For Teaching

Ezekiel 37: What the Passage Says

108 claims across 28 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ezekiel 37 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD sets Ezekiel down in a valley full of dry bones and tells him to speak God's message over them; the bones come together, grow flesh, and stand up alive as a huge army. God explains that the bones stand for the whole house of Israel, who say their hope is gone, and promises to open their graves, put his Spirit in them, and bring them back to their own land. Then Ezekiel is told to join two sticks, one for Judah and one for Joseph, into one, as a sign that God will gather the people from the nations and make them one nation under one king. God promises to cleanse them, to set his servant David over them as shepherd and prince, and to make a lasting covenant of peace with his sanctuary among them forever.

Claim by Claim

37:1
- The hand of the LORD came upon the speaker.
- The LORD brought the speaker out by the spirit of the LORD.
- The LORD set the speaker down in the middle of the valley.
- The valley was full of bones.
37:2
- The LORD led the speaker among the bones all around.
- The bones were very many across the surface of the valley.
- The bones were very dry.
37:3
- The LORD asked the speaker, addressing him as son of man, whether these bones could live.
- The speaker answered, addressing him as Lord GOD, that the LORD knows.
37:4
- The LORD told the speaker to prophesy over these bones.
- The LORD told the speaker to say to the bones: dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.
37:5
- The Lord GOD says to these bones that He will bring breath into them.
- The Lord GOD says the bones will live.
37:6
- The LORD will put sinews on the bones.
- The LORD will bring up flesh upon them.
- The LORD will cover them with skin.
- The LORD will put breath in them.
- They will live.
- They will know that He is the LORD.
37:7
- The speaker prophesied as he was commanded.
- As he prophesied there was a noise.
- There was a rattling.
- The bones drew together.
- Each bone came to its matching bone.
37:8
- The speaker looked and saw sinews on the bones.
- Flesh came up on them.
- Skin covered them over.
- There was no breath in them.
37:9
- The LORD told the speaker to prophesy to the breath.
- The LORD told the speaker, addressing him as son of man, to prophesy.
- The LORD told the speaker to say to the breath what the Lord GOD says.
- The Lord GOD commands the breath to come from the four winds.
- The Lord GOD commands the breath to breathe into these slain.
- The purpose is that the slain may live.
37:10
- The speaker prophesied as the LORD commanded him.
- The breath came into the slain.
- They lived.
- They stood up on their feet.
- They were an exceedingly great army.
37:11
- The LORD told the speaker, addressing him as son of man, that these bones are the whole house of Israel.
- The people say their bones are dried up.
- The people say their hope has perished.
- The people say they are cut off.
37:12
- The LORD told the speaker to prophesy and say to them what the Lord GOD says.
- The Lord GOD will open their graves.
- The Lord GOD will bring them up out of their graves.
- The Lord GOD calls them His people.
- The Lord GOD will bring them into the land of Israel.
37:13
- They will know that He is the LORD.
- This knowing comes when He opens their graves and brings them up out of their graves.
- He calls them His people.
37:14
- The LORD will put His spirit in them.
- They will live.
- The LORD will settle them on their own land.
- They will know that the LORD has spoken it.
- They will know that the LORD has done it.
- This is the declaration of the LORD.
37:15
- The word of the LORD came to the speaker again.
37:16
- The LORD addressed the speaker as son of man.
- The LORD told him to take one stick of wood.
- He is to write on it: for Judah and for the children of Israel his companions.
- He is to take another stick of wood.
- He is to write on it: for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions.
37:17
- He is to bring the two sticks together into one stick.
- They will become one in his hand.
37:18
- The children of his people will speak to him.
- They will ask whether he will tell them what these things mean to him.
37:19
- He is to say to them what the Lord GOD says.
- The Lord GOD will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, along with the tribes of Israel his companions.
- The Lord GOD will put them with the stick of Judah.
- The Lord GOD will make them one stick.
- They will be one in the LORD's hand.
37:20
- The sticks he writes on will be in his hand.
- They will be before the eyes of the people.
37:21
- He is to say to them what the Lord GOD says.
- The Lord GOD will take the children of Israel from among the nations where they have gone.
- The Lord GOD will gather them from every side.
- The Lord GOD will bring them into their own land.
37:22
- The LORD will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel.
- One king will be king over all of them.
- They will no longer be two nations.
- They will no longer be divided into two kingdoms.
37:23
- They will no longer defile themselves with their idols.
- They will no longer defile themselves with their detestable things.
- They will no longer defile themselves with any of their transgressions.
- The LORD will save them out of all their dwelling places in which they sinned.
- The LORD will cleanse them.
- They will be His people.
- He will be their God.
37:24
- David the LORD's servant will be king over them.
- They will all have one shepherd.
- They will walk in the LORD's judgments.
- They will keep the LORD's statutes.
- They will do them.
37:25
- They will dwell in the land the LORD gave to His servant Jacob.
- Their fathers dwelt in that land.
- They will dwell in it, they and their children and their children's children, forever.
- David the LORD's servant will be their prince forever.
37:26
- The LORD will make a covenant of peace with them.
- It will be an everlasting covenant with them.
- The LORD will establish them.
- The LORD will multiply them.
- The LORD will set His sanctuary among them forever.
37:27
- The LORD's dwelling place will be over them.
- The LORD will be their God.
- They will be His people.
37:28
- The nations will know that the LORD sanctifies Israel.
- They will know this when the LORD's sanctuary is among them forever.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

37:1: "The hand of the LORD was upon me" is a fixed prophetic idiom for being seized and overpowered by God, a compelling force that takes the prophet somewhere or makes him speak, not a literal touch. Ezekiel uses it to mark the start of his visions.
37:2: Bones lying exposed on open ground, unburied and bleached dry, would have struck ancient readers as an atrocity: leaving the dead unburied was one of the worst fates imaginable, and a valley strewn with bones pictures a battlefield whose casualties nobody ever collected. Verse 9 confirms these are "the slain."
37:3: "Son of man" is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, a Hebrew phrase meaning simply "human being," "mortal." It marks the distance between the speaker and the man he is speaking to. Where the printed text has LORD or GOD in capitals it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish tradition does not pronounce; "Lord GOD" renders the pair of Hebrew words Adonai YHWH, roughly "the Sovereign, the LORD."
37:4: To "prophesy" is to speak a message on God's behalf. It is not fortune telling. The prophet is a mouthpiece, and here the words themselves are what does the work: he is told to speak, and the speaking is what makes things happen.
37:5: One Hebrew word, ruach, runs through this whole vision, and English needs three words for it: "breath" here and in verses 6, 8, 9 and 10, "winds" in verse 9, and "Spirit" in verses 1 and 14. The play on the single word is deliberate and cannot be reproduced in English.
37:6: "Sinews" are tendons, the tough cords that tie muscle to bone. The bodies are rebuilt in order, from the inside out. "Ye shall know that I am the LORD" is a formula Ezekiel repeats around seventy times; it is his standard way of naming the point of any event.
37:7: "Bone to his bone" uses "his" where modern English would say "its." In 1611 English, "his" served as the possessive for things as well as for men, so no person is implied here.
37:9: "The four winds" means the four directions of the compass: that is, from every quarter of the world, from everywhere at once.
37:10: The word translated "army" can mean either a huge crowd or a fighting force. Given that verse 9 called them the slain, the picture is of a defeated army standing up again as a living one.
37:11: Ezekiel was writing among Judeans deported to Babylon after Jerusalem's defeat. "Cut off" translates a phrase used of a branch severed from a tree or a person cut off from their people, the exiles are saying they are finished, with no future as a people. "The whole house of Israel" means the entire nation descended from Jacob, both the northern and southern parts (see verse 16).
37:12: Israelites were usually buried in family tombs, caves or chambers cut into rock and closed with a stone, so "open your graves" pictures rolling back that stone. The graves here stand for exile in a foreign country; the promise is return to the land, not a general statement about the dead.
37:14: "Spirit" here is the same Hebrew word used for breath and wind earlier in the chapter.
37:16: Prophets regularly performed acted-out signs, small public dramas whose meaning they then explained, and this is one of them. The word translated "stick" means a piece of wood, and could be either a wooden writing board or a staff of the kind that stood for a tribe. The two names mark the two halves of a divided nation: after Solomon's death (about 930 BC) the twelve tribes split into a southern kingdom, Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, and a northern kingdom of ten tribes. Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh headed the largest northern tribes, so "Ephraim" and "Joseph" are used as names for the north as a whole.
37:17: Prophets often acted their messages out in public. Watching two sticks become one made the promise easier to picture than words alone.
37:18: "Shew" is just the old spelling of "show."
37:19: A tribe is a very big family group. Israel had twelve tribes, and they all came from one grandfather.
37:21: The King James "heathen" translates a Hebrew word meaning simply "the nations", the peoples other than Israel. It carries no sneer about their beliefs; it is a plain word for foreigners, and here means the countries the exiles were scattered into.
37:22: The northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria in 722 BC and much of its population deported; the southern kingdom fell to Babylon in 586 BC. By Ezekiel's day the split had lasted roughly three and a half centuries and looked permanent.
37:23: "Defile" and "make clean" are ritual terms rather than terms of hygiene: to be clean was to be fit to approach God and take part in worship, and to be unclean was to be barred from it until the state was put right. "Detestable things" is a stock Hebrew word for images of other gods and the objects used in their worship.
37:24: David had been dead some four hundred years when Ezekiel wrote. "My servant David" means a king of David's line, the name of the founding king used for the dynasty and the ideal ruler it was expected to produce. Calling a king a "shepherd" was ordinary political language across the ancient Near East, where kings routinely described themselves as shepherds of their people; it says something about the job, not about the countryside.
37:25: Jacob was the grandson of Abraham and the ancestor of the twelve tribes; he was also given the name Israel, which is why the nation carries it.
37:26: A covenant was a formal binding agreement, sworn and public, of the kind made between a king and his subjects or between two states, closer to a treaty than to a private promise. "My holy house" translates a word meaning sanctuary: the temple, the building set apart for God's presence among the people.
37:27: The King James "tabernacle" is the word for a dwelling place, and specifically for the portable tent-shrine Israel carried through the wilderness. The image is of God pitching his tent in the middle of the camp and living there.
37:28: "Sanctify" and "holy" translate words meaning set apart, marked off from ordinary use for God's exclusive purposes. The primary sense is separateness rather than moral goodness.

Read Ezekiel 37