NOTES for Eze 37:21-28
All the messianic prophecies of the exile speak of the coming return of the people to the land of their fathers. Ezekiel is no exception: he also prophesies about a swift return, that God will gather His people on the land He gave them, fulfilling what He promised Abraham. But this return was never a return to the past. Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, knew: the people of God have no road into the past; they have one road - forward, into the future.
Without God, however, the people's future would have become the same past, only at a new stage. The territory would become larger, the people more numerous, the country richer, and in general there would be more of everything than before the exile, including honor and respect from neighbors. God, however, had His own, somewhat different plan. He knew that after the exile, having passed through every trial and preserved the faith, His people would become more numerous and stronger than before. But God does not return His people to the land of their fathers for that reason. He wants His people to acquire a new spiritual quality. It is inseparable from the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom, but in God's plans the role of the people was never purely instrumental.
The point was not that, after playing its role in the messianic perspective, the Jewish people would leave the historical stage. In a certain sense, that did indeed happen, if one has in mind the catastrophe of A.D. 70, but it happened not because God had planned it that way, but because the people proved not fully adequate in what concerned the Messiah and His ministry. Even from this point of view it is hardly possible to speak of punishment: missed opportunities, including (when a people is in question) historical opportunities, always later turn into failure, and sometimes catastrophe.
So it happened with the Jewish people. And it happened precisely because for many in gospel times the messianic Kingdom appeared not as the prophets, including Ezekiel, saw it, but as those who reduced spiritual life to religious life wanted to see it. They needed a triumphant conqueror of the Gentiles who would restore a strong Jewish state and make it even stronger than it had been under David and Solomon, in the golden age of ancient Israel.
Jesus of Nazareth did not fit that role. He died and rose again, and instead of Him others were found who seemed more suitable. He did not dare challenge the Romans; they dared. Thus Judea perished and Jerusalem was destroyed. The Messiah came, the Kingdom appeared, and the people passed by. They followed a mirage, a path that turned out not to be the way of life, but the way of death.