Ezekiel 37:12

12. my people—in antithesis to "for our parts" ( :-). The hope that is utterly gone, if looking at themselves, is sure for them in God, because He regards them as His people. Their covenant relation to God ensures His not letting death permanently reign over them. Christ makes the same principle the ground on which the literal resurrection rests. God had said, "I am the God of Abraham," c. God, by taking the patriarchs as His, undertook to do for them all that Omnipotence can perform: He, being the ever living God, is necessarily the God of, not dead, but living persons, that is, of those whose bodies His covenant love binds Him to raise again. He can—and because He can—He will—He must [FAIRBAIRN]. He calls them "My people" when receiving them into favor; but "thy people," in addressing His servant, as if He would put them away from Him (Ezekiel 13:17; Ezekiel 33:2; Exodus 32:7).

out of your graves—out of your politically dead state, primarily in Babylon, finally hereafter in all lands (compare Ezekiel 6:8; Hosea 13:14). The Jews regarded the lands of their captivity and dispersion as their "graves"; their restoration was to be as "life from the dead" (Hosea 13:14- :). Before, the bones were in the open plain (Ezekiel 37:1; Ezekiel 37:2); now, in the graves, that is, some of the Jews were in the graves of actual captivity, others at large but dispersed. Both alike were nationally dead.