Ezekiel 37:2
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He led me all around among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, and indeed, they were very dry.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
The threatenings of the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem for their sins, which we had in the former part of this book, were not so terrible, but the promises of their restoration and deliverance for the glory of God, which we have here in the latter part of the book, are as comfortable; and as those were illustrated with many visions and similitudes, for the awakening of a holy fear, so are these, for the encouraging of a humble faith. God had assured them, in the foregoing chapter, that he would gather the house of Israel, even all of it, and would bring them out of their captivity, and return them to their own land; but there were two things that rendered this very unlikely: - I. That they were so dispersed among their enemies, so destitute of all helps and advantages which might favour or further their return, and so dispirited likewise in their own minds; upon all these accounts they are here, in vision, compared to a valley full of the dry bones of dead men, which should be brought together and raised to life. The vision of this we have (Eze 37:1-10) and the explication of it, with its application to the present case (Eze 37:11-14). II. That they were so divided among themselves, too much of the old enmity between Judah and Ephriam remaining even in their captivity. But, as to this, by a sign of two sticks made one in the hand of the prophet is foreshown the happy coalition that should be, at their return, between the two nations of Israel and Judah (Eze 37:15-22). In this there was a type of the uniting of Jews and Gentiles, Jews and Samaritans, in Christ and his church. And so the prophet slides into a prediction of the kingdom of Christ, which should be set up in the world with God's tabernacle in it, and of the glories and graces of that kingdom (Eze 37:23-28…
Open source ↗37:2 This death scene seemed hopeless; these were not recently expired corpses but miscellaneous bones, scattered everywhere across the ground and . . . completely dried out. This scene symbolized the attitude of the people. Their hopes for themselves were not merely dead; they were dismembered and desiccated.
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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As when one plows and breaks up the soil, so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of Sheol.
Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Look, they are saying, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off.’
Are not these mountains across the Jordan, west of the road toward the sunset, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah opposite Gilgal near the Oak of Moreh?