Ezekiel 37:11-12

These bones are the whole house of Israel These bones represent the forlorn and desperate condition to which the whole nation of Israel is reduced; they say, Our bones are dried, &c. Our affairs are in the most desperate condition; there is not so much as any hope left of their being retrieved. We are cut off for our parts We are separated and cut off from one another, like a limb that is cut off from the body. Therefore prophesy, &c. Inform these poor, dejected, desponding Israelites of their mistake, and revive their hope by a new promise and declaration of my purposes of mercy toward them. O my people, I will open your graves Though your captivity be as death, your prisons and places of confinement close as graves, yet will I open those graves. And cause you to come up out of your graves I will bring you out of your state of captivity, in which you are little better than dead persons, having no power or privileges of your own, nor enjoying any thing which can properly be called life. The Jewish nation, in their state of dispersion and captivity, are called the dead Israelites, by Baruch, chap. Ezekiel 3:4: and their restoration is described as a resurrection by Isaiah 26:19. In like manner St. Paul expresses their conversion, and the general restoration which shall accompany it, by life from the dead, Romans 11:15. And the foregoing similitude showed, in a strong and beautiful manner, that God, who could even raise the dead, had power to convert and restore them.