If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
10 June. Ezekiel chapters 35-37
Ezekiel 36:26 is one of the most quoted verses from this book: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”. Its prime meaning is usually taken as being that in future people would no longer live selfishly, and regard Gods commandments as onerous and to be avoided, but would willingly embrace a new and loving relationship with God and welcome his laws as rules for living well. The context is the restoration of Israel as a nation on its own land, which occupies the rest of this book.
Chapter 37 is equally well known for its vision of the dry bones of the dead which God restored to life and breathed his spirit into them. The promise that God would “open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people” (37:12) could possibly be seen as a belief in reincarnation, but such a belief is not found elsewhere in the Bible, so is much more likely to be a way of saying that Israel would be re-founded as a kingdom. In fact the last section of the chapter makes it clear that this would happen, and that the former division of Israel and Judah would be healed, and they would be one nation again.