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filled with a flock

Ezekiel 36:37-38 (JDV)

Ezekiel 36:37 ” ‘This is what the Lord Yahveh says: I will respond to the house of Israel and do this for them: I will multiply them in number like a flock.
Ezekiel 36:38 So the ruined cities will be filled with a flock of people, just as Jerusalem is filled with a flock of sheep for sacrifice during its appointed festivals. Then they will know that I am Yahveh.'”

filled with a flock

Cowles writes: “The word “flock” comes from the previous figure which accounts the people as the Lord’s sheep and himself as their shepherd. The population would crowd the cities densely, as the throng filled Jerusalem in the great national feasts” (208).

Imagine a city once ruined and abandoned, but now so filled that it looked like Jerusalem overrun by sheep ready for the Passover sacrifice. This is the hope of a nation desolated by war. It is also the hope of a person who knows the destitution and shame of separation from God.

Cowles, Henry. Ezekiel and Daniel: With Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical. New York: D. Appleton, 1870.