The following, on some of the Messianic expectations in the book of Ezekiel, comes from Joseph Klausner’s interesting study, The Messianic Idea in Israel from the beginning to the Completion of the Mishnah. It touches upon some texts, including Ezek 37 and the “two sticks” (a text that too many Latter-day Saints misread as a prophecy of the Book of Mormon) and the future Davidic King concept:
Political well-being is also emphasized by Ezekiel in a striking manner. Along with Judah, Samaria will be restored to life and will become subject to her younger sister in a subjection both spiritual and political: Samaria will be the daughter and Judah the mother, the metropolis (16:53, 54, 61). Ezekiel emphasizes this idea more than the rest of the prophets, and on it turns the vision of the two sticks joined into one (37:19-28). The sons of Israel, whom the sons of Judah had considered as dry bones, as a dead member in the body of the nation, will also be gathered from all the lands where they have been driven, and will be restored to national and religious life on their own soil. This is indicated by the sublime vision of “the Valley of Dry Bones” (37:1-14). Not for nothing does “the vision of the two sticks joined together” follow immediately after the vision of “the resurrection of the dry bones.” For the prophet goes on to say in the name of the LORD:
and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king of them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all (37:22).
This one king will be David, that is—as we have seen in Hosea and in Jeremiah—a king from the house of David. This king will be “their prince for ever” ((37:24-25). This Messianism of the rule of the house of David is emphasized by Ezekiel in still another passage (34:23-24), and we see here the prophet of the Exile following in the footsteps of the prophets of freedom who preceded him. There is no doubt in my mind that these prophecies were uttered a short time after the Destruction, during the lifetime of Zedekiah. Fourteen years after the Destruction, Ezekiel already speaks only of a “prince,” and at that time there is no longer any mention in his words either of David or of a king. I shall return to this fact in the course of the discussion.
The king from the house of David is not described as a victorious warrior, nor even as the possessor of very high spiritual qualities of the kind attributed by Isaiah to the “shoot out of the stock of Jesse.” This king will be a shepherd, a good shepherd, who will feed the flock and not himself, who will not allow the strong and fat sheep to thrust aside from the sick and the lean. But in one prophecy, which without any doubt was delivered before the Destruction, because in it the prophet complains against Zedekiah for violating his oath to Nebuchadnezzar, we still find the hope that the king from the house of David will achieve a great political success. From the top of the cedar of the LORD will crop off a tender twig and will plant it “in the mountain of the height of Israel”; and “it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a stately cedar; and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing, in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell” (17:22-24). It is possible that by “fowl of every wing” is meant only all the dispersed tribes of Israel, and it is possible that the words “a stately cedar” are only an exaggeration for rhetorical effect. But it is also possible that before the complete Destruction the prophet had not yet given up hope of seeing at a time more or less distant the house of David at the head of a great and powerful kingdom.
But before the final political Golden Age comes to Israel, the people of the LORD will once more be in great distress—though they are already dwelling upon their own soil. This is a new conception, which we find only in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Messianic oracles of the rest of the prophets, the Day of Judgment always preceded the day of redemption and consolation; even in Ezekiel punishment comes before redemption, except that he is not satisfied with this. There is in his prophecies something like a second day of judgement, which, like repentance in his scheme, does not come before the redemption but after it. This is the war with Gog and Magog. According to the opinion of most scholars, the two long prophecies in Ezekiel (38 and 39) concerning the war with Gog and Magog are only an echo of the prophecy of Jeremiah and Zephaniah concerning the onslaught of the Scythians at the approach to the land of Judah in the time of Josiah. King Ashurbanipal (668-626), the Asenappar of the Bible (Ezra 4:10), had already fought against these “Ashkuzites” (Ashguzai); and he also mentions his war against “the sons of Gâg.” The next Assyrian king before the last, Sin-shar-ishkun, the Sarakos of the Greeks (c. 620-612), also fought against them. These “sons of Gâg” are, according to Hommel, “The Gog of the land of Magog” of Ezekiel, who could not forget, even after forty years, the devastation (described in such vivid colors in the prophecy of Jeremiah from the year 625, Jer. 5:15-17) which these barbarians made near the land of Judah (the prophecy of Ezekiel concerning the war with Gog is from about the year 585); and it seemed to Ezekiel that as long as these barbarians were not completely destroyed, there could be no true peace in the land of Israel. (Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel from the Beginning of the Completion of the Mishnah [New York: Macmillan, 1955], 125-27, emphasis in original)
