NOTES for Eze 37:14
Ezekiel's vision of the spiritual renewal of the people of God, of course, inspired hope in the hearts of those for whom it was intended, the deported inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is no surprise that later it was reinterpreted in the context of New Testament revelation, becoming a symbol of the universal resurrection. It is just as unsurprising that, several centuries later, a whole theology connected with the teaching about the Holy Spirit grew up around this and similar texts.
But it is still important to keep in mind that all such theological concepts belong to a completely different era and, to a certain degree, to a different tradition. The prophet speaks of the breath of God, which returns life to dead bones, making them not simply a people, but the people of God. And here before us is a prophetic or, more broadly, biblical idea of what life is, whether the life of an individual person or of an entire people, which also stood before God as a certain spiritual whole. As we can see, life here turns out to be a process that is not natural, not biological, but spiritual in the full sense of the word, at least when it concerns a human being. And this is no surprise: already at creation God "breathes" into the human being's "nostrils" (in the Hebrew text, exactly so) the breath of life, which gives the human being life. And in Ezekiel's vision He does the same thing with an entire people.
As we can see, the measure of life or, more precisely, of "aliveness" both of individual people and of whole nations is determined by the measure of the fullness of the breath of God. And that measure can vary from what belongs to the Kingdom (and here the parallel with the universal resurrection is quite appropriate, since resurrection to life presupposes entrance into the Kingdom) down to the minimum characteristic of Sheol, where only a pale shadow of life remains. And only a person's relationship with God determines how full and intense that person's life will be.
The same applies to the people of God as a whole: as we can see, by the beginning of the exile, spiritually it was a heap of bones, and this had the corresponding effect on its historical destiny. And when the spiritual life of the people regained fullness, their return to the land of their fathers became possible. But that return was preceded by another: the return to the fullness of communion with God, which happened even while the people were living in Babylon. Without it, the return to Judea would have been meaningless and, in all reality, simply impossible.