Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ezekiel · About this commentary
Two Sticks Made One
Ezekiel 37:15-28
15 Yahweh’s word came again to me, saying, · WEB
A split that had lasted three and a half centuries is healed by holding two pieces of wood until they read as one.
The sign is the simplest in the book. Take a stick and write on it For Judah. Take another and write on it For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim. Then hold them together, so that they may become one in your hand. No fire, no digging, no rationing. A man stands in front of people with two pieces of wood and closes his fist.
The division being addressed was old and looked permanent. The kingdom had split after Solomon. The northern tribes had been deported by Assyria a century and a half before Ezekiel, and their descendants were scattered and mostly untraceable. Judah's exiles had every reason to regard the north as gone. The two sticks are made one in my hand — the hand is named twice, and the joining is not achieved by negotiation between the two parties.
What is promised on the back of the sign runs beyond reunification. One nation, on the mountains of Israel, with one king over them all, They will no longer be two nations. The shepherd of chapter 34 returns by name, my servant David, now called both king and prince. And a clause is added that the political history never managed: They won't defile themselves any more with their idols... but I will save them out of all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them.
The last verses move from the nation to the sanctuary, and they are the bridge to the final vision. A covenant of peace, called an everlasting covenant. A sanctuary set among them forever more, and the word repeated three times in three verses. And then a sentence that reaches back past the temple to the tent in the wilderness: My tent also will be with them. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
That pairing is the oldest promise in the covenant, and it is what the whole book has been tracking. The glory left the house in chapter 10 because the house had been defiled. Here a sanctuary is promised that will stand in the middle of a cleansed people permanently. The effect on the watching nations is stated as the purpose: The nations will know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is among them forever more.
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