Ezekiel 37

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The valley of dry bones

¹ The hand of Yahweh was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of Yahweh and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. ² He made me pass among them all around, and see, there were very many on the face of the valley; and see, they were very dry. ³ And He said to me: Son of man, can these bones live? And I said, "Adonai Yahweh, You know." ⁴ And He said to me: Prophesy over these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of Yahweh! ⁵ Thus says Adonai Yahweh to these bones: See, I will cause breath to enter you, and you will live. ⁶ I will put sinews on you, and bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you will live; and you will know that I am Yahweh.

⁷ So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a sound, and see, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸ And I looked, and see, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come up, and skin had covered them over; but there was no breath in them. ⁹ Then He said to me: Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says Adonai Yahweh: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, so that they may live. ¹⁰ So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

¹¹ Then He said to me: Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. See, they say, "Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are cut off completely!" ¹² Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus says Adonai Yahweh: See, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, O My people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. ¹³ And you will know that I am Yahweh, when I open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, O My people. ¹⁴ I will put My Spirit in you, and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land; and you will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken, and I will do it, declares Yahweh.

The two sticks made one

¹⁵ The word of Yahweh came to me, saying, ¹⁶ And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick and write on it, "For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions"; then take another stick and write on it, "For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions." ¹⁷ Join them one to the other into one stick, and they shall become one in your hand.

¹⁸ And when the children of your people speak to you, saying, "Will you not tell us what you mean by these?" ¹⁹ say to them, Thus says Adonai Yahweh: See, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his companions; and I will join them with it, with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in My hand. ²⁰ And the sticks on which you write shall be in your hand before their eyes.

One nation under one king

²¹ Then say to them, Thus says Adonai Yahweh: See, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations to which they have gone, and will gather them from every side, and bring them into their own land. ²² I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; and they shall no longer be two nations, nor ever be divided into two kingdoms again. ²³ They shall no longer defile themselves with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their Elohim.

²⁴ My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd; and they will walk in My judgments, and keep My statutes and do them. ²⁵ They shall dwell in the land that I gave to My servant Jacob, in which your fathers dwelt; they shall dwell in it, they and their children and their children's children forever; and David My servant shall be their prince forever.

An everlasting covenant of peace

²⁶ I will make with them a covenant of peace; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. ²⁷ My dwelling shall be with them; and I will be their Elohim, and they shall be My people. ²⁸ And the nations will know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever.

Notes

• 37:9 One Hebrew word, ruach, runs through verses 1-14, and the TRB lets its three senses show: Ezekiel is brought out "by the Spirit of Yahweh" (verse 1), "breath" enters the bones, it comes "from the four winds," and Yahweh explains, "I will put My Spirit in you, and you will live" (verse 14). A Hebrew reader hears the same word each time: the breath that gives life is Yahweh's own Spirit. "Breathe" is the verb of Genesis 2:7, where Yahweh Elohim "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life"; the slain are made alive as the first man was.
• 37:11 Yahweh Himself explains the vision: the bones are "the whole house of Israel," all the tribes and not Judah alone, as the sign of the two sticks goes on to show (verses 15-22). The graves are the exile, and the answer to "our hope is lost" is a people raised up and brought home (verses 12-14); Israel's anthem, Hatikvah ("The Hope"), takes up these words: "our hope is not yet lost." The vision is first of all about the nation's restoration, yet its opened graves also fed the hope of bodily resurrection (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2), and later Jewish tradition (the Talmud, Sanhedrin 92b) debated whether the dead Ezekiel saw rise were literal.
• 37:16 Ets is the everyday word for a tree, wood or a stick; here it is a plain piece of wood (some think of a wooden writing tablet), not a royal sceptre. "For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions" means the southern kingdom with those joined to it, such as Benjamin and the priests and Levites (2 Chronicles 11:12-13). "Joseph, the stick of Ephraim" means the northern kingdom, led by the tribe of Ephraim, Joseph's son, from the time of Jeroboam the Ephraimite (1 Kings 11:26; 12:20). "His companions" follows the reading in the margin of the Masoretic text (qere); the written text (ketiv) has the singular.
• 37:23 "Their dwelling places" is the Masoretic text (moshvotehem). Many scholars read a nearly identical word, "their backslidings" (meshuvotehem), the word of Jeremiah 3:22, much as the ancient Greek has "their lawless deeds"; either way the cleansing reaches the places and ways of their sin. The verse ends with the covenant formula already heard in 11:20 and 14:11: "they shall be My people, and I will be their Elohim."
• 37:24 Verses 22-24 bring together the two promises: one nation and one king instead of two kingdoms, and "one shepherd," "My servant David," as in 34:23-24, a king of David's line long after David's death (compare Jeremiah 30:9, "David their king, whom I will raise up for them"). The reunited people "will walk in My judgments, and keep My statutes and do them," the pair of words of 36:27, where Yahweh promised to bring this about by His Spirit; mishpatim here are Yahweh's rulings for life, rendered "judgments" beside chuqqot, "statutes." Many see the king fulfilled in Yeshua, the Son of David, who spoke of one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16).
• 37:26 Two covenant phrases meet here: the "covenant of peace" (berit shalom) of 34:25 and the "everlasting covenant" (berit olam) of 16:60. At its center is Yahweh's presence: His sanctuary in their midst forever and His "dwelling" (mishkan, the word for the tabernacle) with them, as Leviticus 26:11-12 promised: "I will set My dwelling among you… I will walk among you and be your Elohim, and you shall be My people." Paul quotes this promise in 2 Corinthians 6:16, and Revelation 21:3 echoes it; Ezekiel's own vision of the sanctuary follows in chapters 40-48.

Ezekiel 36 · Ezekiel 38

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