Ezekiel 37

16	16 And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick¹, and write upon it, ‘For Yehūdah and for the sons of Yisra’ēl, his companion.² And take one stick, and write upon it, for Yōsēf (the stick of E̕phrai̱m) and all the house of Yisra’ēl, his companion. 17 And make approach them, one unto the other one, for yourself, as one stick. And they will have become united ones in your hand.‡
18	18 And as that they will say unto you, the sons of your people, saying, ‘Will you not make declared to us what these mean to you?’, 19 make be spoken unto them, ‘Thus has said A̕dōnai Yăhwēh, Behold I am taking the stick of Yōsēf, which is in the hand of E̕phrai̱m, and the tribes of Yisra’ēl, his companions,¹, and I will have put them upon him (the stick of Yehūdah), and I will have made them as one stick. And they will have become one in my hand.
20	20 And the sticks will have been, when you will write on them, in your hand, before their eyes. 21 And say unto them, ‘Thus has said A̕dōnai Yăhwēh, Behold I am taking the sons of Yisra’ēl, from among the nations, which they have gone there, and I will have made them to be collected from round about, and I will have made them come unto their ground. 22 And I will have made them as one nation, in the land, on the mountains of Yisra’ēl. And one king shall be to all of them as king, and they will not be again as two nations, and they will not be divided again, as two kingdoms again. 23 They will not make themselves to be unclean again with their worthless things, and with their detestable things, and with all their transgressions, and I will have made them saved from all their apostasies¹ which they have sinned in them, and I will have made them to be clean, and they will have become to me as a people, and I, I will be to them as Almĭghty. 24 And my servant Daυid, will be king over them, and One shepherding will be for all of them, and in my judgments they will walk, and my statutes they will guard, and they will have done them.
25	25 And they will dwell upon the land, which I have given to my servant, to Ya‘aqōv̱, which their fathers had dwelled in it. And they will dwell upon it, they and their sons, and the sons of their sons, onward time immemorial, and Daυid my servant will be a prince to them to time immemorial. 26 And I will have cut for them a covenant of peace. A covenant of time immemorial it¹ will be with them. And I will have placed them, and I will made made them many, and I will have put my holy place in their midst to time immemorial. 27 And will have been my dwelling over them, and I will have been to them as Almĭghty, and they, they will become to me as a people.
28	28 Then the nations will have known that I am Yăhwēh making Yisra’ēl to be holy, in being my holy place in their midst to time immemorial.

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Commentary

37:16¹ ^{^}עֵץ ē̒ts = tree, branch, stick of wood.

37:16² ^{^}The noun reading in the MT: חֲבֵרוֹ ḥav̱ērō means “his joiner,” i.e. the one who joins Yehūdah. This is derived from the verb root לַחֲבֹר laḥav̱ōr, “to join, to unite, to connect.” The reference then is to descendants of the Northern Kingdom who count themselves as Yehūdi̱m, i.e. Jews.

37:17‡ ^{^}They will say that this all happened during the Persian dominion between the Babylonian Exile, and the rise of the Greek dominon, so as to deny Gen. 48:19, where it says E̕phrai̱m would become the “fullness of the nations” מְלֹא הַגּוֹיִם melō’ haggōyim, which Paul renders: τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν in Rom. 11:25, “until the fulness of the nations should enter in.” The fullness of the nations enters into Yisra’ēl through Mĕssiah, to become fellow citizens.

If they deny, and if they say that this prophecy was fullfilled in the Persian Period, then ask them if those sons of Yisra’ēl, from the Northern Kingdom, who rejoined them then, are Jews? If they say no, then they have allowed the non-Jew to enter the nation. If they say yes, then ask them who are those of the house of Yisra’ēl, who are not companions of Yehūdah, but companions of Yōsēf, in the hand of E̕phrai̱m?

A Jewish person is by definition a companion of the tribe of Yehūdah, because some few from the Northern Kingdom resettled in Judea, and these became companions of the Yehūdi̱m. The word companion means “joined with” in Hebrew. Therefore Paul, from the tribe of Bi̱nyami̱n identified himself as a Jew. The only sons of Yisra’ēl returning with Yehūdah after the Babylonian exile were those already joined to that tribe.

37:19¹ ^{^}See note 37:16². This refers to the tribes which are joined to the stick of Yōsēf, which is in the hand of E̕phrai̱m. These tribes are not Yehūdi̱m, i.e. Jews. They are non-Jews.

37:23¹ ^{^}Read with the LXX: τῶν ἀνομιῶν αὐτῶν מְשׁוּבַתֵיהֶם meshūv̱atēihem. See BDB. Two letters switched places, and the MT reading does not make sense. No one needs be saved from their dwellings.

37:26¹ ^{^}And unexplained gender disagreement here. The verb pronoun is 3ms, and what it refers to is 3fs.