Ezekiel 37:28

Ezekiel received this word in Babylon, among the people of Judah who had been carried into exile. The division it speaks to was already more than three centuries old. After Solomon died, around 931 BC, his son Rehoboam refused to lighten the heavy burdens laid on the people, and ten of the twelve tribes rebelled and formed their own kingdom under Jeroboam, while Judah and Benjamin stayed with the house of David (1 Kings 12, 2 Chronicles 10). From then on there were two kingdoms. The northern one kept the name Israel and was also called Ephraim, Joseph or Samaria. The southern one was Judah, with David’s line of kings and the temple in Jerusalem. The two were rivals for centuries, the north gave itself to idols, and at times they went to war with each other.

Both kingdoms fell under God’s judgment. Assyria conquered the north in 722 BC and scattered its people, and Babylon took Judah, destroying Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC (2 Kings 25). The exiles had lost their land, their temple and their king, and many of them wondered whether God had abandoned them and whether they had any future as his people. The lament of Psalm 137 comes from those years. To people who could remember only division and loss, God promised one nation again, and he gave the promise in a picture they could see and hold.

“The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying” (verse 15) is how the prophets mark a message as God’s. Jeremiah’s call opens the same way (Jeremiah 1:4–9), and so do the books of Hosea and Joel (Hosea 1:1, Joel 1:1). The words tell the hearers that the prophet is a messenger and that what follows comes from God. The Hebrew for “word”, dâbâr, means a word or speech, and in a separate sense a matter or thing. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s covenant name, which the KJV prints as “the LORD”, and “saying” is the ordinary verb ʼâmar, “to say”, which introduces what God said.

“Again” ties this message to the one before it. The God who has just promised life to the dry bones has more to say, and what he says next builds on that promise. He has kept speaking ever since. He spoke to the fathers by the prophets, and in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). His word accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11), and so the promises that follow here are sure.

God tells Ezekiel, whom he calls “son of man”, a title that marks the prophet as a mortal man standing before the Almighty, to take a stick and write on it. The word for stick is ʻêts (also written ‘ēṣ), the common word for a tree or for wood. Here it means a piece of wood that can be written on, a rod or a wooden tablet. “Write”, kâthab, can also mean to engrave. Two plain pieces of wood with names written on them made the message easy to see and easy to remember.

The explanation begins with God’s authority: “Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD” (verse 19). “Lord GOD” stands for Adonai Yᵉhôvâh, the sovereign Lord who is also Israel’s covenant God. Then he says what he will do: “I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.” The joining Ezekiel acted out, God will accomplish, and the reunited people will rest in his hand, which holds them with all his power and care.

The first part of the promise is a gathering. “I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land” (verse 21). “Heathen”, gôwy, means a nation, most often a foreign nation, the Gentiles. The children of Israel were living among those nations as a small and vulnerable people, under foreign rule and foreign gods, in danger of losing who they were. “Gather”, qâbats, means to collect or assemble, bringing people together for a common purpose, and God will gather them “on every side”, from wherever they have gone.

Moses had promised long before that if Israel were scattered, God would gather them and bring them back into the land (Deuteronomy 30:3–5). Jeremiah said that after seventy years in Babylon God would bring his people home (Jeremiah 29:10), and Isaiah spoke of the Lord gathering Israel again (Isaiah 11:11–12). Ezekiel’s promise stands in that line, and God himself is the one who takes, gathers and brings.

“And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel” (verse 22). The word for nation is the same word gôwy that verse 21 used for the heathen, here used of Israel as one people among the nations. “The mountains of Israel” stands for the whole land, their own hill country. “One king shall be king to them all” ends the centuries of two kings over two kingdoms. Then the promise is made permanent: “they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.” Châtsâh, divided, means to cut or split in two, to halve, which is exactly what had happened to the kingdom after Solomon.

ʼEchâd comes back here in “one nation” and “one king”. It is the same word Moses used when he declared that the LORD is one (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the one God makes his people one. Their king is the ruler God had promised through the prophets, the Messiah whose reign Isaiah foretold (Isaiah 9:6–7) and the righteous Branch of whom Jeremiah spoke (Jeremiah 23:5–6).

A gathered and reunited people still needed clean hearts, and verse 23 promises them. “Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions”. These were the sins that had sent Israel into exile. Ṭâmêʼ, defile, means to be or become unclean, and it covers uncleanness of every kind, whether from contact, from disease or from wilful sin. Israel had made itself unclean by worshipping false gods and taking up the practices of the nations around it. Their idols are gillûwl, properly logs or blocks, shapeless things, a word of contempt for images men had made. The “detestable things” were the abominations of pagan worship, which the law of Moses forbade, and “any of their transgressions” takes in every other rebellion.

Then the verse turns to God’s own work: “but I will save them out of all their dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them”. He will rescue them from the places where they sinned and from the sin itself. Ṭâhêr, cleanse, means to make clean or pure, the opposite of ṭâmêʼ, and God is the one who does it. The chapter before tells how. He will sprinkle clean water on his people, give them a new heart and a new spirit, and put his own Spirit within them so that they walk in his statutes (Ezekiel 36:25–27).

“So shall they be my people, and I will be their God.” This is the covenant promise, the heart of what God had always meant his bond with Israel to be, and verse 27 repeats it to close the passage. Jeremiah heard it in the promise of a new covenant, with God’s law written in his people’s hearts and their sins remembered no more (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and the letter to the Hebrews takes up that promise for all who belong to Christ (Hebrews 8:10–12).

The cleansing Ezekiel promised comes to us in Christ. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and his blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7, Hebrews 9:14). The wages of sin is death, and God’s gift in him is eternal life (Romans 6:23). At the Last Supper Jesus called the cup the new testament in his blood (Luke 22:20), and anyone who is in him is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd” (verse 24). Dâvid is the name of Israel’s greatest king, which Strong’s traces to a root meaning “loving”. God had promised David a son whose throne he would establish for ever (2 Samuel 7:12–16), and the whole of 2 Samuel 7 tells of that covenant. “My servant” marks the king as God’s own choice, who does God’s will. He is also a shepherd. Râʻâh means to tend a flock, to pasture it, and also to rule, and Scripture uses the picture of kings and above all of God himself: “The LORD is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). One shepherd means one flock, guided, fed and protected together.

Under him “they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.” Mishpâṭ, judgment, is a verdict or decree, and God’s judgments are his just laws. “And do them” makes the obedience practical, lived out day by day. It is the obedience that the new heart makes possible, when God puts his law within his people (Jeremiah 31:33) and writes it in their hearts (Hebrews 8:10). Paul says the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit (Romans 8:4).

“And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt” (verse 25). God had promised the land to Abraham (Genesis 12:7) and renewed the promise to Jacob at Bethel (Genesis 28:13). Yâshab, dwell, means to sit down, and so to settle and remain, and it comes twice: they shall dwell, and they shall dwell therein, “even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever”. ʻÔwlâm, for ever, is time without end, and the same word stands behind “everlasting” in verse 26.

“And my servant David shall be their prince for ever.” Nâsîyʼ, prince, means a chief or ruler, properly an exalted one. Verses 22 and 24 call the same ruler king, and here he is prince, a ruler whose authority comes from God. Like the people’s dwelling, his rule is for ever.

“Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them” (verse 26). Bᵉrîyth, covenant, is a solemn, binding agreement, an alliance or treaty. Its root is uncertain, and Scripture shows how solemn a covenant was in Genesis 15, where God made his covenant with Abram over animals cut in pieces. Shâlôwm, peace, names completeness, soundness, welfare and safety, the whole well-being of a people at peace with God and secure in their land. Isaiah speaks of the same covenant of peace, held fast by God’s everlasting kindness (Isaiah 54:10).

The covenant is everlasting because God keeps it. Israel had broken the covenant made at Sinai (Exodus 19, Exodus 24), and that was why they were in exile. This one rests on God’s own faithfulness, as Jeremiah also heard when God promised his people an everlasting covenant (Jeremiah 32:38–41), and as Isaiah heard when God tied an everlasting covenant to his kindness to David (Isaiah 55:3).

“And I will place them, and multiply them” recalls God’s promises to Abraham of a land and of many descendants (Genesis 12:2, Genesis 17:2). A people diminished by war and exile would be settled in their place and grow again.

“And will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.” Miqdâsh, sanctuary, means a consecrated place, a holy place. The same word could name the shrines of idols, and here God calls it “my sanctuary”. At Sinai God told Moses to have Israel make him a sanctuary so that he might dwell among them (Exodus 25:8). The tabernacle of Exodus 25 and later Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6) were where God’s presence was among his people, and the temple’s destruction had been a crushing blow to the exiles. God now promises his sanctuary again, at the center of his people, for evermore. The last chapters of the book describe a new temple in detail (Ezekiel 40–48), and Zechariah later heard God promise to return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem (Zechariah 8:3).

“My tabernacle also shall be with them” (verse 27). Mishkân means a dwelling place, and it is the word for the tabernacle in the wilderness. It can also mean a tent or hut, such as shepherds lived in. It recalls the years when God lived among his people in a tent as they travelled, and his promise to dwell among the children of Israel and be their God (Exodus 29:45) and to walk among them (Leviticus 26:12). The verse before has already said that this presence will last for evermore. Then the covenant promise comes again: “yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” ʼĔlôhîym, God, is plural in form and is read as a plural of majesty when it names the true God. ʻAm, people, is a people bound together, here the nation that belongs to him.

God began to keep this promise when exiles came home from Babylon, and believers differ on how the rest of it is kept. The return was real but partial. People from both the northern and the southern tribes came back and lived as one community in the land and rebuilt Jerusalem, but they lived under foreign rule, without a son of David on the throne, and the old tribal lines were never fully restored.

Some believers hold that the words “from among the heathen” and “on every side” look further ahead, to a gathering of the Jewish people from all over the world in the last days, as other prophets also foretold (Amos 9:14–15), with the whole promise kept when the Messiah reigns. Many of them see the modern state of Israel as a partial ingathering of this kind.

Other believers hold that the promise is kept in Christ and his church, where Jew and Gentile are gathered into one flock under one Shepherd. On this reading the land points ahead to the new heavens and new earth, where the nations walk in the light of the Lamb (Revelation 21:24–26), and the sanctuary is the people of God, built even now into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).

Believers who hold either view agree that the one King is Jesus Christ, that the gathering and the cleansing are God’s own work, and that every word of the promise will be kept. When the new heavens and earth come, God will dwell with his people, and there will be no more death, sorrow or tears (Revelation 21:1–4).

In John 10:11–16 Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep. He speaks of other sheep, outside Israel’s fold, whom he must also bring, “and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). He said that when he was lifted up from the earth he would draw all men to himself (John 12:32). By his cross he broke down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile and made the two one people in himself (Ephesians 2:14–16). So in him Jew and Gentile are one (Galatians 3:28), Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11), and he is the head of his body, the church (Colossians 1:18).

He also brings God’s dwelling to his people. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and John’s verb, eskēnōsen, means that he pitched his tent, or tabernacled, among us. He is Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), and he spoke of his own body as the temple (John 2:19–21). Through him the Holy Spirit dwells in believers, whose bodies are his temple (1 Corinthians 6:19), and the church is being built into a holy temple, a dwelling place of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21–22). In the holy city at the end, the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple (Revelation 21:22), and the Lamb is its light (Revelation 21:23).

The two halves of Ezekiel 37 meet in him as well. Those who were dead in sins, like the dry bones, God has quickened together with Christ (Ephesians 2:1–5), and he has given them a living hope and an inheritance that cannot perish or be defiled (1 Peter 1:3–4).

This passage shows a God who finishes what he begins. He gave Israel life in the valley of bones, and then he promised to make the living nation one, to bring it home, to wash it clean and to live in its midst. Each step is his own: I will take, I will gather, I will make, I will save, I will cleanse, I will set my sanctuary. The unity of his people is something he makes in his own hand, and what he holds there stays held.

It also shows what he was after all along. The passage ends with “I will be their God, and they shall be my people”, and with his dwelling among them where the nations can see. In Christ that promise has reached us. The one Shepherd has gathered Jew and Gentile into one fold, his blood makes us clean, and his Spirit makes his people God’s temple. Wherever God’s people are divided, this passage holds before us the God who joined two sticks that had been apart for centuries, and the day when his sanctuary will be with his people for evermore.