Ezekiel 37:1-14 concerns the vision
Ezekiel had of the valley of dry bones. The vision occurred sometime between
33:21 in 576 BC and 40:1 in 562 BC. No end to exile is in sight. The loss
suffered in exile was not only its national life, but its hope. This vision
will address both losses.
Referring to this passage as “The
Resurrection of Dead Israel,” as Walther Zimmerli does in his “Hermeneia”
commentary is not the same thing as saying that Ezekiel’s vision of the valley
of dry bones is about the resurrection of the dead, as some commentators have
suggested (see, for example, the bibliography in Zimmerli).[1]
Ezekiel’s vision is about a restored geopolitical Israel in the wake of a
specific historical disaster, not generalized individual life after death. Pannenberg[2]
says that in this passage, we may simply have a metaphor for the rebirth of the
people, and thus one should not use it as providing the context for the Jewish
concept of resurrection.
Barth will stress that one thing
was not destroyed when Israel became a valley of dry bones, and this was the
prophetic Spirit by whom this people had become a nation. The same Spirit who
had once quickened Israel and kept it alive was now to quicken it afresh after
its merited disappearance. It was of this return of the breath of life to an
Israel already dead that Ezekiel spoke. [3]
Ezekiel 37:1-10 is the report of
the vision. The vision is one of the best known prophetic visions. It teeters
between the harrowing and the macabre. The vision is vivid as it looks toward
the power of God to bring back to life something truly dead. The vision begins
with the hand of the Lord upon Ezekiel. The expression is frequent in the
Hebrew Bible, and is a favorite of the prophet Ezekiel (1:3, 3:14, 3:22, 8:1,
33:22, 37:1, 40:1). The phrase usually denotes the divine presence in a
negative way — the hand of the LORD is often “against” someone or something
(e.g., Judges 2:15; Ruth 1:13; 1 Samuel 5:9). The expression has clear
directive implications — the “hand of the LORD” functions synonymously with
what we would call “divine providence” or “the divine will” — as it does in the
present context. The prophet continues that the Lord, by the spirit of the
Lord, brought him to the middle of a valley (or plain, biqah) full of bones. This
vision pictures the people of Israel as dis-spirited people. The Babylonians
had killed the sons of their last king, Zedekiah, before his eyes; then they
blinded him and led him off, in bronze chains, to Babylon. They destroyed the
temple and much of the rest of Jerusalem. Many of the exiles' family members
and friends were killed, wounded or missing. Had God abandoned them forever?
Would they cease to exist as a people, hundreds of miles from home? Would they
ever return? How could they survive in a strange land? Psalm 137 gives voice to
their agony: "By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we
wept when we remembered Zion ... How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign
land?" (vv. 1, 4). This suggests
the prophet is in Mesopotamia, a land of broad grainy river basins. Considering
that many exiles thought that prophesy could only occur in Israel, this
geographical detail is important. The idea of the continuing nature of divine
revelation in exile was extraordinarily powerful and reassuring, and set the
stage for the emergence and development of post-exilic Israelite religion. As
the vision continues, the Lord led him all around the bones. The bones were
many and dry. As a prophet-priest, Ezekiel would now be unclean by this contact
with human remains, as Numbers 19:16 suggests. The Lord asked him whether these
bones could live. He answered, piously and trustingly, that only the Lord
knows. The Lord told him to prophesy (bringing him close to necromancy,
communicating with the dead) to the dry bones that they are to hear the word of
the Lord, that the Lord will cause breath to enter the dry bones, and the bones
shall live. The Lord will lay sinews on the bones, and cause breath to enter,
and they shall live. Then, they will know who the Lord is. In this series of
causative statements, the prophet declares that the dramatic events about to
unfold are through the agency of the God of Israel, and not through the ability
of Israel. Israel will not be able to put itself together. Ezekiel prophesied
as the Lord commanded, and as he did so, suddenly, he heard a noise, a
rattling, and the bones coming together. Ezekiel looked and sinews were on the
bones, and flesh came upon them, and then the skin covered them. They did not
yet have breath. Then, the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath or wind
to come from the four winds (ruchot, plural of ruach) and breathe upon these
slain, that the slain (Israelites fallen in battle) may live. Ezekiel
prophesied as commanded, and breath came into the reconstituted bones, flesh,
and skin, and they lived. They stood on their feet, a vast multitude, reminding
us that the focus is the restoration of the politico-religious entity known as
Israel, and not notions of individual immortality. Pannenberg notes that we
find the Jewish concepts of the relation between the divine Spirit and life.[4]
Further, consistent with the dominant anthropological view of the Hebrew Bible,
humans are a psychophysical unity of body and breath/spirit that is
unrecognizable as such in the absence of either component. The animating spirit
has entered the slain.
Ezekiel 37:11-14 is an explanation
of the meaning of the vision. The Lord has shown sovereignty over the forces of
life and death. Verse 11 seems to be the nucleus around which the vision and
its explanation revolve. The Lord speaks to mortal Ezekiel that their complaint
is that their bones are dried up and hope lost, as they feel cut off
completely. Therefore, the Lord tells Ezekiel to prophesy that the Lord is
going to open their graves and bring them up, as they are the people of God.
The Lord will bring them back to the land of Israel, at which time they will
know the Lord. The Lord will put the divine spirit within them, and they shall
live. What we have here is a revelation from God that these exiles shall return
to the land. Pannenberg notes in his discussion of the multiplicity of biblical
ideas of revelation that in this case a classical prophet looks forward to new
deliverance as a form of self-declaration of God and knowledge of God.[5] It
is into this enlightened, restored people that Yahweh promises to put his
spirit, bringing them to life, and establishing them once again as his
covenantal partners. The prophet continues that the Lord will place them on
their own soil. They shall know the Lord has spoken and will act. One way to
look at this issue is that Yahweh intends to do with the house of Israel what
he has just done with these nameless bones. Yahweh identifies the bones as the
house of Israel, based on the Israelites' lament, which he quotes. The
lamentation of dried-up bones may have become proverbial by the time of
Ezekiel, as the application of heat and aridity to bones is a common biblical
expression of distress (e.g., Job 21:24, 30:30; Psalm 102:3; Proverbs 17:22;
Jeremiah 20:9; Lamentations 1:13). In the context of the languishing
Israelites, the prophet brings into close connection their dried bones to the
abandonment of hope and their utter annihilation. That the vision is about the
restoration of the geopolitical collective known as Israel rather than the
afterlives of individual Israelites is emphasized in verses 12 and 14, with the
promise of the land. The Israelites will know that the Lord is in ultimate
control of their destiny only when they are restored as a people and returned
to their own land; people and land are inseparable in mainstream biblical
thought, an idea that continues to shape the politics of the Middle East even
today.
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