Ezekiel 36

Ezekiel 36:1-37

Section 3 (Ezekiel 36:1-38; Ezekiel 37:1-28).Restoration and reorganization. We have now the work of restoration, of reorganization, accomplished first of all in the land once more becoming Israel’s. Jehovah claims it from its would-be possessors, and gives it back to Israel. But, that they may enjoy it, a deeper work must be done in the nation itself, and thus we have the Lord sprinkling clean water upon them to make them clean, and putting within them a new heart and a new spirit. In the third place we have the resurrection of the nation as such, their political resurrection, the embodiment in a fitting manner of the new life; and for this Judah and Ephraim, so long sundered, must come together. God can lose nothing of that which, through grace, is now to be owned as His. There must be no final triumph of the power of evil anywhere.

The work of restoration is thus to be completed; but the seal of their new condition and the perfect blessing which is to be theirs forever -the return of the glory of God, which Ezekiel had seen depart, but which henceforth is to be in brighter display in the restored city -remains yet to be given us. It has a place by itself, therefore, as the crown of their blessed condition when the city itself shall be known upon earth as the dwelling-place of God with man, Jehovah Shammah, “The Lord is there.”

1. We have, first of all, Jehovah’s word to the land itself. This is in plain connection with the claim which the Edomite enemy had made to possess it. It must be vindicated from this reproach, therefore. The land is really Jehovah’s land, and He certainly has never forfeited it, and will never give it up to those who are His enemies. Israel are to possess it upon the surest ground possible -that of God’s grace. They are to be sojourners with Him, to be His guests, and thus to know all the resources of His hand, as well as the full protection necessitated by this relationship. Thus Ezekiel is instructed now to prophesy to the mountains of Israel, and say: “Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of Jehovah: thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, and the ancient high places have become ours in possession: therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because, yea, because they have made you desolate, and have swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession to the remnant of the nations, and ye are taken up on the lips of talkers, and the defamation of the people; therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah.” These mountains have been addressed before, in the sixth chapter, but in far other terms. They were then the seats of an idolatry which dared to lift its head in a special manner in the high places of the land. Desolation had come upon them, therefore; and the enemy had taken it up as a reproach both to them and to Jehovah Himself. But these mountains of Israel, very far from being what we have seen Mount Seir to be (the indication of the folly of Esau’s choice and the barrenness of the portion which had thus become his own), were characteristically verdant and fruitful mountains, the places of pasture for the flock; they also were in testimony to the condition of a people whom Jehovah owned as His: round about whom He stood as the mountains round about Jerusalem. Their foundations must be upon the earth, but their tops were lifted high into the light and glory of heaven. How different from their condition since! -a reproach, in their present barrenness, in the sight of those that look upon them -the types, as so many suppose, of the hopeless forfeiture of all things by the people to whom they belonged! How often Jehovah declared here that He has pledged Himself by His never-to-be-broken word, to their revival! That word therefore takes in all the land: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and to the hills, to the water-courses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and the cities that are forsaken, which have become a prey and a derision to the remnant of the nations that are round about; therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the remnant of the nations, and against the whole of Edom who have appointed my land unto themselves for a possession with the joy of all their heart, with spite of soul, to take possession of it for a prey.” This is all that the enemy could do. Make it yield its fruit to him, he could not; and already we see this in the long Sabbaths in which the land has rested while Israel has been banished from it. To none of the nations would it yield its strength, and the people who are in present possession are just those who can be readily characterized as mere plunderers, and nothing else. But this suits, in the meanwhile, Jehovah’s purpose. With all this, they are as it were, His watchmen against the intrusion of those who might take it up with more serious intent to make their own out of it. The hordes that sweep over it still, the government under which it remains and under which everything like prosperity is impossible, all this is but the sign that the land is still waiting for her true inhabitants. The prophet is instructed, therefore, to speak to the mountains and to the hills, to the water-courses and to the valleys, and to declare to them that they shall yet shoot forth their branches and yield their fruit to His people Israel, as a people who are at His hand, ready to come. The people, as we know, are kept as distinct as ever they were, under the same repression meanwhile as their land has been. Jerusalem is to “be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” If we see, as surely we do see now, the people gathering back, and the land sought to by them for a new occupation, we have in all this the proof that God is ready to turn His face towards them and to their land alike. It would then be seen far other than as the eye of the stranger has seen and the scoff of the infidel has declared it, a land that has but devoured its inhabitants. It is to be, as the faithfulness of God is pledged to make it, a land that shall be “the glory of all lands,” a land upon which His eye rests continually: “I will multiply men upon you -all the house of Israel, the whole of it; and the cities shall be inhabited, and the waste places shall be built, and I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and be fruitful.” Thus has God pledged Himself; and, as in other cases, if He restore it is not merely to the old fruitfulness, to the condition at the beginning, but to one far better than at the beginning. The reproach of the nations shall be entirely removed from it, and His glory shall be more fully seen than ever where men have assumed to see His dishonor.
2. The prophet now turns from the land to the people themselves. The condition of the land was but the reflection of their own condition. If Joshua sees the people flee before their enemies, and in astonishment and dismay falls before God to ask, “And what wilt Thou do for thy great name?” the sufficient and only answer is, “Israel hath sinned.” But Israel has resisted the lesson of their scattered condition, and have turned it even into a matter of self-glorying as if it were the sins of others that they were bearing and making atonement for! Thus they have interpreted Isaiah 53:1-12. God here asserts against them that it is judgment on account of their condition.

They have defiled the land with their idolatry, and He scattered them among the nations, and they have been dispersed through the countries. According to their ways and according to their doings He has judged them: nor can they say that it was for their sin before they were carried captive into Babylon, but that since then they have been clear.

They were, in fact, permitted to go back into their land, in order that they might, with the lesson of their past before them, receive the One who alone could atone for the iniquities they had committed. But to these sins they have added the crowning sin of rejecting Him who came to them, afore-announced by the prophets, with the signs and wonders with which God sealed the testimony that He gave. Thus they have bought for themselves an Aceldama with the price of His betrayal. Thank God, for this also there can be and will be forgiveness; for grace shall yet manifest itself for them above all their sins! But how vain to plead that that to which the prophet looks on here, was the termination of their scattered condition -a condition which was expressly the judgment for their sins -when we go on to that which follows here! Have they ever been taken from among the nations and gathered out from all the countries and brought to their own land?

Have they ever, with a new heart and a new spirit, entered upon the possession of that from which they are no more to be alienated? It is impossible honestly to read a prophecy such as we have here and not to see that the scattering which began at Babylon has never really come to its end for God; but that they are still abiding, as Hosea declared they should abide, “many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim” (Hosea 3:4).

Their idolatrous ensigns have indeed passed from them; but recover themselves from that in which their sins have involved them, they never can until, as another prophet has declared, “they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for an only son . . . In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness”(Zechariah 12:10; Zechariah 13:1). God will fulfil His word, but only in His appointed way, and the cleansing of His people can only come when He sprinkles upon them that “clean water” which, as a type of old, declared the virtue of a sacrifice before completed -not a work of atonement as then newly wrought, but the verity of that which, blessed be God, still abides for them when faith in them shall be able to claim it. There is a remarkable connection here between the 51st psalm and the prophet’s declaration. This is the answer from God to their prayer, as it is prophetically given us in the psalm referred to. The prayer is: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow . . Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalms 51:7; Psalms 51:10). Put this in connection with the promise here: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean . . . and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you.” How plainly the one corresponds to the other, while there is indeed, as one might expect, a greater fulness in the answer than in the prayer! That this 51st psalm is, in fact, the voice of the people when they shall turn to God in the latter days, has been seen by many, and the proof of it has been fully given elsewhere. (See Psalms 51:1-19, Notes.) It was David’s voice that utters it, no doubt, but the personal application to himself is plainly not all, and this “Purge me with hyssop” clearly refers to the language in Ezekiel -to that sprinkling which is for cleansing from defilement with the dead, and speaks of a more terrible defilement of the people, and of God’s provision for it in a sacrifice whose virtue, as already said, still abides for them.

It is like that other remarkable ordinance for the day of atonement, when the sins of the people are carried away by the scape-goat, which does not make atonement for them, but which is identified with an atonement already made. (See Leviticus 16:1-34, Notes.) The priest has carried in the blood of the offering for them -the blood of the first goat; but no answer as to it comes forth for them while the priest is himself hidden in the sanctuary into which he is entered. When he comes out again, the scapegoat (identified with the first goat in the work which has been accomplished before, and which is not repeated) carries away the iniquities of the nation to a land cut off. Thus, in fact, Israel will be met by the power and virtue of an atonement made before our Great High Priest passed into heaven. There He remains, and so long as He remains there hidden from them, Israel have practically no atonement for them nationally. Their sins are not put away. How perfectly this is in keeping with the sprinkling of water in which are the ashes of a sacrifice before offered -the memorial of a before-accomplished work. It is then only that this word is carried out: “From all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you.” They abide as yet under the condemnation of their sins, as it is plain that nationally a new heart and a new spirit, which are the accompaniment of this, have never yet become theirs. Had it been so, that which follows immediately here would have taken place, and a fulness of blessing would be theirs, in which their whole condition would bear witness to the reality of what God is yet to do for them. It is not mere reformation; it is no work such as man can perform. If David witnesses that God must create in him a clean heart, so the promise here declares: “I will give you a new heart.” It is the new heart that He will give which can alone alter their condition, a new heart which is itself the effect of a new spirit put within them. The words at once remind us of the Lord’s declaration to Nicodemus, that the Israelite also needed to be born again in order to inherit the kingdom of God. Water and Spirit the Lord puts together in these words: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” “born of the Spirit” implies, therefore, a new spirit in the person so born -a new and divine nature from the Almighty Worker of every true work that has ever been done in man. (See John 3:1-36, Notes.) For this, the heart of stone must be taken out of the flesh, that a heart of flesh -a true feeling and tender heart -may be theirs. To this is added the blessed assurance: “I will put my Spirit within you,” and thus, as the glory rests upon Jerusalem itself in the days that we are so shortly to contemplate, there is to be for all His saved among the people a personal assurance of this glorious reality. “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments and do them.” Then follows that for which only now they are fit, and are secure in it: “Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” The increase of the land follows as a necessary consequence. Israel’s portion is in the earth, and therefore nature itself is a witness to the relation in which they stand to God. It has been largely a witness against them, as we know. It is yet to bear testimony of another kind. Christians are taken out of the world, and are strangers and pilgrims in it: their portion is elsewhere. But, alas, with Christians also there can be a reproach of famine, which is the index of how they stand with God.

How many have gone down to Egypt, as Abraham did of old, because of a famine in their own things! Our land is indeed “the glory of all lands;” but it is, above all things, a dependent land, and if we are not in communion with God we have less than any others; for the world is a wilderness for us, however much we may dream of plenty in it, while our own portion, though not denied us, surely, can yet be found only by those who dwell in it. The word is still for us, “Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.” It is not so much the knowledge of the evil we have brought upon ourselves that brings repentance, but, in its full character, it is the wonder of the Lord’s grace that does so; as the apostle says, ’ The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance," so it will be when Israel shall have been brought back into their land by the mercy of God, and find His abundant welcome in the light of His glorious presence. They shall indeed remember their evil ways and their doings that were not good, and loathe themselves for their iniquities and abominations. Meanwhile God is acting for Himself, as He declares here. He is in a measure doing in Israel what we shall know in a still brighter scene and in all its fulness, when God shall show “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” It is not only for their sakes or for our sakes that God takes up any, but He delights to make Himself known in all that He is -the depths of the riches of His wisdom as well as of His love. Thus He has a sure ground upon which to act, and we have an unchallengeable blessing,which never can be forfeited. If God is going to show “the exceeding riches of His grace,” where can we limit that? What wondrous revelations are implied here! It is good, while we are thinking of all the prophet here sets before us, to realize that they are but the figures of the things which belong to us -not indeed in the sense in which so many would make them figures, as depriving Israel of their just title to them, for the apostle of the Gentiles has assured us that these Old Testament promises belong to his “kinsmen according to the flesh:” it seems idle, therefore, to discuss whether these promises do belong to Israel.

The earth at that time will be, as it were, a reflection of the heavens that are opened over it. But we shall have to trace this more fully in our prophet when we reach the final chapters. There is no confusion between the earthly and the heavenly spheres of blessing, and there is no excuse for any making confusion. Correspondence there is indeed, and we shall find many a lesson in seeking to trace this. God has not forgotten man and the earth, and He is not going to drop it out of sight and have done with it. It is the scene of His own Son’s sufferings, and the earth itself has been purchased by Him. It shall therefore be redeemed, not done away. The millennial blessing itself is but a step to the full glory of it. It is its regeneration time, according to the Word elsewhere (Matthew 19:28), the time when evil shall be put down and righteousness shall rule, but not yet the time when it will be utterly banished. That there comes between this and the time of full blessing, the passing away of the heavens and earth to be replaced by new heavens and a new earth, has been misapprehended so as to make a great mistake in the way.

The earth passes -is to be changed -just as the body passes from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the state of dishonor which sin has caused, to the state of glory; but the identification of the risen man with the man who toiled and suffered and sinned upon earth is no less complete on this account. We speak of a “new man” when we do not mean another man in the strict sense of the word; so we speak of “a new earth” which will indeed be that, as every one shall realize, yet not another earth, but the earth made new -a realized fulfilment of God’s thoughts with regard to the earth when He created it.

We do not go on to that here. Save in a single expression, Old Testament prophecy is limited to the millennium as its outlook, and then that kingdom shall have begun in which, under the rule of Him who is the perfect Revealer of the mind of God, that which is eternal will be perfected. What we have here is, on the one side, the trial of man still, but, on the other, God is finally inviting (by the display of all this beauty and the manifestation of His truth and grace) men to enjoy it. Revelation assures us that even then, as there will be hearts obdurate to it all the way through, so there will be a final outbreak even under those glorious skies. It is the necessary manifestation of what has been kept down by power throughout the millennial reign, in order that judgment may make the clean work which it must finally do that perfect blessing may come in. And what a witness to man will be that which we find here; and they shall say: “This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited!” There is no room for doubt or question any longer but that Jehovah has done this. There will be no skeptics or atheists in those days; yet, alas, the enmity of man’s heart will not be removed even by that wondrous vision. “The nations that shall be left round about you shall know that I Jehovah build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate. I Jehovah have spoken it, and will do it.” That which follows immediately is not necessarily a condition that God will “yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them;” but, rather, the assurance that they will. It does not involve, as some seem to imagine, that the actual unbelief of the nation at the present time has set aside such promises as these which have been given them. The Lord goes on imme diately with His assurances, which certainly do not rest upon any foundation less broad than that upon which He has set them. God is acting for the glory of His name, and who shall disappoint Him? “I will increase them with men,” He says, “like a flock, as the holy flock; as the flock of Jerusalem at her appointed times; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men, and they shall know that I am Jehovah.” 3. We have still to see this restoration of Israel stamped as a resurrection; God bringing them out of a condition in which even to themselves all hope is lost. They are but as the dry bones of the slain, of which, if the question be raised, “Can these bones live?” the answer can only be in God’s hands. The new life of the nation is truly a resurrection. The stamp which God is putting upon all things here is to be put distinctly upon this people yet. It will not be by their own efforts or achievements -as they are thinking and planning now -that they will become all that the prophets have declared that they shall become. Nothing but the quickening breath of God can accomplish it for them, and for this they have yet to be brought down into the dust, even after all that they have suffered for these centuries, in order that they may learn their needed lesson of abasement and may learn the grace to which, as they shall finally own, they owe everything. (1) We have two parts in this chapter: First, new life in the Spirit is given to the nation which thus becomes miraculously reorganized; while, in the second part we have what must be in order for this, the healing of the long breach between Judah and Ephraim, so that the nation as a whole shall re-attain its unity and under the true David, from whom, alas, they have alike gone astray. “The hand of Jehovah was upon me, and Jehovah carried me out in the Spirit, and set me down in the midst of a valley, and it was full of bones; and He caused me to pass by them round about, and behold, there were very many on the face of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.” There is no mingling here of the dead and the living as the prophet sees them. They are altogether those from whom not merely life is departed, but who are the mere dry and scattered relics of the dead. The prophet is challenged by the question: “Son of man, can these bones live?” To man of course this is impossible. The passage from death to life has never been achieved, save by the power of God alone; and this, spite of all their present thoughts, is the condition out of which God at last revives them. It is not the actual condition of the nation at present in which, as we know, there are yet those who live -live spiritually. “Blindness in part is happened unto Israel.” It is true that these are, in the mind of God, no more part of the people according to the flesh; they have lost their Jewish hopes, to find in the loving mercy of God far better ones. When the Lord shall have removed His present people to Himself, the Church, this state of things will be ended.

The nation will be then, in their rejection of Christ, utterly dead. The prophet answers: “O Lord Jehovah, Thou knowest,” and then he is bidden to give Jehovah’s word to the dry bones themselves. The nation is to be thus new born by the word of God, and from the dead. Every step here is a true creative work of God: “Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live; and I will put sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live.” And then comes once more the refrain, -for this alone is what can make it truly life: “Ye shall know that I am Jehovah.” So the prophet prophesies and sees the miracle wrought -the wondrous miracle of resurrection. He sees the bones come together and the flesh cover them, and the form given, while yet there is no breath’ from on high. But then he is told to prophesy to the winds, the type, as we know, in the Lord’s words, of the Spirit; and from the four winds, the breath comes into these slain, and now they live. These that, but a moment since, were mere inanimate and scattered wrecks of departed life, are now at once an exceeding great army, the hosts of the Lord. The prophet is not left in doubt about the vision. The bones are the whole of the house of Israel, and in a condition in which they are made to realize at last that, as to themselves, there is no hope any longer. They are not only dead, as the prophet has seen them, but in their graves, buried and gone. But this is the stamp which God puts upon everything in nature. The evening dies into the night before the morning springs out of it. The earth itself will have to find its dissolution before it comes to that new earth in which dwelleth righteousness.

Ezekiel’s wheel is going round; it is ordained to abase all the glory of man in order that man may come at last to true glory. In resurrection alone can everything be stable, as that which manifests the power of evil already met and conquered, and no foe to meet again. God has done it all Himself; He has taken upon Himself the whole burden of it! How strange a work He has wrought in order that He might lift creation into the glory that yet shall be, every Christian knows. And Israel shall know who it is that has done this, that He is indeed Jehovah, when He has opened their graves and caused them to come up out of their graves and put His Spirit in them that they may live. The blessing still keeps to the old sphere of promise for them; as an earthly people the earth is their destiny. “I will bless you,” says the Lord, “in your own land.” Then shall prophecy find its full witness and have the eternal seal upon it: “Ye shall know that I Jehovah have spoken it, and have done it, saith Jehovah.” (2) One thing remains which must not be omitted. The ancient and unnatural strife between Judah and Ephraim must and will surely pass away if all this is to be; and the complete assurance of it is given “The word of Jehovah came 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 of Israel his companions; and join them one to another into one stick, and they shall become one in thy hand.” The people are Jews, for us now; that is, they are all of Judah; and the question has even been asked whether such coming together did not find its accomplishment long ago, when the people returned out of captivity in Babylon. Thus we are told with regard to the prophetess Anna, in our Lord’s day, that she was of the tribe of Asher; and it is thought that other intimations are given that the ten tribes, so often spoken of as “the lost tribes,” have become merged long since into this one Jewish race. But this will not do for the prophecy here, and assuredly it will not do for God. It is distinctly in their own land, and under the King whom God will raise up to them, when God shall be once more manifestly their God, His sanctuary set in the midst of them forever, that this prophecy shall find its accomplishment. There is a universal gathering: “Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations whither they are 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 kingdoms any more at all.” That the time of all this is future should need no argument, nor should it need one that the promise to which God has appended no condition here (but which He affirms He will Himself fulfil) can never be set aside by any unfaithfulness of the people of whom He speaks, a people whose unfaithfulness has been all contemplated (and realized) from the beginning. Faithless as they may be, the time will come, as God has announced it, when they shall no more defile themselves with their idols nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions, but He will save them out of their dwelling places wherein they have sinned, and they shall be His people and He will be their God. The former shepherd-king comes again before us here, David, “the Beloved.” This keeper of sheep has celebrated in his psalms, as we well know, Jehovah Himself in this character, and realized wondrous things from it: “Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” This is God’s thought of rule, as Christ, the true Shepherd, fully manifests it so that even if He take the rod of iron, as e will do in the time near to come, it will be to “tend” or shepherd the nations with it. Here is one with whom rule is ministry, and subjection to Him is subjection to eternal love itself. Thus when God at last shall be able to show all that is in His heart, in the times contemplated here, how shall it in fact be shown? When they shall dwell in the land as their unalienable inheritance, they and their children and their children’s children forever; and David, “the Beloved,” himself the servant of Jehovah, shall be their prince forever. The One who claims obedience shall be the One who has milked in obedience, and that at all cost to Himself, and in devotedness to all the interests of His people. Thus the “covenant of peace” shall be made with them -“He has made peace by the blood of His cross.” Thus it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and “I will bless them,” says the Lord, “and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.” This last remains for full expansion by the mouth of Ezekiel himself, but divine love lingers upon it: “My tabernacle also shall be over them” -those covering wings which once they refused, but of which they shall yet know the blessedness -“and I will be their God, and they shall be my people; and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah that sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.”