Ezekiel 37

37:1 THE hand of the LORD was upon me, and he carried me out in the spirit of the 2 LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones; and he caused me to pass by them round about: and behold, there were very many in the open valley; 3 and lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And 4 I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy over these bones, 5 and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord God 6 unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and 7 put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold an earthquake, 8 and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And I beheld, and lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up, and skin covered them above: but there was no breath in 9 them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 10 these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came 11 into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our 12 bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off. Therefore prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come 13 up out of your graves, O my people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, and caused you to come 14 up out of your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in your own land: and ye shall know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD. 15, 16 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, And thou, son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house 17 of Israel his companions: and join them for thee one to another into one stick, that they may 18 become one in thine hand. And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these? say unto them, Thus saith the Lord 19 God: Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his companions; and I will put them with it, even with the stick of Judah, and 20 make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand. And the sticks whereon thou 21 writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, whither they be 22 gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two 23 kingdoms any more at all: neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwelling places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they 24 be my people, and I will be their God. And my servant David shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgements, and observe 25 my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, they, and their children, and their children’s children, for ever: and David my servant shall be their prince for 26 ever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them: it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in 27 the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them; and I will be their 28 God, and they shall be my people. And the nations shall know that I am the LORD that sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.

Chap. 37. The strain of rich and glorious promise still continues, looking primarily to the immediate case of the exiles to whom the message first came, but stretching its view far onward into the great sublime future of the Zion of the Lord our God. As to its figures and symbols, the chapter is in two parts. The first (verses 1-14) is a vision of dry bones brought back to life, vigor and beauty—to represent the restored nationality of the captive, dispirited Jews and their renewed spiritual life: while the second part (verses 15-20) gives us by a figure the enduring union of the two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. Then verses 21-28 expand into a rich promise of the future peace and purity of Messiah’s kingdom. The first section is prophetic vision and not symbolic transaction in real life. But the second section is manifestly a real transaction, of a symbolic character. H. C.

1,2. By a prophetic impulse and a Divine power he was, in vision, carried out and set in the midst of a valley—probably that plain spoken of (chap. 3: 22)—where God then talked with him; and it was full of bones, of dead men’s bones; not piled up on a heap, as in a charnel-house, but scattered upon the face of the ground, as if some bloody battle had been fought here, and the slain left unburied till all the flesh was devoured or putrefied, and nothing left but the bones, and those disjointed from one another and dispersed. He passed by them round about, and he observed not only that they were very many (for there are multitudes gone to the congregation of the dead), but that, lo, they were very dry, having been long exposed to the sun and wind. The bones that had been moistened with marrow, when they have been any while dead, lose all their moisture; the body is now fenced with bones, but then they will themselves be defenceless. The Jews in Babylon were like those dead and dry bones, unlikely ever to come together, to be so much as a skeleton, less likely to be formed into a body, and least of all to be a living body. H.

2. Before him on every side is the absolute victory of death over life. It is like the scene of some bloody battle, which no human foot has trodden during the ages that have passed away since the day of that terrible conflict. Nature has completed her work of destruction. Every vestige of life has disappeared in these dried-up remains. Godet.

3. The Jews were at this time captives in Babylon, and so dispersed through that vast empire that they said of themselves, in the language of despair (verse 11), “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts.” Even the prophet himself looked on their case as so irrecoverable by human means that when God gave him a visionary representation of their state, by a valley covered with dry bones, and put the question to him, “Son of man, can these bones live?” his answer was, “O Lord God, Thou knowest.” With Thee indeed all things are possible: Omnipotence may do this great thing; but whether it shall be done, or by what means it may come to pass, Thou, O Lord God, and Thou only knowest. R. Walker.

4-6. The pertinence of prophesying to dry bones becomes fully apparent when we get the true idea of their significance in this vision. These dead and dry bones, according to the Lord’s own interpretation (verse 11), “are the whole house of Israel,” as they lay in their captivity. They were saying, “Our bones are dried and our hope is lost; as for us, we are utterly cut off”—i.e., from being a nation; we are nationally annihilated. So the hearts of the exiles had sunk into despair of ever returning to their native land and becoming again a nation enjoying the favor of God there. Now, despondency does not preclude reasoning, although real death does. Despondency does not shut off preaching—does not make it absurd to proclaim the word of the Lord. These exiled Jews were dead only in figure; they were dry bones only in the sense of being utterly discouraged, and of having lost heart and hope in their nation’s future. Preaching and prophesying to them the word of the Lord was the legitimate remedy. It might perhaps have the aspect of an absurdity while they are thought of only as dead and dry bones. The absurdity comes of forcing the figure, not of understanding the fact it represents. A special interpretation has been sometimes put upon this entire vision whereby these bones are spiritually dead sinners, and their resurrection is regeneration by the Spirit of the Lord. In this view of it, the prophet (Gospel minister) prophesies (preaches) to sinners void of spiritual life, only because he is commanded to do so, and not because there is any natural adaptation of the means to the end proposed—their resuscitation to life. When this view of the sinner’s death is pushed to the extreme of denying to him intelligence to understand God’s truth and conscience to feel its force, the absurdity becomes glaring. Yet the thing to be said here of these views is that whatever may or may not be true in regard to them, they are entirely foreign from the doctrine of this vision. Any effort to make this passage teach the laws of regeneration is altogether gratuitous. The Lord should be allowed to put His own interpretation upon the visions which He gives. When He has done this we have but one duty—viz., to abide by it, and resist all abuse and perversion of God’s Word. H. C.

7,8. No sooner has Ezekiel uttered the Divine command to these bones, than over the whole extent of the plain, movement succeeds to stillness, and a mysterious sound to the profound silence. These bones begin to stir—to come together; they form into skeletons; then appear the sinews—and the flesh covers the sinews, and clothes itself in skin. But here the whole process ends. The organs of life are there, but life itself is wanting. They are no longer mere skeletons, but still they are only dead bodies—“there is no breath in them,” says the prophet. This is but the first phase of a resurrection. Godet.

8. Formalists are like the troops in Ezekiel’s army before they were quickened: covered well with plump flesh and fair skin, yet no breath was in them; at distance a famous army, but on near approach, all dead men—no life in them until the Spirit breathed upon them. Berridge.

10. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, God the Spirit, to the pulling down of strongholds. Without His benediction the ministry of an archangel would never convert one sinner from the error of his way. But when He descends, with His life-giving influence from God out of heaven, then “foolish things of the world confound the wise; and weak things of the world confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, bring to naught things which are.” It is this ministration of the Spirit which renders the preaching of the Gospel to men dead in trespasses and sins a reasonable service. When I am set down in the valley of vision, and view the bones, very many and very dry, and am desired to try the effect of my own ability in recalling them to life, I will fold my hands and stand mute in astonishment and despair. But when the Lord God commands me to speak in His name, my closed lips shall be opened; when He calls upon the breath from the four winds to breathe upon the slain that they may live, I will prophesy without fear, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord;” and, obedient to His voice, they shall come together, bone to His bone—shall be covered with sinews and flesh—shall receive new life, and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. J. M. Mason.

11-14. The words these bones are the whole house of Israel say plainly that what follows is the explanation of the vision. In the vision, the bones were scattered on the earth; in the explanation, they are to be raised from their graves. But the difference is easily explained. The bones must have been seen in the vision, in order that the process of revivification might be exhibited. In the explanation, the dead condition of the people is described by the usual figure of bodies gone down to the grave. The restoration of the people to the land of Israel had reference to a primary fulfilment in the return from Babylon, but the chief purport of the vision was the promise of restoration from a death in trespasses and sins to a new life of holiness, fulfilled in the Gospel dispensation (John 5: 25), but having its consummation in the general resurrection at the last day. B. C.

The simple meaning of the words requires that we should regard these verses as the explanation of the preceding vision; and since at least verse 11 (“these bones are the whole house of Israel”), which declares the condition of Israel to be that of dry bones, must be symbolically understood, it seems quite arbitrary to take verse 12, where it is declared to those who have said, Our bones are dried, “I will open your graves,” etc., literally. In any case, however, the vision is of the greatest importance in the development of the doctrine of the resurrection, which, though not resulting therefrom as its direct explanation, is yet implied by its obvious application. Tertullian had already justly remarked concerning this passage: de vacuo similitudo non competit; de nullo parabola non convenit. That the power of God can, against all human thought and hope, reanimate the dead, is the general idea of the passage, from which consequently the hope of a literal resurrection of the dead may naturally be inferred, though the context shows that this is not what is here spoken of. The resurrection of the dead is, however, decidedly taught in Dan 12. O.

Those who find dark or doubtful passages in the Word of God should mark God’s own interpretation of them and regard that as absolutely decisive; discarding all speculations of their own at variance with God’s explanations. “O My people,” breathes the tone of kind, parental recognition. Compare chap. 13: 17, where, as if God would disown them, He calls them, not My people, but “thy people.” The change from thy to My betokens the tenderness of returning love. It indicates that deep spiritual blessings are involved in this promised revivification and restoration of their own land. The reader will notice with interest that this vision assumes the doctrine of a resurrection of the dead from their graves. It is based precisely on this great idea. The figure is drawn from the fact of a resurrection, and of course assumes not merely that the resurrection of the body is a truth, yet to become reality, but that this doctrine was currently known by the Jews of Ezekiel’s time. Figures, legitimately used, always draw their analogies from things known. Else they would only make darkness yet more dark. There is no law of language more rational, universal, and fixed than this; that figures of speech are legitimate and useful only when drawn from things palpable and visible, or from facts understood and believed. The thing we would explain or set in yet stronger light, we compare with something better known than itself; else our figures and analogies avail nothing. In the case before us, it should be borne in mind that the resurrection is not a doctrine of nature. Nature never has taught it, and it never can. It comes to men only through revelation. The Jews had this revelation; else Ezekiel in these allusions to it would have been as one who speaks in an unknown tongue. Hence this reference to the resurrection irresistibly implies the general belief in that doctrine among the Jews at that time. A similar use of this figure appears in Isaiah (chap. 26: 14, 19), applied first to the godless nations: “They are dead; they shall not live; deceased; they shall not rise; because Thou hast visited and destroyed them and made all their memory to perish.” Next he applies it to the penitent and trustful nation: “Thy dead shall live; being my own dead body, they shall arise; awake and sing, ye dwellers in dust, for thy dew is the dew of herbs” (fertilizing and life-inspiring), “and on the earth, on the dead, Thou wilt cause it to fall.” Hence the doctrine of the resurrection was certainly current among the Jews in the time of Isaiah. H. C.

12-14. Here we have the picture of a double restoration; primarily an external and political elevation of the people, of which the first phase of the resurrection is the image; this is the return from the Captivity. But a national restoration can give to a people only the organs of life—civil and social institutions—not life itself. For what is the most brilliant and prosperous state without life, without the Divine breath, the spirit of holiness? The return of Israel into their own country, if it was truly to deserve the name of a resurrection, must culminate in the kingdom of God; but this can only be by means of a gift from heaven—that of spiritual life. In Pentecost, then, we see the second act represented in the vision, and one which, while effecting the spiritual regeneration of the nation, will also inaugurate the new era of a salvation for all mankind. Godet.

This vision of the dry bones coming together at the word of the prophet, and then breathed upon by the breath of life, and by that quickening breath made to stand upon their feet and transformed into an army of living men, wonderfully represents to us that work of the Lord which began at Pentecost when the word of the Lord went forth, and the Spirit of the Lord with that word breathed mercifully and mightily on a dead world, renewed the moral force of the earth, and commenced that wondrous transformation, that regeneration which, having its beginning in the hearts of men, shall not cease till all things have been made new, a new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness shall dwell. Trench.

That the vision of the valley of dry bones relates ultimately to times yet future may be seen by a glance either at the context preceding or following. When the prophet had surveyed the dreary Golgotha, and beheld in the withered fragments of mortality with which it was filled, what was and what would be the hopeless condition of his people, he was commanded to prophesy upon these dry bones, and to say unto them, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” And having delivered to them that word, consisting of a promise of life and salvation, he is next commanded to prophesy to the wind, and to say, “Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.” In other words, having preached to the politically and spiritually dead the glad tidings of deliverance, and invoked on them the vital influence of the Spirit, a moral resurrection ensued, which filled the valley with life and activity. It follows, then, that the same instrumentality will be made conducive to the conversion of the Jews, which will be employed with success for the conversion of the Gentiles—the ministry of the Gospel of Christ. . . .

If the house of Israel is to experience a spiritual resurrection, it is because the Spirit, whose emblem is the wind, will descend on the moral Golgotha, and replenish it with spiritual life. If the wilderness of the Church is to be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field to be counted for a forest, it is not until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high. If the world is to be convinced of sin, the Spirit alone is appointed and adequate to the office. But the only medium through which He operates in the discharge of His office is that of the truth; on which account He is designated by Christ Himself, “the Spirit of truth.” The Gospel is the only weapon He employs in His aggressions on the territories of darkness, and hence it is called “the sword of the Spirit.” And when by the successful employment of that instrument, He shall have convinced the world of sin, and have become the great animating Spirit of mankind, that which He has promised to write on the general heart is, the “laws” of God, and the “ways” in which He will cause them to walk are, in His “statutes.” So that, when at length He shall be poured out upon all flesh, and when, as the one Soul of the whole, He shall have led them to crown the Saviour “Lord of all,” it will be found that no moral conquest has ever been achieved but by the agency of the Spirit, and that in achieving it, no weapon has ever been directly employed but the Gospel—that, from first to last, the sword of the Spirit was never laid aside.

Though the progress of the kingdom of Christ to the universality and glory which await it may be attended by a series of providential judgments, that progress will be made and that ultimate glory attained, by the diffusion of the Gospel directed and made efficient by the agency of the Holy Spirit. Let us “not, then, be moved away from the hope of the Gospel,” and expect that judgments and providential occurrences are to produce effects which are promised only to the diffusion of the Word of God. That judgments will accompany and pioneer its march through the earth, as they ever have done, we freely admit. But they are not to be regarded as forming an order of means distinct from the Gospel economy, and superior to it. They wait on its steps. So vast is that economy in its sweep and design, that it includes and appropriates every kind of agency; presses into its service the angel of wrath, as well as employs the angel of mercy; and lays under tribute all the revolutions of time, and all the dispensations of Providence. J. Harris.

While the agent of renovation is the Divine Spirit, and the condition of renovation is our cleaving to Christ, the medium of renovation and the weapon which the transforming grace employs is “the word of the truth of the Gospel,” whereby we are sanctified. There we get the law, and there we get the motive and the impulse. There we get the encouragement and the hope. In it, in the grand, simple message—“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,” lie the germs of all moral progress. And in proportion as we believe that—not with the cold belief of our understandings, but with the living affiance of our hearts and our whole spiritual being—in proportion as we believe this, in that proportion shall we grow in “knowledge,” shall grow in “righteousness,” in the “image of Him that created us.” The Gospel is the great means of this change, because it is the great means by which He who works the change comes near to our understandings and our hearts. So let us learn how impossible are righteousness and holiness, morality and religion in men unless they flow from this source. It is the truth that sanctifies. It is the Spirit who wields that truth that sanctifies. It is Christ who sends the Spirit who sanctifies. A. M.

16-28. A prophecy of the reunion of Israel and Judah, the incorporation of Israel under one Ruler, the kingdom of Messiah upon earth and in heaven. B. C.

15-22. This scene is a real transaction. These “sticks” were rather rods than tablets, yet such rods that a name might be written upon them. The import of this transaction is fully explained in verses 21, 22—viz., the perfect and enduring union of the two kingdoms, Ephraim and Judah, in one. The revolt under Jeroboam was one of the saddest facts of Hebrew history. It occasioned terrible and destructive wars; it mainly severed the Ten Tribes from the sanctuary and from the entire Mosaic institutions, and precipitated first that northern kingdom, and ultimately the southern as well, into the depths of a most guilty and debasing idolatry. It then led on by natural result and rapid step to the national ruin of both kingdoms, and to the captivity of the masses who survived the shock under which the nations fell. Hence most naturally that rending asunder became a symbol of the sorest calamity; and in like manner the reunion of the two kingdoms into one became the symbol of the best, the largest, most enduring prosperity. So the figure is to be taken here—not so much a prediction of the gathering up of the scattered Ten Tribes, their literal restoration and actual reunion with Judah, as a general symbol of the greatest and best prosperity. H. C.

16. Take thee one stick, and write upon it.** That is, one rod: the expression alludes to Num. 17:2, where Moses is commanded to take twelve rods, one for each tribe, and to write the name of the tribe upon the rod. W. Lowth.—For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions. When Jeroboam at the head of his companions withdrew from his obedience to the house of David, the tribes of Benjamin, Judah and Levi still adhered to the government of Rehoboam. Besides these three tribes, many Israelites from the other tribes joined themselves to the same party, as appears from 2 Chron. 11:12-16; 15:9; 30:11, 18. Hence the expression, “For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions.” Calmet.—

For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim. Upon Reuben’s forfeiting his birthright, that privilege was conferred upon the sons of Joseph, of whom Ephraim had the precedence (1 Chron. 5:1; Gen. 42:20); which caused him to be reckoned the head of the Ten Tribes. Samaria, the seat of that kingdom, was likewise situated in the tribe of Ephraim, and Jeroboam, their first king, was an Ephraimite. Upon these accounts the name of Ephraim signifies in the prophets the whole kingdom of Israel as distinct from that of Judah. W. Lowth.

22. One king shall be king to them all.** The Messiah is described as King of the Jews in most of the prophecies of the Old Testament, beginning with that of Genesis (chap. 49 : 10), concerning Shiloh. From David’s time He is commonly spoken of as the Person in whom the promises relating to the perpetuity of David’s kingdom were to be accomplished. This was a truth unanimously owned by the Jews (see John 1 : 49) ; to which our Saviour bore testimony before Pontius Pilate, when the question being put to Him, “Art Thou a king?” He made answer, “Thou sayest” (the truth) “that I am a king.” Paul, alluding to these words, calls them “a good confession” (1 Tim. 6 : 13). The same truth Pontius Pilate himself asserted in that inscription which, by the direction of Providence, he ordered to be written upon the cross ; so that the chief priests impiously renounced their own avowed principles when they told Pilate that they had no king but Caesar. W. Lowth.

Compare Zech. 12 : 8 to the end of the book. The reign of the one King David is the reign of Christ in His kingdom, the Church. First will come the restoration of Israel (portions of the united Israel under the name of Jews) to their native soil. That will lead the way to the coming of the promised King, the Son of David, who will gather into His kingdom the true Israel, the term including not only the converted descendants of Abraham according to the flesh, but all who shall by faith be acknowledged as the Israel of God. B. C.

23-28. That this passage is Messianic, looking far down, not only to, but into the Gospel age, can admit of no question. “David My servant” is here (as in chaps. 34 : 23, 24 ; Jer. 30 : 9 ; Hos. 3 : 5) the greater Son of David, to whom “the Lord God will give the throne of His Father David.” So the inspired angel explained and applied these prophecies in Luke 1 : 32, 33. The designation “My servant” identifies Him fully and beautifully. (Cf. Isa. 42 : 1 ; 49 : 3, 6 ; 52 : 13 ; 53 : 11.) The most precious fact of His reign is the moral purity of His people under His redeeming, sanctifying power. They shall defile themselves no more with their idols, nor with any of their transgressions ! Let us not fail to notice the forceful repetition of the idea that God dwells among

His people in these latter days. “I will set My sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore ;” “My tabernacle also shall be with them ;” “the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel when My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forevermore.” Ezekiel had seen the visible glory of God go up from the midst of the city as if to depart from the Temple (chap. 11 : 23). With the fall of that Temple this symbol of His presence had of course disappeared from among them. But here the Lord pledges Himself to return and indeed to dwell with His people in forms and manifestations far more rich, effective and perfect than ever before. The ancient Shekinah was rather a symbol than itself a power. It prophesied of the glorious presence of God by His Spirit in the future days of Zion. But here those days are drawn up near the eye for a more distinct and impressive view. Christian hearts become the temple of the living God. Here are the germs of those precious thoughts which our Lord unfolded so richly when He opened His mouth to speak of the Comforter (John, chaps. 12-16), and which Paul grasped with so clear a view of their spiritual power in his letter to the brethren at Corinth (2 Cor. 6 : 16-18 ; 7 : 1). “For ye are the temple of the living God ; as God hath said ; I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” The reader should not fail to notice that this very blessing—God dwelling with and in His people, making His presence manifest as a power unto their holiness and blessedness—is the great comprehensive promise of both the Old Testament dispensation and the New. It had the Shekinah in the most holy place as its symbol under the old dispensation ; it was embodied in the promise and gift of the Holy Ghost in the Gospel age. To Moses the Lord said (Ex. 29 : 45, 46), “I will dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God ; and they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt that I may dwell among them : I am the Lord their God.” And again (Lev. 26 : 3, 11, 12) : “If ye walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them, I will set My tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you, and I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be My people.” These are specimen passages from the records of the ancient economy. As to the Gospel age it may suffice to refer to the promises of our Lord ; “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto him.” “If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.’ ‘It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.’ ‘He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.’ ‘He shall testify of Me.’ ‘He will guide you into all truth. He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you,’ etc. (John 14: 21, 23, 26; 15: 26; 16: 7-15). From Paul come these expressive words: ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’ ‘Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?’ ‘And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God,’ etc. (1 Cor. 3: 16; 6: 19; 2 Cor. 6: 16). ‘In whom (Christ) ye are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit’ (Eph. 2: 22). Paul speaks of this doctrine as specially well known—one of the obvious and fundamental truths of the Gospel system.

Briefly, my views of these chapters of Ezekiel (34, 36, 37) are these: They are general, not specific; comprehensive rather than minute. Their central thought is promise—the assurance of God’s love and faithfulness to His Zion, especially in His pledge of His presence as a power unto her sanctification. ‘I will be with you to sanctify and to save you from all your sins,’ is the elementary and precious truth which they bear. Now let it be carefully noted: This great central truth applied under the old dispensation while it lasted, in harmony with the genius of that dispensation. It applies under the new, in harmony with its genius and spirit. Under the old, it promised restoration to the literal Canaan and the re-establishment of the Mosaic ritual system. It came to the exiles with these cheering promises and hopes, in terms which they could not misunderstand. To them these promises in this sense were the very thing they needed, for the Zion and kingdom of God had not yet cast off the forms of the Mosaic system. But for the Gospel age, under the New Testament dispensation, these same promises had a new and different specific sense. Their general sense was and is still the same; but their external, specific sense has changed. To explain this change and to bring the practical views and the actual Christian life of the Church into harmony with it were the great struggle and labor of the apostolic age. To induce converted Jews to let go the ritual and joyfully accept the spiritual; to forego what was exclusive and national in Judaism, and still retain all that its symbols signified and its promises pledged, cost the apostles whole years of intensest labor. That labor should suffice to give us the clew to the interpretation of these prophecies as applied to the Gospel age. That part of their significance which yet remained to be fulfilled after the death of Christ—no small part surely—must be seen in the light of New Testament ideas. We have the Gospel idea in the passages already quoted from Paul. Comparing Paul (2 Cor. 6: 16) with Ezekiel in this passage, we shall see it. In Ezekiel’s sanctuary, God’s temple of wood and stone, God dwelt in the visible glory over the ark. In the new dispensation, according to Paul, every Christian becomes ‘a temple of the living God,’ ‘an habitation of God through the Spirit.’ H. C.

26. Covenant of peace, an everlasting covenant.** The God who makes peace between heaven and earth, between law and conscience, between Himself and sinful men. How does He make it? Through ’the blood of the everlasting covenant.’ If there is a way between heaven and earth, an open way for hopes and prayers, for departing souls and descending angels; if troubled consciences are pacified and cleansed; if thunders of broken law are hushed into silence, it is because this blood was shed, because Christ died, ’the just for the unjust.’ If men cease to fret and worry themselves with the troubles of life, for that they believe that all is well; if they lay aside all animosity, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and all evil speaking, and seek really to love their neighbor as themselves, all this is through the blood of the everlasting covenant. That is the fountain of all true peace. A. Raleigh.

27,28. Israel is the prophet among the nations, and its day is not yet over. The history that no theories can explain away, which binds us with the past, and looks on to the future, will not end less miraculously than it began. As Heine says with entire truth, the Jews who decline to practise any form of idolatry, and have followed after a law during more than three thousand years, are ’the people of the Spirit,’ and even their worship of wealth, for which not they, but their Christian persecutors, must answer, cannot destroy the passion or the hope with which their teachers are still inspired. Yet again they may be spoiled and scattered; but enlightenment, civilization and the growth of democratic equality have in them no elements, so far as we can discern, which will absorb Israel. He remains, as in harder times than our own, “the everlasting Jew.” What we could desire for him is that he should fling aside his delusive Kabbala and his armor of the Talmud, and recognize in the New Testament such a law, embodied in a perfect and Divine life, as will set him free from casuistry, and reconcile obedience with the inward light of love and reason. It is strange, indeed, that he should hesitate to claim as his greatest inheritance the Christ who has established above Greek wisdom and Roman law an order of things which the prophets beheld in vision, but which only a Divine strength could have made victorious and a present reality. Nor need the Jew renounce, in acknowledging his true Master, anything which the noblest of his race would, at all events in these days, insist upon preserving. To “modern thought,” as it is called, his other sacred books, Talmud, Yetsira, Zokar, and the rest, will doubtless yield; but not the Bible. He has learned so much from Mendelssohn. Let him learn from “Chozari” that the olive and the wild olive, when Providence grafts them into one stem, will flourish together; and that the two covenants, which have a common past, were intended to work out between them, in friendship and not by antagonism—in love and not in hate—the future of mankind. Lon. Quarterly, 1892.