‘Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are cut off for us (or ‘our thread of life has been cut off').' Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel, and you will know that I am Yahweh when I have opened your graves, and caused you to come up out of your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit within you, and you will live, and I will place you in your own land, and you will know that I Yahweh have spoken it and have performed it,' says Yahweh.” '
God explains the parable. The dry bones were the whole house of Israel, wherever they were. And they were in a state of despondency and hopelessness. They felt that they were like totally dried up skeletons. They had lost hope. They saw themselves as cut off from their land and cut off from God. They had lost any vision of life. They were in process of giving up. The destruction of Jerusalem had dashed their hopes completely.
But through Ezekiel God spoke to them and told them that they need not think like that, for it was as though He would raise their dead bodies from the grave. He would restore their spirits, and lift them out of the graves that they had dug for themselves in their minds, and give them life, and He would bring them back into their own land.
The context of these words and their connection with the prophesying of Ezekiel confirms that we are to see this picture as applying to the post-exilic people of God and not directly to some future age. It is they who would be restored and returned to their land, and would enjoy new life in the Spirit. And it was guaranteed by the word of Yahweh, and He would therefore certainly do it. They had His word for it. We must not underestimate the work of the Spirit in the people of God after the exile.
The picture can of course be applied spiritually to His people in every period. It is a picture of rebirth, of new life in the Spirit of God. But its essential message was to the people of Ezekiel's day, and it reminds us that we do the words of Ezekiel an injustice when we do not recognise their application to his own day. It was, however, something that would in essence be repeated in the future, for God's supposed people have often become like dry bones and spiritually dead, and have needed to be revived again.
‘We are cut off for us' can be rendered ‘our thread of life has been cut off.' The alternative rendering results from using the same Hebrew consonants but dividing them differently. (In ancient scripts there was no word division and almost no vowels).
The Uniting of the Nation and the Coming King (Ezekiel 37:15-28).
In this passage Ezekiel is shown that Judah and Joseph (Ephraim/Israel) will be made one and that David will arise to be their shepherd. This must be seen as confirming that Israelites will return from many lands, not only from Babylon, although not necessarily in large numbers, or else there would be no necessity for any mention of this. Those of Joseph who had lived in Jerusalem/Judah previously would probably already have been united. (However, it could be that strong feelings existed between different sections which were known to Ezekiel).
Israel had originally split into two in the days of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. That too was because of idolatry, and resulted in idolatry (1 Kings 11:30-39; 1 Kings 12:1-20; 1 Kings 12:28-31). Now this split was to be remedied.
The idea and emphasis is on the unity of God's people. There is to be no distinction or separation, they are all to be one in the covenant. We can compare how this was Jesus' emphasis for His people as well, that they might be one (John 17:20-23), and the emphasis of Paul that we might be one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). God's constant purpose is oneness between His people.