NOTES for Eze 37:13-14

For Ezekiel, the very possibility of the future return of the people of God to the land of their fathers is connected with their spiritual renewal, with that breath of God which gives a person life. This is undoubtedly the same breath that God "breathed" into the human being's "nostrils" at creation, although in the account of the Book of Genesis it is designated by another word.

The fallen person no longer lives so much by this breath as, in the language of the Bible, by "blood." After the fall, his vital principle, his "soul," turns out to be connected not with the breath of God, as it was before the fall, but with his own nature.

One can, if not live a full life in this way, at least exist. This is true for an individual person and for an entire people. It will be precisely existence on what remains, not so much life as survival. Then there is no room for independence, for one's own statehood, or for resistance to enemies: all this requires such spiritual strength as cannot be found by relying on one's own nature instead of on God.

Paradoxically, exile in such a spiritual condition was the best outcome. After all, the issue was not the destruction of the people. Even those deported to Babylon were not going to be killed. The authorities did not even take any special care over assimilation: if it happened in part, it happened only as a natural process under such conditions.

It was precisely the naturalness and ease of such a life that placed every Jew who found himself in Babylon before a choice: to keep faith with the God of the fathers or to get rid of that faith as an unnecessary burden in the new circumstances, one that now gives no advantages and can create problems, though not catastrophic ones.

However, in order to preserve the faith of the fathers, it had to be renewed, and it is precisely this spiritual renewal that the prophet speaks about. He understands perfectly well that the possibility of returning to the land of the fathers, and therefore in effect the chance for another, second history, can be received only by acquiring the spiritual strength necessary for the new historical path ahead. Otherwise this second history not only will not be successful; it simply will not be able to begin.

Ezekiel, perfectly understanding the spiritual situation that had developed, not by accident speaks of the renewal of the people as their resurrection: the matter truly is a return to life already lost, in the same way, or almost the same way, that centuries later those raised by Jesus would return to it. And just as the subsequent life of those raised can be considered a miracle, even though for now still in an untransformed body, so too the whole post-exilic history of the Jewish people can be considered a miracle. A miracle whose culmination will be the coming of the Messiah.