And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
The two sticks are Judah and Ephraim, also called Israel and Joseph with their fellow tribes, and their joining into one stick to become one in the prophet's hand is the sign that the divided tribes would be restored together as one nation and one people in their own land to display God's salvation and glory among the nations. The one king and one shepherd set over the reunited people is David, the seed of David, the second David, Christ, in whom those united become one fold. The promise was conditional on faith, obedience, repentance and returning to God wholeheartedly, which God would have fulfilled in the national restoration and union when Cyrus decreed the return and rebuilding of the temple. Because the people did not repent the restoration was fulfilled only in part, as when about forty thousand returned from Babylon, and was never fulfilled literally in all its details in its original setting, but will be fulfilled more gloriously in the last days at the coming of Jesus and in the new heaven and new earth for true spiritual Israel, in which believing Israelites and Gentiles become one in Christ. The chapter portrays bodily resurrection in which the dry bones, which are the whole house of Israel, receive sinews, flesh and breath and come up from opened graves, and that resurrection is the gateway to the promised land and permanent planting never to be removed, since mortal people must first be raised and changed to immortality.
Sticks Joined Into One
The two sticks are Judah and Ephraim, also called Israel and Joseph, with their fellow tribes and companions joined to each. They stand for the divided tribes of Israel, Judah and the ten tribes, scattered Israel and Judah to be made one nation again.
To join them one to another into one stick, so that they become one in the prophet's hand, is a sign and symbol of God's purpose to unite the divided kingdoms and restore them together as one people and one nation. That restoration includes return to their own land, resurrection and joining together of the scattered hosts, rule under David, and a distinct people displaying God's salvation and glory among the nations. In its future union God's people become one fold through Christ as the one Shepherd.
The one king and one shepherd over the reunited people is David and the seed of David, meaning the second David, Christ, ruling the coming Messianic kingdom. Those made one in Him are the second Israel, Israel by faith under the new covenant rather than natural descendants under the first covenant, with the first Israel and first David belonging entirely to the first covenant and the second Israel and second David to the new. In a spiritual sense the redeemed in God's everlasting kingdom belong to the twelve tribes of Israel.
The verse belongs to the closing prophecy of restoration from Ezekiel 36 onward through chapter 48, promising resurrection, national reunion, the city, the restored land, and the temple in glorious form from chapter 40 onward with its sanctuary. It is expressed in figures and language drawn from Ezekiel's time, given around 587 B.C. after Ezekiel had been taken into captivity and after Jerusalem's destruction.
Conditional Promise Future Fulfillment
The promise of joining was conditional on faith, obedience, repentance, shame for iniquity, putting away sin, turning from iniquity, returning to God wholeheartedly, yielding to Him, and being filled with His Spirit. God would have brought about the national restoration and union when Cyrus decreed the return and rebuilding of the temple, and would then have restored the faithful who had died, defeated enemies, made Jerusalem a praise in the earth, gathered the scattered people back to their land, and made them alive again even raising those who slept in death. Because the people did not repent, were not ashamed, did not put away sin, did not truly repent, did not follow God's plan, and largely failed to meet the conditions, the promised restoration, resurrection, victory, and union did not take place in that form.
What followed was fulfilled only in part, in small part, or only partially, as when about forty thousand returned from Babylon. The restoration as first given was never literally fulfilled, was not fulfilled exactly as first given, was not fulfilled in all its details, and will not be fulfilled in its original historical setting, by building that sanctuary, or under the local conditions of Ezekiel's day. The people who had died would have been resurrected if God's people had heeded the prophet's words, but that restoration never literally took place.
The prophecy will instead be fulfilled more gloriously in the new dispensation and in the last days under different conditions and on a broader and more glorious scale. Its greater fulfillment belongs to the final gathering of God's people when Jesus comes, at the second coming and related events, with no fulfillment before Christ's second advent. He will more than fulfill all those promises to His Israel in Christ Jesus in the new heaven and the new earth whose capital city is the New Jerusalem.
That fulfillment is for true Israel, spiritual Israel, the second Israel by faith under the new covenant rather than natural descendants as the first Israel under the first covenant, since the first Israel and reign of the first David belonged entirely to the first covenant and the second Israel and David the second belong to the new. In Christ believing Israelites and Gentiles become one, Gentiles being fellow heirs and partakers of the promise with no Greek and Jew, including the other sheep and all who prevail by faith brought into one fold under one Shepherd, and the saved enter the city as God's people belonging in a spiritual sense to the twelve tribes of Israel. The prophecy is also a type of God's broad promises to His people at the second coming, though its details are not fulfilled in the antitype and not necessarily in the precise details described.
The gathering from among the nations is due now while the powers of earth take their places for fast-approaching Armageddon, so the gospel must go to Persia and the regions round about with missionary evangelists gathering out God's children there even while the agents of the god of this world work day and night to gather men to the battle of the great day. The two sticks do not represent the Book of Mormon and the Bible combined, nor does Joseph's stick identify the American continent or Joseph Smith. The verse does not promise a return of the Jews as a nation to Palestine in mortal life under a future Davidic king; all unfulfilled returns to the land God gave to Abraham refer to the true Israel in the resurrection, when the land belongs to Christ and His saints and Abraham and all his seed together come into everlasting possession, which they cannot do while death reigns.
Resurrection and One People
Ezekiel 37 portrays bodily resurrection in the valley of dry bones, where the bones, which are the whole house of Israel, come together, receive sinews and flesh and skin, receive breath, live and stand as a great army, and come up from opened graves. That rebuilding of the dead takes place without any immortal soul or deathless spirit entering the body. The power of that resurrection is found in the Word of God. The same rising from the dead is the hope Isaiah proclaimed for the righteous.
Resurrection is the gateway to Israel's promised land and to permanent planting never to be removed. All unfulfilled returns to their own land, the land given to Abraham, belong to true Israel in the resurrection, when Abraham and all his seed together come into everlasting possession of the land belonging to Christ and His saints, which they cannot do while death reigns. That gathering and return is fulfilled at the resurrection and in the new earth, not by a return of the Jews to their land in mortal life under a future Davidic king. Mortal people must first be raised from the dead and changed to immortality, so the kingdom would not appear immediately, a prophecy Nicodemus should have known.
The resurrection of the dead is the hope, the only hope, the blessed hope of God's children. At Christ's coming with all the shining angelic host the dead hear His voice, and those who sleep in Him come forth to everlasting life and immortality. Eternal life comes only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ at His coming and the resurrection. The vision meets those dried up with hope lost, as Israel of old felt, and calls them to take hold of God and His mighty power and be revived.
The valley of dry bones is also presented as a vivid picture of bodily resurrection and of opened graves with return to the land, without explaining the joining of the sticks in verse 17 itself. The prophecy from chapters 36 to the end of Ezekiel is likewise set forth as conditioned on ancient Israel's faith and obedience, to have been fulfilled in detail if met and now to be fulfilled more gloriously in redemption and the earth made new, without explaining the joining of the sticks itself.
The two sticks are Judah and Ephraim, also called Israel and Joseph with their fellow tribes, and their joining into one stick to become one in the prophet's hand is the sign that the divided tribes would be restored together as one nation and one people in their own land to display God's salvation and glory among the nations. The one king and one shepherd set over the reunited people is David, the seed of David, the second David, Christ, in whom those united become one fold. The promise was conditional on faith, obedience, repentance and returning to God wholeheartedly, which God would have fulfilled in the national restoration and union when Cyrus decreed the return and rebuilding of the temple. Because the people did not repent the restoration was fulfilled only in part, as when about forty thousand returned from Babylon, and was never fulfilled literally in all its details in its original setting, but will be fulfilled more gloriously in the last days at the coming of Jesus and in the new heaven and new earth for true spiritual Israel, in which believing Israelites and Gentiles become one in Christ. The chapter portrays bodily resurrection in which the dry bones, which are the whole house of Israel, receive sinews, flesh and breath and come up from opened graves, and that resurrection is the gateway to the promised land and permanent planting never to be removed, since mortal people must first be raised and changed to immortality.
Sticks Joined Into One
The two sticks are Judah and Ephraim, also called Israel and Joseph, with their fellow tribes and companions joined to each. They stand for the divided tribes of Israel, Judah and the ten tribes, scattered Israel and Judah to be made one nation again.
To join them one to another into one stick, so that they become one in the prophet's hand, is a sign and symbol of God's purpose to unite the divided kingdoms and restore them together as one people and one nation. That restoration includes return to their own land, resurrection and joining together of the scattered hosts, rule under David, and a distinct people displaying God's salvation and glory among the nations. In its future union God's people become one fold through Christ as the one Shepherd.
The one king and one shepherd over the reunited people is David and the seed of David, meaning the second David, Christ, ruling the coming Messianic kingdom. Those made one in Him are the second Israel, Israel by faith under the new covenant rather than natural descendants under the first covenant, with the first Israel and first David belonging entirely to the first covenant and the second Israel and second David to the new. In a spiritual sense the redeemed in God's everlasting kingdom belong to the twelve tribes of Israel.
The verse belongs to the closing prophecy of restoration from Ezekiel 36 onward through chapter 48, promising resurrection, national reunion, the city, the restored land, and the temple in glorious form from chapter 40 onward with its sanctuary. It is expressed in figures and language drawn from Ezekiel's time, given around 587 B.C. after Ezekiel had been taken into captivity and after Jerusalem's destruction.
Conditional Promise Future Fulfillment
The promise of joining was conditional on faith, obedience, repentance, shame for iniquity, putting away sin, turning from iniquity, returning to God wholeheartedly, yielding to Him, and being filled with His Spirit. God would have brought about the national restoration and union when Cyrus decreed the return and rebuilding of the temple, and would then have restored the faithful who had died, defeated enemies, made Jerusalem a praise in the earth, gathered the scattered people back to their land, and made them alive again even raising those who slept in death. Because the people did not repent, were not ashamed, did not put away sin, did not truly repent, did not follow God's plan, and largely failed to meet the conditions, the promised restoration, resurrection, victory, and union did not take place in that form.
What followed was fulfilled only in part, in small part, or only partially, as when about forty thousand returned from Babylon. The restoration as first given was never literally fulfilled, was not fulfilled exactly as first given, was not fulfilled in all its details, and will not be fulfilled in its original historical setting, by building that sanctuary, or under the local conditions of Ezekiel's day. The people who had died would have been resurrected if God's people had heeded the prophet's words, but that restoration never literally took place.
The prophecy will instead be fulfilled more gloriously in the new dispensation and in the last days under different conditions and on a broader and more glorious scale. Its greater fulfillment belongs to the final gathering of God's people when Jesus comes, at the second coming and related events, with no fulfillment before Christ's second advent. He will more than fulfill all those promises to His Israel in Christ Jesus in the new heaven and the new earth whose capital city is the New Jerusalem.
That fulfillment is for true Israel, spiritual Israel, the second Israel by faith under the new covenant rather than natural descendants as the first Israel under the first covenant, since the first Israel and reign of the first David belonged entirely to the first covenant and the second Israel and David the second belong to the new. In Christ believing Israelites and Gentiles become one, Gentiles being fellow heirs and partakers of the promise with no Greek and Jew, including the other sheep and all who prevail by faith brought into one fold under one Shepherd, and the saved enter the city as God's people belonging in a spiritual sense to the twelve tribes of Israel. The prophecy is also a type of God's broad promises to His people at the second coming, though its details are not fulfilled in the antitype and not necessarily in the precise details described.
The gathering from among the nations is due now while the powers of earth take their places for fast-approaching Armageddon, so the gospel must go to Persia and the regions round about with missionary evangelists gathering out God's children there even while the agents of the god of this world work day and night to gather men to the battle of the great day. The two sticks do not represent the Book of Mormon and the Bible combined, nor does Joseph's stick identify the American continent or Joseph Smith. The verse does not promise a return of the Jews as a nation to Palestine in mortal life under a future Davidic king; all unfulfilled returns to the land God gave to Abraham refer to the true Israel in the resurrection, when the land belongs to Christ and His saints and Abraham and all his seed together come into everlasting possession, which they cannot do while death reigns.
Resurrection and One People
Ezekiel 37 portrays bodily resurrection in the valley of dry bones, where the bones, which are the whole house of Israel, come together, receive sinews and flesh and skin, receive breath, live and stand as a great army, and come up from opened graves. That rebuilding of the dead takes place without any immortal soul or deathless spirit entering the body. The power of that resurrection is found in the Word of God. The same rising from the dead is the hope Isaiah proclaimed for the righteous.
Resurrection is the gateway to Israel's promised land and to permanent planting never to be removed. All unfulfilled returns to their own land, the land given to Abraham, belong to true Israel in the resurrection, when Abraham and all his seed together come into everlasting possession of the land belonging to Christ and His saints, which they cannot do while death reigns. That gathering and return is fulfilled at the resurrection and in the new earth, not by a return of the Jews to their land in mortal life under a future Davidic king. Mortal people must first be raised from the dead and changed to immortality, so the kingdom would not appear immediately, a prophecy Nicodemus should have known.
The resurrection of the dead is the hope, the only hope, the blessed hope of God's children. At Christ's coming with all the shining angelic host the dead hear His voice, and those who sleep in Him come forth to everlasting life and immortality. Eternal life comes only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ at His coming and the resurrection. The vision meets those dried up with hope lost, as Israel of old felt, and calls them to take hold of God and His mighty power and be revived.
The valley of dry bones is also presented as a vivid picture of bodily resurrection and of opened graves with return to the land, without explaining the joining of the sticks in verse 17 itself. The prophecy from chapters 36 to the end of Ezekiel is likewise set forth as conditioned on ancient Israel's faith and obedience, to have been fulfilled in detail if met and now to be fulfilled more gloriously in redemption and the earth made new, without explaining the joining of the sticks itself.