Ezekiel 37:1-14 concerns the vision Ezekiel had of the valley of dry bones. This vision offers a word of judgment and a word that God loves us enough to take us where we are. the vision symbolizes the restoration of the people of Israel. He speaks metaphorically of these bones, but in a later context people took it as the Lord setting him in a valley of such bones, along with the notion of resurrection of the body. Ezekiel may well have seen the area around Jerusalem littered with bodies of the dead with the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem.
The vision invites us to reflect upon the people of God today. Have the people of God today experienced exile due to its broken covenant with God? In what ways have the people of God have broken covenant? Do the people of God even have enough to courage to see themselves as they are? We can also apply such questions to individuals. Do we know what exile feels like? I suspect we do. A healthy view of God and of being the people of God will allow a place for us to feel without hope and without God. Yet, to raise such questions is a sign of life.
The vision occurred sometime between 33:21 in 576 BC and 40:1 in 562 BC in Babylon. No end to exile is in sight. The loss suffered in exile was not only its national life, but also its hope. This vision will address both losses. The vision promises the resurrection or rebirth of a spiritually dead Israel as the people of God. The people of God no longer possessed the land, their temple for almost 500 years is gone, and they no longer have a king. However, one thing not destroyed, as Ezekiel makes clear, is the prophetic spirit. The same Spirit who came upon Moses, the Judges of Israel, the kings of Israel, and the prophets of Israel and Judah, still came upon prophets in Babylon. The prophetic spirit looked into the future and saw that the breath of life would once again fill the presently dead people of God.[1] We will see the intimate relation between the divine Spirit and the presence life on this earth. This message comes through in a macabre and harrowing vision of the future activity of the power of God to bring to life what has been dead. The prophet refers to the hand of the Lord coming on him, suggesting divine providence and divine will. In picturing the people of God as a valley of dry bones, the prophet is looking upon Israel as dis-spirited. They wonder if God has abandoned them, if they could survive in a foreign land, and if they could ever return home. The prophet will walk among the dry bones, making him ritually unclean. The prophet stresses that their hope is the activity of God rather than their ability to put themselves together. The Lord is sovereign over the forces of life and death. With the rebirth of the people of God, they shall know who their Lord is. They will become covenant partners with the Lord again. The Lord controls their destiny in restoring them to their land. The connection we see between people and land still controls much of the thinking in the Middle East today.
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).[2] Ezekiel’s vision is about a restored geopolitical Israel in the wake of a specific historical disaster, not generalized individual life after death. 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.[3]
The idea of a bodily resurrection in Israel first appears in this prophecy. He delivered a series of oracles of hope that included visions of a gloriously rebuilt Jerusalem with a magnificent temple. A plain with dried bones is reminiscent of a Zoroastrian funeral ground where the bodies of the dead remained unburied. Worshippers of Ahura Mazda the creator allowed the bodies to be in the sun for a year until the rains turned the flesh into carrion and the bords devoured it, leaving only the bones. At a later resurrection the creator would reassemble the scattered parts of the body. Ezekiel adapted the Zoroastrian resurrection to the religious and political outlook of Jews. He linked the idea of resurrection to national concerns rather than to universal cosmological expectations. Instead of a vision of the end of human history, it becomes in Ezekiel a vision of a new beginning of the national life of Israel. He expected a new national life free of foreign oppression rather than a new universe.[4]
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. Ezekiel envisions a future for the dry bones that they cannot produce. 1The hand of the Lord came upon me. 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; I 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 hand of the Lord brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley (biqah) or plain; it was 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. Babylonians killed many of the family members and friends of exiles. 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 Mesopotamian, a land of broad alluvial 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. 2 The Lordled me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. As a prophet-priest, Ezekiel would now be unclean by this contact with human remains, as Numbers 19:16 suggests. 3 The Lord said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, piously and trustingly, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then the Lord said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, bringing him close to necromancy, communicating with the dead, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I can imagine that some preachers complain about their congregations being non-responsive. However, here is a prophet speaking to dry bones. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath (ruach) to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews (gid)[5] on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 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. The passage reminds us in a powerful way that belief in God is belief in the principle that life is the goal of history, rather than emptiness or death. 7 So I prophesied as the Lord had commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath (ruach) in them. 9 Then the Lord said to me, “Prophesy to the breath (ruach), prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, (ruchot, plural of ruach) O breath (ruach), and breathe upon these slain, (Israelites fallen in battle)[6] that they may live.” In function, although not in name, this is the same as the "breath of life" (ruach chayyim) breathed by Yahweh into the first human at creation (Genesis 2:7; cf. Genesis 6:17, 7:15). the parallel thus established between the creation of humans at the dawn of the first age and the re-creation of Yahweh's people at the dawn of the new age is deliberate and powerful. 10 I prophesied as the Lordcommanded me, the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. We find expressed here in a dramatic way the Jewish concepts of the relation between the divine Spirit and life.[7] The Spirit is life-giving. The presence of the divine Spirit means that emptiness and death are not the goal of human history. The “breath” or “spirit” (or “wind”) that will re-animate the dry bones has none of the immaterial substance that characterizes later biblical and subsequent thought about the nature of human persons. There is no hint in this passage that human beings are essentially divine spirits trapped within corporeal matter. 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. The Lord now explains the immediate meaning of the vision. Traditional Jewish exegesis through rabbinic Judaism finds here the idea of the resurrection of the dead before the day of judgment, which was a fundamental belief of rabbinic Judaism. The image symbolizes the restoration of Israel to its own land. They will emerge from the grave of their captivity and live again in freedom. This revival of the people will be the result of an act of the Lord. 11Then the Lord said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. This statement reminds us that the focus is the restoration of the politico-religious entity known as Israel, and not notions of individual immortality. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ This verse is the nucleus around which the vision and its explanation revolve. Ezekiel refutes a popular proverb, as he does elsewhere in his oracles. The people are saying something about themselves and their relation to the Lord. However, through the prophet, the Lord has an alternative idea. We might even refer to this as a prophetic insight into a situation perceived one way by the people and another way by the prophet, who believes his insight into the situation derives from the Lord. 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 At that point, you shall know that I am the Lord. When we reflect upon the multiplicity of biblical ideas of revelation, in this case a classical prophet looks forward to new deliverance as a form of self-declaration of God and knowledge of God.[8] The people will come to a new knowledge of God through the new events that will shape the people of God through exile and its aftermath. This new knowledge will come when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live. Into this enlightened, restored people, Yahweh promises to put the divine Spirit, bringing them to life, and establishing them once again as covenantal partners of the Lord. Further, I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord. ‘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. Job complains that his bones have become moist (21:24) and burn with heat (30:30). The bones of the psalmist burn like a furnace (Psalm 102:3). A downcast spirit dries up the bones (Proverbs 17:22). Jeremiah has a shut up in his bones that longs to come out (Jeremiah 20:9). The lament of the3 defeated city of Jerusalem is that the Lord sent fire that went deep within its bones (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 we see 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 the Lord restores them as a people and returns them 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.
This vision is a word of judgment. The people of Israel and Judah had broken covenant with the Lord. The Lord finally allowed historical events to overtake them. Their land, city, temple, and king are gone. They are homeless. Enemies have taken them away from their homes and friends. The familiar political, social, and religious structures are no longer there. There is a sense of being alone. There is a sense that God no longer cares. I do not have proof of this, but I suspect that as Ezekiel saw these dry bones in the valley, he thought, "Yes, God, that is what these people are. Dry bones!" This was a time to give a word of judgement for the people to shape up and live right. The text says that the bones are "very dry." I can hear Ezekiel say: Indeed, they are! They truly are worthless in their present condition. "...can these bones live?" That is the question of God to Ezekiel. My suspicion is that Ezekiel was skeptical about a positive answer. Yet, he is willing to concede that it would possible: "O Lord God, you know." He concedes that it might be possible for God to do this, but not any human power.
Do we know what it is like to live in exile? I suspect that one way or another, we do. We hear many followers of Jesus speak in terms the ancient Hebrews might have used: I feel spiritually dried up. I have not heard anything from God in years. My prayers feel as though they never leave the room. I would believe in God if God would show up for me, just this once. People search for happiness in many ways. For some, it becomes a quest to fill up their lives with activities and with material things. It can be so subtle! We buy things. We surround ourselves with all kinds of electronic gadgets, state of the art sound systems, and video systems, and cars, and the list could go on. We can fill our lives with many worthwhile activities, whether with family, with church, with school, with community involvements. These situations feel hopeless. No God and no end in sight. Though these cries of the heart come from people who feel spiritually dead, they are signs of life. Living in exile, then, is the time when one has lost one's sense of direction and purpose in life and finds life to be an aimless series of activities. "Can these bones live?" The question itself means that God has not given up. A healthy view of God and the Christian life has room for such outcries. God will take us as we are. If we feel this dry and empty, God will start there. Real change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God.
In fact, it may well be that the return to hope comes first through embracing our spiritual despair. The Lord showed Ezekiel total death before he saw the possibility of new life. God will take us as we are. God does not want to leave us that way. God was willing to overlook generations of the dry and decaying spiritual life of Israel. God would give them undeserved blessing again. Death is not the final verdict. Believers can always have hope. No situation is beyond God’s reach. The current is not the final.
This passage is clear in saying that we have the possibility of new life because the Spirit of the Lord breathes life into our spirit. We throw ourselves upon the resources of the Lord for any possibility of life. For today, what does this mean? When we turn away from the source of life, we begin to die. The Spirit of God is always a life-giving Spirit. It raises some significant questions for the people of God everywhere. How many people feel dryness in their spiritual bones? How many are yearning for empty lives to be full? This passage reminds us that God can achieve the impossible. At the heart of this passage from Ezekiel is the message “God is able.” When we are lost, God can find us. When guilt crushes us, God can lift this burden. When we are without vision, God can inspire us. When events overwhelm us, God can calm us. When the events of life attack us, God can deliver us. When we are feeling disconnected, desiccated, and discouraged, God can reconnect us, refresh us and revive us.
[1] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.1 [41.3] 248.
[2] (Ezekiel 2; Fortress Press, 1983, 253)
[3]
[4] Bernard Lang, “Afterlife: Ancient Israel’s Changing Vision of the World Beyond,” Bible Review (February 1988), 19-20
[5] This word occurs infrequently in the Hebrew Bible. It describes that portion of an animal's thigh muscle which is not eaten by Israelites because Jacob was wounded therein (Genesis 32:32), the obstinacy of the Israelites (possessed, according to Isaiah 48:4, of a neck of "an iron sinew"), and, in conjunction with bones, an essential component of both human and animal anatomy (Job 10:11, 40:17, and here). Missing here, anatomically, are blood and its vessels (for which biblical Hebrew has no words), represented metonymically by the animating "spirit" (cf. Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17:11, 14; Deuteronomy 12:23).
[6] Whether the reference to the slain is intended to evoke images of Israelites fallen in battle, the emphasis is not on the circumstances by which the once-living slain became a plain of lifeless bones, but on their restoration to the land of the living, the arena of Yahweh's interaction with all beings.
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Nice take on this. Kinda fits with Taylor and living in a hostile culture.
ReplyDeleteJust read this for a second time today. Like the take on spiritual dryness as application for this text. Your last paragraph seems an answer to Taylor's view of a secularized world. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI Like your the way you think in making that connection. Well worth pondering.
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