Ezekiel 37:2,3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

He caused me to pass by them round about To take an exact view of them; and behold, there were very many in the open valley As if it had been a place where a great battle had been fought, and a vast multitude slain, who had been left unburied till the flesh was all consumed, and the bones were divided and scattered about. And lo, they were very dry Having been long exposed to the sun and wind in the open valley, and the marrow within, as well as the flesh without, being utterly wasted. This circumstance was intended to show how unlikely it was, humanly speaking, that the Jews should ever be delivered from their dispersions and restored; should ever be brought together again, and formed into a body politic, or even into the skeleton of one. Still more unlikely it is that the dead in sin should be quickened, and raised up into living Christians; and most unlikely of all, that the dead bodies of men, after they have been turned into dust, and scattered to the four winds of heaven, should live again, and become bodies of light and glory. And he said, Son of man, can these bones live? Namely, immediately, and in your sight? Or, as Houbigant renders it, Shall these bones live? The question, as he justly observes, is not concerning the possibility of the fact, for the prophet well knew that God could do all things; but the Lord, introductory to what follows, asks him whether these bones should now revive or not. And though this be the right interpretation of the place, yet a resurrection from the dead is very justly collected from it: for “a simile of the resurrection,” says St. Jerome, “would never have been used to signify the restoration of the people of Israel, unless such a future resurrection had been believed and known; because nobody ever confirms uncertain things by things which have no existence.” And I answered, O Lord, thou knowest Raising the dead can only be an act of thy power and good pleasure. The prophet replies in a doubting manner, because he knew not the scope of the vision.