Ezekiel
37:1-28
LIFE
FROM THE DEAD
The
most formidable obstacle to faith on the part of the exiles in the
possibility of a national redemption was the complete disintegration
of the ancient people of Israel. Hard as it was to realize that
Jehovah still lived and reigned in spite of the cessation of
His worship, and hard to hope for a recovery of the land of Canaan
from the dominion of the heathen, these things were still
conceivable. What almost surpassed conception was the restoration
of national life to the feeble and demoralized remnant who had
survived the fall of the state. It was no mere figure of speech that
these exiles employed when they thought of their nation as
dead. Cast off by its God, driven from its land, dismembered and
deprived of its political organization, Israel as a people had
ceased to exist. Not only were the outward symbols of national unity
destroyed, but the national spirit was extinct. Just as the
destruction of the bodily organism implies the death of each separate
member and organ and cell, so the individual Israelites felt
themselves to be as dead men, dragging out an aimless
existence without hope in the world. While Israel was alive, they had
lived in her and for her; all the best part of their life, religion,
duty, liberty, and loyalty had been bound up with the consciousness
of belonging to a nation with a proud history behind them and a
brilliant future for their posterity. Now that Israel had
perished all spiritual and ideal significance had gone out of their
lives; there remained but a selfish and sordid struggle for
existence, and this they felt was not life, but death in life. And
thus a promise of deliverance which appealed to them as members of a
nation seemed to them a mockery, because they felt in themselves that
the bond of national life was irrevocably broken.
The
hardest part of Ezekiel’s task at this time was therefore to revive
the national sentiment, so as to meet the obvious objection that even
if Jehovah
were able to drive the heathen from His
land
there
was still no people of Israel to whom He could
give it.
If only the exiles could be brought to believe that Israel had a
future, that although now dead it could be raised from the dead, the
spiritual meaning of their life would be given back to them in the
form of hope,
and faith in God would be possible.
Accordingly, the prophet’s thoughts are now directed to the idea of
the nation as the third
factor of
the Messianic hope. He has spoken of the kingdom
and the land,
and each of these ideas has led him on to the contemplation of the
final
condition
of the world, in which Jehovah’s
purpose is
fully manifested. So, in this
chapter he
finds in the idea of the nation a new point of departure, from which
he proceeds to delineate once more the Messianic
salvation
in its completeness.
The
vision of the valley
of dry bones
described in the first part of the chapter contains the answer to the
desponding thoughts of the exiles and seems indeed to be directly
suggested by the figure in which the popular feeling was currently
expressed: "Our bones are dried; our hope is lost: we feel
ourselves cut off" Eze.
37:11.
The fact that the answer came to the prophet in a state
of trance
may perhaps indicate that his mind had brooded over these words of
the people for some time before the moment of inspiration.
Recognizing how faithfully they represented the actual situation; he was yet unable to suggest an adequate solution of the difficulty
by means of the prophetic conceptions hitherto revealed to him. Such
a vision
as this seems to presuppose a period of intense mental activity on
the part of Ezekiel, during which the despairing utterance of his
compatriots sounded in his ears; and the image of the dried
bones of
the house of Israel so fixed itself in his mind that he could not
escape its gloomy associations except by a direct communication from
above.
When at last the hand of the Lord came upon him, the revelation
clothed itself in a form corresponding to his previous meditations;
the emblem
of death
and despair is transformed into a symbol of assured
hope
through the astounding vision
which unfolds itself before his inner eye.
In
the ecstasy he feels himself led out in spirit to the plain
which had been the scene of former appearances of God to His
prophet. But on this occasion, he sees it covered with bones very
many on the surface of the valley, and very dry. He is made to
pass round about them, in order that the full impression of this
spectacle of desolation might sink into his mind. His
attention is engrossed by two facts their exceeding great number, and
their parched appearance, as if they had lain there long. In
other circumstances the question might have suggested itself, how
came these bones there? What countless host has perished here,
leaving its unburied bones to bleach and wither on the open plain?
But the prophet has no need to think of this. They are the bones
which had been familiar to his waking thoughts, the dry bones
of the house of Israel. The question he hears addressed to him is
not, whence are these bones? but, Can these bones live? It is
the problem which had exercised his faith in thinking of a national
restoration which thus comes back to him in vision, to receive its
final solution from Him who alone can give it.
The
prophet’s hesitating answer probably reveals the struggle between
faith and sight, between hope and fear, which was latent in
his mind.
He dares not say no, for that would be to limit
the power of Him
whom he knows to be omnipotent, and also to shut out the last gleam
of hope from his own mind. Yet in presence of that appalling scene of
hopeless decay and death he cannot of his own initiative assert the
possibility
of resurrection.
In the abstract all things are possible with God; but whether this
particular thing, so inconceivable to men, is within the active
purpose of God,
is a question which none can answer save God Himself. Ezekiel does
what man must always do in such a case he throws himself back on God,
and reverently awaits the disclosure of His will, saying, O
Jehovah God, Thou Knowest.
It
is instructive to notice that the divine answer comes through the
consciousness of a duty. Ezekiel is commanded first of all to
prophesy
over these dry bones; and in the words given him to utter the
solution of his own inward perplexity is wrapped up. Say
unto them,
O ye dry bones, hear the word of Jehovah Behold, I will cause breath
to enter into you, and ye shall live Eze.
37:4-5.
In this way he is not only taught that the agency by which Jehovah
will affect
His purpose
is the prophetic word, but he is also reminded that the truth now
revealed to him is to be the guide of his practical ministry, and
that only in the steadfast discharge of his prophetic
duty can
he hold fast the hope of Israel’s resurrection. The problem that
has exercised him is not one that can be settled in retirement and
inaction. What he receives is not a mere answer, but a
message,
and the delivery of the message is the only way in which he can
realize the
truth of
it: his activity as a prophet being indeed a necessary element in the
fulfilment of his words. Let him preach the word of God to these dry
bones, and he will know that they
can live;
but if he fails to do this, he will sink back into the unbelief to
which all things are impossible. Faith comes in the act
of prophesying.
Ezekiel
did as he was commanded; he prophesied over the dry bones, and
immediately he was sensible of the effect of his words. He heard a
rustling, and looking he saw that the bones were coming together,
bone to his bone. He does not need to tell us how his heart rejoiced
at this first sign of life returning to these dead bones, and
as he watched the whole process by which they were built up into the
semblance of men. It is described in minute detail, so that no
feature of the impression produced by the stupendous miracle may be
lost. It is divided into two stages, the restoration of the bodily
frame and the imparting of the principle of life.
This
division cannot have any special significance when applied to the
actual nation, such as that the outward order of the state must be
first established, and then the national consciousness renewed. It
belongs to the imagery of the vision and follows the order
observed in the original creation of man as described in the
second chapter of Genesis. God first formed man of the dust of the
ground, and afterwards breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, so that he became a living soul. So here we have first a
description of the process by which the bodies were built up, the
skeletons being formed from the scattered bones, and then clothed
successively with sinews and flesh and skin. The reanimation
of these still lifeless bodies is a separate act of creative energy,
in which, however, the agency is still the word of God in the
mouth of the prophet. He is bidden call for the breath to come
from the four winds of heaven, and breathe upon these slain that they
may live. In Hebrew the words for wind, breath, and spirit are
identical; and thus the wind becomes a symbol of the universal divine
Spirit, which is the source of all life, while the breath is a
symbol of that Spirit as, so to speak, specialized in the
individual man, or in other words of his personal life. In the case
of the first man Jehovah breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and the idea here is precisely the same. The wind from
the four quarters of heaven which becomes the breath of this vast
assemblage of men is conceived as the breath of God, and symbolizes
the life-giving Spirit which makes each of them a living
person. The resurrection is complete. The men live, and stand up upon
their feet, an exceeding great army.
This
is the simplest, as well as the most suggestive, of Ezekiel’s
visions,
and carries its interpretation on the face of it. The single idea
which it expresses is the restoration of the Hebrew
nationality
through the quickening influence of the Spirit
of Jehovah
on the surviving members of the old house of Israel. It is not a
prophecy of the resurrection of individual Israelites who have
perished. The bones are the
whole house of Israel
now in exile; they are alive as individuals, but as members of a
nation they are dead and hopeless of revival.
This is made clear by the explanation of the vision given in Eze.
37:11-14.
It is addressed to those who think of themselves as
cut off
from the higher interests and activities of the national life. By a
slight change of figure, they are conceived as dead and buried; and
the resurrection is represented as an opening
of their graves.
But the grave is no more to be understood literally than the dry
bones of the vision itself;
both are symbols of the gloomy
and despairing
view which the exiles take of their own condition. The substance of
the prophet’s message is that the God who raises the dead and calls
the things that are not as though they were able to bring together
the scattered
members of
the house of Israel and form them into a new people through the
operation of His
life-giving Spirit.
It
has often been supposed that, although the passage may not directly
teach the resurrection of the body, it nevertheless implies a certain
familiarity with that doctrine on the part
of Ezekiel,
if not of his hearers likewise. If the raising of dead men to life
could be used as an analogy of a national restoration, the former
conception must have been at least more obvious than the latter,
otherwise the prophet would be explaining obscurum
per obscurius.
This argument, however, has only a superficial plausibility. It
confounds two things which are distinct the mere conception
of resurrection,
which is all that was necessary to make the vision intelligible and settled faith in it as an element of the Messianic
expectation.
That God by a miracle could restore the dead to life no devout
Israelite ever doubted. Cf. 1Kgs.
17:1-24; 2Kgs. 4:13 ff; 13:21.
But it is to be noted that the recorded instances of such miracles
are all of those recently dead; and there is no evidence of a general
belief in the possibility of resurrection for those whose bones were
scattered and dry. It is this very impossibility, indeed, that gives
point to the metaphor under which the people here express their sense
of hopelessness. Moreover, if the prophet had presupposed the
doctrine of individual resurrection, he could hardly have used it as
an illustration in the way he does. The mere prospect of a
resuscitation
of the multitudes of Israelites who had perished would of itself have
been a sufficient answer to the despondency of the exiles; and it
would have been an anti-climax
to use it as an argument for something much less wonderful. We must
also bear in mind that while the resurrection
of a nation
may be to us little more than a figure of speech, to the Hebrew
mind it was an object of thought more real and tangible than the idea
of personal immortality.
It
would appear therefore that in the order of revelation the hope of
the resurrection is first presented in the promise of a resurrection
of the dead nation
of Israel, and only in the second
instance
as the resurrection of individual Israelites who should have passed
away without sharing in the glory of the latter days. Like the early
converts to Christianity, the Old Testament believers sorrowed for
those who
fell asleep when
the Messiah’s kingdom was supposed
to be just at hand,
until they found consolation in the blessed
hope of a resurrection
with which Paul comforted the Church at Thessalonica. 1Thes.
4:13 ff
In Ezekiel we find that doctrine as yet only in its more
general form
of a national resurrection; but it can hardly be doubted that the
form in which he expressed it prepared the way for the fuller
revelation of a resurrection of the individual. In two later passages
of the prophetic
Scriptures,
we seem to find clear indications of progress in this direction. One
is a difficult verse in the twenty-sixth
chapter of Isaiah
part of a prophecy usually assigned to a period later than Ezekiel
where the writer, after a lamentation over the disappointments and
wasted efforts of the present, suddenly breaks into a rapture of hope
as he thinks of a time when departed
Israelites shall be restored
to life to join the ranks of the ransomed people of God: "Let
thy dead live again! Let my dead bodies arise! Awake and rejoice, ye
that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is a dew of light, and the earth
shall yield up [her] shades." Isa.
26:19.
There does not seem to be any doubt that what is here predicted is
the actual
resurrection
of individual members of the people of Israel to share in the
blessings of the kingdom of God. The other passage referred to is in
the book of
Daniel,
where we have the first
explicit
prediction of a resurrection both of the just
and the unjust.
In the time of trouble, when the people is delivered "many of
them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
Dan.
12:2.
These
remarks are made merely to show in what sense Ezekiel’s vision may
be regarded as a contribution to the Old Testament doctrine of
personal immortality. It is so not by its direct teaching, nor yet by
its presuppositions, but by the suggestiveness of its imagery;
opening out a line of thought which under the guidance of
the Spirit of
truth led to a fuller disclosure of the care
of God for
the individual life, and His purpose to redeem from the power
of the grave
those who had departed this life in His faith and fear.
But
this line of inquiry lies somewhat apart from the main teaching of
the passage before us as a message
for the Church in all ages.
The passage teaches with striking clearness the continuity of God’s
redeeming work
in the world, in spite of hindrances which to human eyes seem
insurmountable. The gravest hindrance, both in appearance and in
reality, is the decay
of faith
and vital religion in the Church itself. There are times when earnest
men are tempted to say that the Church’s
hope is
lost and her bones are dried when laxity
of life and
lukewarmness in devotion pervade
all her members,
and she ceases to influence the world for good. And yet when we
consider that the whole history of God’s cause is one long process
of raising dead souls to spiritual life and building up a kingdom
of God out
of fallen humanity, we see that the true hope of the Church can never
be lost. It lies in the life-giving,
regenerating power of the divine
Spirit,
and the promise that the word
of God
does not return to Him void but prospers in the thing whereto He
sends it. That is the great
lesson of Ezekiel’s vision,
and although its immediate application may be limited to the occasion
that called it forth, yet the analogy on which it is founded is taken
up by our Lord Himself and extended to the proclamation of His truth
to the world at large: "The hour is coming, and now is, when the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall
live." John 25; Cf. John
20:28-29.
We perhaps too readily empty these strong terms of their meaning. The
Spirit of
God is apt
to become a mere expression for the religious and moral influences
lodged in a Christian society, and we come to rely on these agencies
for the dissemination
of Christian principles
and the formation of Christian character. We forget that behind all
this there is something which is compared to the imparting of life
where there was none, something which is the work of the Spirit
of which
we cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. But in times of
low spirituality, when the love of many waxes cold, and there are few
signs of zeal and activity in the service
of Christ,
men learn to fall back in faith on the invisible
power of God
to make His word effectual for the revival of His
cause
among men. And this happens constantly in narrow spheres which may
never attract the notice of the world. There are positions in the
Church still where Christ’s servants are called to labour in the
faith of Ezekiel, with appearances all against them, and nothing to
inspire them but the conviction that the word they preach is the
power of God and able even to bring life to the dead.
II.
The
second half
of the
chapter speaks of a special feature of the national restoration, the
reunion of the kingdoms
of Judah
and Israel
under one sceptre. This is represented first of all by a symbolic
action. The prophet is directed to take two
pieces of wood,
apparently in the form of scepters, and to write upon them
inscriptions dedicating them respectively to Judah
and Joseph,
the heads of the two confederacies out of which the rival monarchies
were formed. The companions Eze.
37:16
i.e.,
allies of Judah are the two tribes of Benjamin and Simeon; those of
Joseph are all the other tribes, who stood under the hegemony of
Ephraim. If the second
inscription
is rather more complicated than
the first,
it is because of the fact that there was no actual tribe of Joseph.
It therefore runs thus: For Joseph, the staff of Ephraim, and all the
house of Israel his confederates. These two staves then he is to put
together so that they become one
sceptre in his hand.
It is a little difficult to decide whether this was a sign that was
actually performed before the people, or one that is only imagined.
It depends partly on what we take to be meant by the joining
of the two pieces.
If Ezekiel merely took two sticks, put them end to end, and made them
look like one, then no doubt he did this in public, for otherwise
there would be no use in mentioning the circumstance at all. But if
the meaning is, as seems
more probable,
that when the rods are put together, they miraculously grow into one,
then we see that such a sign has a value for the prophet’s own mind
as a symbol
of the truth
revealed to him, and it is no longer necessary to assume that the
action was really performed. The purpose of the sign is not merely to
suggest the idea of political unity, which is too simple to require
any such illustration, but rather to indicate the completeness
of the union
and the divine force needed to bring it about. The difficulty of
conceiving a perfect fusion of the two parts of the nation was really
very great, the cleavage between Judah and the North being much older
than the monarchy and having been accentuated by centuries of
political separation and rivalry.
To
us the most
noteworthy
fact is the steadfastness with which the prophets of this period
cling to the hope of a restoration of the northern tribes, although
nearly a century and a half had now elapsed since "Ephraim was
broken from being a people." Isa.
7:8.
Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, is unable to think of an Israel which does
not include the representatives of the ten
northern tribes.
Whether any communication was kept up with the colonies of Israelites
that had been transported from Samaria to Assyria we do not know, but
they are regarded as still existing, and still remembered
by Jehovah.
The resurrection of the nation which Ezekiel has just predicted is
expressly said to apply to the whole
house of Israel,
and now he goes on to announce that this exceeding
great army
shall march to its land not
under two banners, but under one.
We
have touched already, in speaking of the Messianic idea, on the
reasons which led the prophets to put so much emphasis on this union.
They felt as strongly on the point as a High Churchman does about the
sin of schism, and it would not be difficult for the latter to show
that his point of view and his ideals closely resemble those of the
prophets. The rending of the body of Christ which is supposed
to be involved in a breach of external unity is paralleled by the
disruption of the Hebrew state, which violates the unity of the
one people of Jehovah. The idea of the Church as the bride of
Christ is the same idea under which Hosea expresses the relations
between Jehovah and Israel, and it necessarily carries with it
the unity of the people of Israel in the one case and of the Church
in the other. It must be admitted also that the evils resulting from
the division between Judah and Israel have been reproduced,
with consequences a thousand times more disastrous to religion, in
the strife and uncharitableness, the party spirit and jealousies and
animosities, which different denominations of Christians have
invariably exhibited towards each other when they were close
enough for mutual interest. But granting all this and granting that
what is called schism is essentially the same thing that the
prophets desired to see removed, it does not at once follow
that dissent is in itself sinful, and still less that the sin is
necessarily on the side of the Dissenter. The question is whether the
national standpoint of the prophets is altogether applicable to the
communion of saints in Christ, whether the body of Christ is
really torn asunder by differences in organization and opinion,
whether, in short, anything is necessary to avoid the guilt of schism
beyond keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The Old Testament dealt with men in the mass, as members of a nation,
and its standards can hardly be adequate to the polity of a religion
which has to provide for the freedom of the individual conscience
before God. At the worst the Dissenter may point out that the Old
Testament schism was necessary as a protest against tyranny and
despotism, that in this aspect it was sanctioned by the inspired
prophets of the age, that its undoubted evils were partly compensated
by a freer expansion of religious life, and finally that even the
prophets did not expect it to be healed before the millennium.
From
the idea of the reunited nation Ezekiel returns easily to the promise
of the Davidic king and the blessings of the Messianic
dispensation.
The one people implies one shepherd, and also one land, and one
spirit to walk in Jehovah’s
judgments
and to observe His statutes to do them. The various elements which
enter into the conception of national salvation are thus gathered up
and combined in one picture of the people’s everlasting felicity.
And the whole is crowned by the promise of Jehovah’s presence with
the people, sanctifying and protecting them from
His sanctuary.
This final condition of things is permanent and eternal. The sources
of internal dis peace are removed by the washing away of Israel’s
iniquities, and the impossibility of any disturbance from without is
illustrated by the onslaught of the heathen nations described in the
following chapters.
