants learn nothing until they have an experience similar to that of Ezekiel. They must be led by the Spirit of the Lord, and they must have their eyes and mouths opened by him, and then they can both see the vision, and tell the vision to others. Ezekiel 37:1. _And set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,_ Like a huge grave, or charnel-house, or battle-field where the slain had not been buried. No servant of God would go without being sent to such a place, yet it was needful that Ezekiel should be there in order that he might understand and speak the message of God....

CHAPTER S 37-48 The Future Blessings of Israel, the Nation Regathered, Their Enemies Overthrown, the Millennial Temple, and the Division of the Land _ 1. The vision of the dry bones and Judah and Israel reunited (Ezekiel 37:1) _ 2. Gog and Magog and their destruction (Ezekiel 38:1; Ezekiel 39:1) 3. The millennial temple, its worship, and the division of the land (Ezekiel 40:1; Ezekiel 41:1; Ezekiel 42:1;...

THE RESURRECTION OF THE PEOPLE. Those fair ideals, however, cannot abolish the melancholy reality. The truth is that the exiled people are as good as dead and in their graves (Ezekiel 37:11 f.). Over their despondent words the imagination of Ezekiel broods till once, in an ecstatic mood (Ezekiel 37:1), he seemed to see a valley filled with bones, multitudinous, dry, and loosely scattered for they have not even the coherence of skeletons so that there seemed no promise or possibility of life. He hears a Divine voice it is the voice of his own heart asking, Can these bones live? and gradually it is borne in upon him that the resuscitation of the national life is not beyond the power of God. If the breath of the Divine life be breathed through it, then the people may yet rise to their feet. It is of deep sign

GRAVES. sepulchres, or burying-places. Hebrew. KEBER, not _Sheol_. See App-35. The repetition of this must include resurrection as well as restoration. INTO THE LAND OF ISRAEL. upon the soil of Israel. Hebrew. _'admath_. See note on Ezekiel 11:17....

The vision of Israel's resurrection from the dead The vision seems suggested by the saying current among the people, "our bones are dried, our hope is lost; we are wholly cut off." This idea and feeling of the people takes form in the vision which the prophet saw in the valley. The language of the people is figurative: they speak of the nationality, which is no more, it is dead and its bones scattered and dry. And this idea regarding the nationality, figuratively expressed by the people, is embodied to the prophet in a vision. Hence the passage is not a literal prophecy of the resurrection of individual persons of the nation, dead or slain; it is a prophecy of the resurrection of the nation, whose condition is figuratively expressed by the people when they represent its bones as long scattered and dry. Perfect consistency is not maintained by the prophet: in Ezekiel 37:1 the dry bones a...