I Will Be Their God, They Shall Be My People

TORAH
Gen. 44:18-47:27

HAFTORAH

Eze. 37:15-28

B’RIT HADASHAH

Acts 7:9-16 (13-15)

 

Gen. 45:7; Eze. 37:15-28

Ezekiel, who was a priest of Adonai as well as a prophet, wrote this prophecy during the captivity of Israel by the Babylonians and their king, Nebuchadnezzar. The first temple had been destroyed, the country had been laid waste and all but the very poor and unskilled had been forced into exile in Babylon. A national tragedy threatened the very existence of this people. Prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah had foretold this catastrophic event but from the point of view of the average Judean exile, nothing worse could have happened.

The sticks being referred to by Ezekiel were tribal “totems” as in Num. 17:2, “Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers' house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers' houses, twelve staffs. Write each man's name on his staff.” The fathers mentioned in this verse are the twelve sons of Jacob. In Numbers, each staff represented the tribe composed of the descendants of one of the twelve sons, thus they represent the fullness of the nation of Israel. In this particular passage, there are two sticks, which represent the two most important Hebrew tribes, that of Ephraim in the north (descended from Joseph’s son, Israel’s grandson) and Judah, a son of Jacob, in the south. The identity of every other tribe is located in one of these two, so that again, these sticks represent the complete fullness of Israel.

I believe this act of naming and combining the staffs is more than a symbolic proclamation and may in fact be a form of divinely sanctioned sympathetic magic. (The prophet Hosea carried out similar acts.) The commentators Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe it as “a prophecy in action” of the re-unification of all the tribes of Israel. The prophecy was meant partly to offer immediate hope and comfort at one of the darkest periods in Jewish history. It was more than that however. It was also a divine promise to bring the fractured nation of Israel back into a state of grace and blessing on the Land that God had previously promised to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, after a period (or several periods) of chastisement by God for the sins of His people, particularly idolatry, apostasy and spiritual fornication. Ezekiel speaks for God in chapter two, verses three to five, “And he said to me, ‘Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations [Ephraim and Judah] of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants [i.e. the exiles in Babylon, Ezekiel’s own generation] also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord God.” And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them.’”

The Assyrians had already conquered and exiled the northern tribes and they had become virtually extinct as any kind of Hebrew entity by time of this prophecy. They had become absorbed by gentile peoples and had become a kind of “hybrid” nation. This prophecy however, is saying to the remnant of both houses of Israel that there will come a time when God will call all His people—His chosen people—back to the land of Canaan. This passage is an extended “sermon” that Ezekiel began back at verse one with his prophecy of the Valley of Dry Bones.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’” So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”

Ezekiel is here prophesying that God will bring back and re-constitute the nation, (but not necessarily all the individuals within it). But he is also saying, as did Jeremiah before him, that in effect God would re-create His people by giving them a new covenant, one that He will write on their hearts. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.  And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33). This new covenant will be the “constitution” of the repatriated nation but it will be unlike the last since it will be administered by a new David. Ezekiel speaks prophetically of David as God’s servant and king who will reign over a reunited Israel and who will be its shepherd. However, David had been dead for several hundred years. So we must see something else being referred to here. Ezekiel is in fact referring to the Messiah, who is David’s descendant and of course is in fact Yeshua.  That it is not the historic King David who is being referred to is confirmed by the prophet Isaiah, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (Isa. 42:1, 6-7).

Now the new covenant was not new in the sense of being different or innovative. Rather, it was new in the sense of being renewed, even, if you will, updated, through Christ and the Holy Spirit. That is to say, it is that covenant made with Israel at Sinai but which God is renewing and is in fact applying to the hearts of His people through the Holy Spirit—the Ruach HaKodesh. Indeed, the LXX uses the Greek word kainos, which has this sense of renewal, in its description of the new covenant. In addition, this covenant was made with Israel as a whole. For the Church to apply it directly to itself  is entirely wrong; although it can be applied to Gentiles in another sense, as did Paul in Chapter eleven of his letter to the Romans, and chapter two of his letter to the Ephesians. Lending support to the Church’s belief that the new covenant applies to her is Hebrews 8:7, which seems to be saying that the first covenant [with Israel] was faulty and had to be replaced, and because it was faulty it was being revoked and replaced with a new covenant, which the Church felt justified in hijacking. But reading the very next two verses we learn that it was not the covenant that was faulty—since it came from God and so fulfilled perfectly the purpose for which it was intended—but rather the people’s obedience to it that was faulty and that necessitated a renewal of the original, not a replacement of it. This is what Christ meant when He spoke of “building His church” in Matt. 16:18. It is also what James had in mind when, in Acts 15:16-18 he quotes the prophet Amos, “After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.”

Even so, this new covenant does not apply to every ethnic Jew either. Isaiah (among others) makes this abundantly clear, “In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness” (Isa 10:20-22). In other words, all those who do not accept the new (and final) covenant, administered and mediated by the Messiah, will not be called back to the Promised Land, and who will therefore be recipients of God’s wrath.

I believe the passage from Ezekiel is referring to the millennial age to come, not the final post-resurrection glory. It is a physical blessing in this current world, after the great tribulation and will be characterized by peace, abundance and joy (although not perfectly). The believing remnant of Israel alive at the time will have been brought back by God—every person. But since the dead are not yet resurrected they cannot not share in this millennial period. God is not here calling the dead to life but rather He is fulfilling His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the original covenant that created the Hebrew people. But as we learn from Romans, Gentiles too will have a share in this new covenant because of God’s sovereign will to make it so through His Messiah, Yeshua.

Gentiles will share in the eternal Kingdom through faith or trust—even as it has always been for all God’s people, whether Jew or Gentile. As Paul says, God will cause Israel to be jealous through the salvation of the Gentile elect (not the visible Church) and thereby come to faith (Rom. 11:11). God will then bring them back to join their Messianic brothers and sisters and the grafted-in Gentiles in the Holy Land. This happens in time, not outside of time—we are not here speaking of the last day or final judgment. This passage from Ezekiel is speaking of the millennial reward, the day when, according to Isaiah, “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain” says the LORD (Isa. 65:25, italics added).

This is a glorious hope for God’s elect remnant—Jew and Gentile alike. And while those who are asleep in Christ will not see this wonderful time, they receive their compensation by being in the very presence of their Lord, Christ Jesus, Yeshua ha Massiach, in a state of perfect bliss, awaiting the ultimate fulfillment in the New Heaven and New Jerusalem.

AMEN