Ezekiel 37:4 - Exposition

Prophesy upon (or, over) then bones . This instruction—which shows Jehovah regarded the prophet's answer as equivalent to an admission that the revivification of the bones lay within his (Jehovah's) power—was not a mere command to predict, as in Ezekiel 6:2 and Ezekiel 11:4 , but an injunction to utter the Divine word through which the miracle (of creation, as it really was) should be performed. "The significance of the command lies in the fact that it taught the prophet that he was himself to be instrumental in the great work of resuscitation. He who had been so often troubled with the sense of impotence and failure, who had heard the people say of him, 'Both he not speak parables?' who had been to them as the lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and nothing more than that, was at last to learn that the word of the Lord,' spoken by his lips, was mighty, and would not return to him void" (Plumptre).