And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin: and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

“The hope of resurrection is the root of every kind of good work, for the expectation of reward braces the soul to productive toil. And whereas every worker is ready to sustain his toil if he can look forward to being repaid for his labors, where toil has no recompense the soul is soon discouraged and the body flags with it. A soldier who expects his share of the spoils is ready for war. But no one is prepared to die serving a king so undiscerning that he does not provide rewards for labors. In the same way, any soul that believes in resurrection takes care for itself, as is right, but any soul that disbelieves the resurrection abandons itself to destruction. A person who believes that the body survives to rise again is careful of this garment and does not soil it by fornicating. But a person who does not believe in the resurrection gives himself up to fornication, abusing his own body as if it were nothing to him. A mighty message and teaching of the holy Catholic church is belief about the resurrection of the dead; mighty and most indispensable. While many deny it, the truth claims credence for it. Greeks deny it, Samaritans disbelieve, while heretics tear away the half. Truth never appears but in one shape, while contradiction assumes a hundred.”

“In minute detail the holy prophet Ezekiel teaches and describes how strength will be restored to our dry bones, feeling return and motion added; how, with the return of sinews, the whole structure of the human body will grow strong, and how the driest bones will be clothed with restored flesh and the openings of the veins and the streams of the blood will be concealed by a veil of skin drawn tautly over them. At the very words of the prophet, as we read, the crop of human bodies seems to rise up again to life, and one may see the wide expanses of the fields sprouting with a novel kind of growth.”

“There were at all events many wonderful and great prophets among ourselves who spoke many things about the future, and they in no way used to bid those who asked them to dig up the bones of the departed. Ezekiel standing near the bones themselves was not only not hindered by [the bones] but added flesh, and nerves and skin to them and brought them back to life again.”

“And I will lay sinews upon you, etc. But in the Book of Job it says (10:11): “You clothe me with skin and flesh” first, and afterwards, “and You cover me with bones and sinews.” But to what were these similar? To a man who undresses and then dresses [himself] again, in which case, what he took off last he puts on first, whereas at the beginning of the creation of the fetus, skin and flesh come first and afterwards bones and sinews. and cover you [Heb. וְקָרַמְתִי,] from the word for skin (קְרוּם) ecro(s) ter in Old French, and I shall encrust (with skin).”

“And I will lay sinews upon you, and I will bring up flesh upon you,.... That is, before he should cause breath to enter into them; for though it is first mentioned, it is the last done: this is the orderly process; first sinews are laid to join the bones together; then flesh is laid to cover them, and fill up all vacancies, and form muscles to make the bones capable of motion: and cover you with skin; both bones, sinews, and flesh; for this is uppermost of all, and which makes the whole smooth and beautiful. Job expresses his formation in much such language, "thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews", Job 10:11, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; which is repeated for the confirmation of it: and ye shall know that I am the Lord; the Lord God omnipotent, the Lord gracious and merciful, and your Lord and God: so men, when they are called by grace, know the Lord, they did not before; having an experience of his powerful and efficacious grace upon their hearts, they know him to be theirs and own and acknowledge him, and profess him before men.”

“I will lay sinews upon you - Observe the progress: 1. Here are the bones. 2. The ligaments, called here sinews, are to be added in order to unite the bones, that the skeleton might be complete. 3. The flesh (the whole muscular system, the subjacent and superjacent muscles, including the arterial and venous system) clothes this skeleton. 4. The skin (the dermis and epidermis, or cutis and cuticle) envelopes the whole of these muscles or flesh; and now these bodies are in the state that the body of Adam was before it received the animal and intellectual principle from God. 5. There was no breath in them - they had not yet received their souls. 6. The wind, רוח ruach, the soul, came into them. They were endued with animal and intellectual life; and they arose and evidenced a complete restoration to life, and began to perform its functions, Eze 37:10.”