(21) Will gather them.--The restoration of Israel from their captivity among the heathen here, as often elsewhere, is the first step in the fulfilment of the Divine promises. This, however, like the other Divine promises, was fulfilled only to a "remnant," a course which, as St. Paul shows in Romans 9, had been foreseen and foretold from the first. A fulfilment on a larger scale was perpetually prevented by the sins of the people; God did for them all that their obdurate disobedience would allow Him to do. Yet He did not wholly reject them, but allowed a remnant to keep alive His Church, and become the channel of those richer blessings of the new covenant, in which all who will accept His salvation are united in a holier bond, and led to a land of higher promise than Israel after the flesh could ever know.
Verses 21-28 explain how the unification of the two kingdoms should be brought about. The first step should be the bringing of the people home to their own land (vers. 21, 22); the second, their purification from idolatry (ver. 23); the third, the installation over them, thus united and purified, of one King, the ideal David of the future, or the Messiah (vers. 24, 25); the fourth, the establishment with them of Jehovah's covenant of peace (ver. 26), and the permanent erection amongst them of Jehovah's temple (vers. 27, 28). Verses 21, 22. - I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen. That tills promise was intended to find an initial and partial fulfillment in the return from Babylon is undoubted. That it was also designed to look across the centuries towards the final ingathering of God's spiritual Israel into their permanent inheritance, the heavenly Canaan, an examination of its terms shows. These clearly presuppose a wider dispersion of Israel than had then, i.e. in Ezekiel's day, taken place; and that Israel has never yet been made one nation upon the mountains of Israel, is incontestable. Nor is there ground for expecting she ever will be. Not even after the exile closed did all Israel return to Palestine. Nor did it ever come true in their experience that one king was king to them all, since, in point of fact, they never afterwards had an earthly sore-reign at all who was properly independent. If, therefore, the prince who in the future should shepherd them was not to be a temporal monarch, but the Messiah, the probability is that the Israel he should shepherd was designed to be, not Israel after the flesh, but Israel after the spirit, who should walk in his judgments and observe his statutes, and who, in the fullness of the times, should develop out into the Christian Church. Hence it seems reasonable to conclude that their own land, into which they should eventually be brought, would be not so much the veritable soil from which their ancestors had been expelled, as the country or region in which the new, rejuvenated, reunited, and reformed Israel should dwell, which, again, should be n territory cleansed from sin and idolatry, so as to render it a fit abode for a people devoted to righteousness. Viewed in this light, their own land was first Canaan, in so far as after the exile it was cleansed from idolatry; now it is those portions of the earth in which the Christian Church has been planted, so far as these are influenced by the holy principles of religion; finally, it will be the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (scrap. Ezekiel 34:24; Ezekiel 36:24).
37:15-28 This emblem was to show the people, that the Lord would unite Judah and Israel. Christ is the true David, Israel's King of old; and those whom he makes willing in the day of his power, he makes to walk in his judgments, and to keep his statutes. Events yet to come will further explain this prophecy. Nothing has more hindered the success of the gospel than divisions. Let us study to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; let us seek for Divine grace to keep us from detestable things; and let us pray that all nations may be obedient and happy subjects of the Son of David, that the Lord may be our God, and we may be his people for evermore.
And say unto them, thus saith the Lord God,.... Or, as the Targum,
"thou shalt prophesy to them;''
for what follows is a prophecy of what shall be in the latter day:
behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the Heathen, whither they be gone, or, "from among the Gentiles" (b); not only the Chaldeans, where they were carried captives; but from among the nations where they are now dispersed, and among whom they go freely of their own accord from place to place, for the sake of traffic: and this phrase, "whither they be gone", or "are going" (c), travelling about from one country to another, better describes the present Jews, and their state, than those in the Babylonian captivity:
and will gather them on every side, or, "round about" (d); from the several parts of the world where they are:
and bring them into their own land; the land of Canaan, given by the Lord to their fathers, and to them their posterity, for an inheritance; though now in the possession of others, who, it seems, are not the right owners.
(b) "e medio ipsarum gentium", Junius & Tremellius; "ex gentibus", Starckius; "e vel medio gentium", Piscator, Cocceius. (c) "ambulant, vel ambulantes sunt". (d) "circumquaque", Junius & Tremellius, Polanus, Starckius.
"thou shalt prophesy to them;''
for what follows is a prophecy of what shall be in the latter day:
behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the Heathen, whither they be gone, or, "from among the Gentiles" (b); not only the Chaldeans, where they were carried captives; but from among the nations where they are now dispersed, and among whom they go freely of their own accord from place to place, for the sake of traffic: and this phrase, "whither they be gone", or "are going" (c), travelling about from one country to another, better describes the present Jews, and their state, than those in the Babylonian captivity:
and will gather them on every side, or, "round about" (d); from the several parts of the world where they are:
and bring them into their own land; the land of Canaan, given by the Lord to their fathers, and to them their posterity, for an inheritance; though now in the possession of others, who, it seems, are not the right owners.
(b) "e medio ipsarum gentium", Junius & Tremellius; "ex gentibus", Starckius; "e vel medio gentium", Piscator, Cocceius. (c) "ambulant, vel ambulantes sunt". (d) "circumquaque", Junius & Tremellius, Polanus, Starckius.