Chapter 34 portrays God’s recovery of His people outwardly through His coming as their Shepherd to seek His lost sheep and bring them back to their own land, and ch. 36 concerns God’s inward recovery by life by giving His people a new heart and a new spirit and putting His Spirit within them. Chapter 37 reveals how God’s Spirit enters into His people in order to enliven them that they may become a corporate Body formed into an army and built up to be God’s dwelling place.
The vision of the dry bones shows that before God came in to renew and regenerate us, we were not only sinful and filthy (Ezek. 36:25) but also dead and buried in “graves” of various sinful, worldly, and religious things (vv. 12-13). We were like dead and dry bones, disjointed and scattered, having no oneness. But the Lord is the Savior of the dead (John 5:25; Eph. 2:1-8).