NOTES for Eze 37:12-14
Ezekiel's vision of a field strewn with dead bones, which God brings to life by breathing the breath of life into them, is usually associated with faith in the universal resurrection at the end of time, on the assumption that this is what God is showing His prophet. Yet it is apparently not about this after all. Of course, faith in the universal resurrection and in the Day of Judgement must already have existed among the Jews at the time of the Babylonian exile, when Ezekiel was allowed to see what he saw. But God does not disclose to the prophet an image of the Last Judgement, but something else: the destiny of God's people. He shows Ezekiel the spiritual path that the people would have to travel. Dead bones: that was the spiritual state of the Jewish people when they found themselves in Babylon. And this is understandable, for if it had been otherwise, the historical destiny of the people would also have been different. In any event, the national catastrophe of the exile could then probably have been avoided.
But judging by what God allowed His prophet to see, no spiritual life was left among the people at all. Everything had to begin again, starting with the small community in Babylon and its spiritual renewal. Then, after that renewal, it would grow, in essence, into a new people, into that very post-exilic Jewry whose history continues to this day, the same people who would have to meet the Messiah promised by God.
Such a renewal could not, of course, be achieved by human efforts alone. God's direct intervention was needed; a miracle was needed. And the spiritual renewal of the people that took place in Babylon truly became a miracle, just as all subsequent Jewish history was a miracle, a history which, humanly speaking, simply could not have existed. The Babylonian kingdom absorbed and assimilated many small peoples, including the Jews' neighbours: the Ammonites, Moabites, Philistines and Phoenicians. All the more was the small community of Jews deported from Jerusalem doomed to assimilation in a metropolis such as Babylon was at that time.
Yet it was not only preserved, but was renewed spiritually and gave rise to a new Jewry. It was this miracle that God allowed Ezekiel to see, at a time when all of it still lay ahead. But what he saw inspired hope, the hope that what seemed to be the end of the people's historical journey was only the beginning of a new stage, leading the people directly towards the Messiah and to the threshold of the Kingdom.