Hello and welcome to the Scriptures A Real Podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about elements of the scriptures that have become real to us so that we can draw more power out of the scriptures. I'm your host, Kerry Mielstein, and this is a short cast on Ezekiel 37.

Ezekiel 37 is a really crucial chapter just in terms of Ezekiel's meaning in general, and especially for us as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But I think we often take these verses out of context, and we do things with them that are good and useful, but not as good and useful as if we understood them more fully in their original context and what their primary interpretation is.

We typically run with the secondary interpretations, and sometimes that can make us look silly and give us less ability to connect with other Christians and Jews.

And it robs us of the opportunity to get the full meaning out of these chapters.

So I want to spend just a few minutes on this chapter and these two images that are in this chapter.

That's a really important chapter.

So to make sense of it, of course, we have to look at the context. If we're going

to understand the beginning of chapter 37, we have to look at the end of chapter 36, which is also

a crucial chapter in Ezekiel. This is where we start to get God talking about establishing a new

covenant with Israel. So if we were to look at, say, starting in verse 25, then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall become clean?

And so it's after verse 24, I should say, which is for I will take you from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries and will bring you into your own land.

And then he's going to spring water on them and make them clean from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit I will put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you an heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk my statutes and you shall keep my judgments and do them. So you can see, oh, and verse 28, and ye shall dwell on the land that I gave to your

fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. And then he goes on to say all sorts of

other things. It's all about gathering them back to him and making them a kind of people that

want to love and keep his covenant, and he will keep the covenant with them we end with verse 37 and

38 well 36 then the heathen that are left around about you shall know that i the lord build the ruin

places and plant that that was desolate i will i the lord have spoken it and i will do it so it's this

idea that you didn't keep the

covenant. So the covenant itself and the, all the blessings promised from whether that be the land or

you as a people have become desolate, but I can build it again. When you keep the covenant,

I can make all of this happen again and make the blessings of the covenant happen again.

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