Son of man, can these bones live? Whether or not this question was directed, as Plumptre surmises, to meet despairing thoughts which had arisen in the prophet's own mind, it seems reasonable to hold, with Havernick, that the question was addressed to him as representing "ever against God the people, and certainly as to this point the natural and purely human consciousness of the same," to which Israel's restoration appeared as unlikely an occurrence as the reanimation of the withered bones that lay around.
The extreme improbability, if not absolute impossibility, of the occurrence, at least to human reason and power, is perhaps pointed at in the designation "Son of man" here given to the prophet. The prophet's answer, O Lord God, thou knowest, is not to be interpreted as proving that to the prophet hitherto the thought of a resurrection had been unfamiliar, if not completely absent, or as giving a direct reply either affirmative or negative to the question proposed to him, but merely as expressing the prophet's sense of the greatness of the wonder suggested to his mind, with perhaps a latent acknowledgment that God alone had the power by which such a wonder could, and therefore alone also the knowledge whether it would, be accomplished (comp.