Ezekiel 37 – Resurrection Time

If the One80 blog had an accompanying soundtrack, I’d be cuing up Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” right about now.  Wow!  This has to be one of the most outlandish passages in the Bible: dry bones of the long-dead come rattling back together, their bodies rising again with new breath.  If we already thought God had turned up the extreme teaching illustrations on Ezekiel, He cranks it to the max here.

Just one chapter before, in Ezekiel 36:24-38, God announces the future restoration of the nation.  Bible scholars believe God then gave Ezekiel a vision of what this restoration will be like.  Drawing from the vivid imagery God gives here of lifeless bones rising from the ground, scholars make these connections:

• The “bones” in verse 11 represent the whole house of Israel, their resting place the unmarked graves of foreign nations they have fallen into.

• Verses 12-14 prophesy the bringing of God’s people out of these graves and back together into one body, one nation—like tendons on the bone.

• Verses 13-14 speak of their conversion back to God, the breath of His Spirit filling their souls and restoring their lives.

All great news indeed for the embattled nation of Israel, but don’t miss the prophecy just for the gentiles in the last verse of this chapter—when God hints at His even wider plan of redemption (see Acts 15):

“Then the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.”

Reuben Smith