CAN THESE BONES LIVE?
Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’ 4Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. 5Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I will lay sinews 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.’ 7So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” 12Therefore 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. 13And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.’
‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ To describe these words as depressing is an understatement. We don’t want this feeling and would urge the complainers to find a more positive, optimistic perspective for their health and happiness, and ours. But ten years after a devastating defeat by the Babylonians that destroyed their country and put them in exile in Babylon, that’s how the Jewish exiles felt and how they honestly described themselves. If they’d been asked, ‘Can these bones live?’ I suspect their response would be, ‘I don’t think so.’
Few of us come anywhere close to the experience of these exiles, however, most, if not all of us have experienced stuff that made us feel spiritually dried up, hopeless, cut off, disintegrated dry bones lying in a valley. We’ve despaired over personal losses, failures, disappointments, tragedies, doubts, and over the state of our nation as policies and practices are put in place that aim more towards death than life. We can identify with these exiles, even if only on a spiritual level. We too have lamented and wondered: Can we live again? So we come to this ancient text asking: Can Ezekiel’s vision and message of hope to those Jewish exiles give hope and assurance for us as well? I believe it can because, as Brueggemann writes, ‘the core truth of our faith is this: the God of the gospel brings life out of death.’[1]
Many of us are familiar with this macabre, gruesome vision of a valley full of dry bones, perhaps the only chapter in Ezekiel we know about. But I suspect few of us ever think to turn to it for comfort, for restored hope that life can and will change, that we can and will live again. I never did. Ezekiel wasn’t high on my Bible reading list because I was incorrectly taught that most of it was about ‘end times’. The valley of dry bones, for instance, was a vision of the future resurrection of all people at the end of time. Interpretations like this did nothing to restore hope as I struggled with present trials. Then, when I did finally read all of Ezekiel (so I could teach a class on it), I found his writing style repetitive, monotonous, boring, and I recommended it to insomniacs! I continued to ignore this long book and, as a result, never discovered the artistry of his many repetitions, his spiritual depth, and his message of hope for our dry souls today.
Yes, there is a message of hope and it’s given in two parts in this chapter. First (vv. 1-10), the vision of a valley of dry bones and, second (vv. 11-14), the interpretation, where the image changes to bodies in graves. It all began, says Ezekiel, when the ‘hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD.’[2] He was set in the middle of a valley of bones and silently led all round it. He saw that ‘there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.’ It was an apt vision of the state of his community in their utter despair—dried up, hopeless, cut off. They never imagined they’d live again, and all Ezekiel’s messages to them thus far had done nothing to give them hope they’d ever laugh, play, flourish again. We’ve been there, experienced our own defeats, failures, crises, setbacks, whatever and wondered: Can we live again? And then God asks what seems to us an absurd question, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I wonder, how would you respond?
If you’re wise, you’ll answer as Ezekiel did: ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’
This isn’t the response of a defeatist, nor of a person whose faith in God has waned. It’s the response of a person who knows and trusts God and knows God often works in hidden and surprising ways. Ezekiel had no idea whether or how these very dry bones could live. But he knew enough about his God to know God could be trusted to bring life from death.
God accepted his answer and promptly gave him a mission as absurd as the question itself. ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.’ The message included two basic promises from God: ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live,’ and ‘you shall know that I am the LORD.’
Ezekiel accepted, without hesitation, his absurd mission. He began to preach God’s word to dry lifeless, deaf bones and God immediately began to work. Ezekiel’s description of what happened is graphic, house-of-horrors graphic! ‘Suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.’ As he looked, he saw the bones being covered, just as God had said, with muscle, flesh, skin. Disintegrated, scattered dry bones correctly connected into many human forms. If you’ve ever felt scattered and disintegrated, this is the image to reflect on. It’s a wonderful image that, despite its macabre nature, can give hope that our many parts, our many selves, can come together into an integrated whole; that Christ’s divided and divisive Church can again live in unity.
But Ezekiel noticed a major problem. The bones had come together, they looked like an alive united whole, ‘but there was no breath in them.’ Twice God had assured Ezekiel about this, promising the dry bones, ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live,’ and again ‘I will put breath in you, and you shall live.’ The repetition hammers the point deep into us. But breath hadn’t come. And where there’s no breath, there’s no life.
The word breath occurs often in these few verses, one of Ezekiel’s many repetitions. It’s the Hebrew word, ruach, which is used ten times. It’s not an easy word to translate because, as John Taylor explained, “No English translation can do justice to its variety of meaning.” It’s root meaning, he wrote, “denotes the sense of ‘air in motion’, i.e. wind or breath,”[3] and also, spirit. In this passage it’s translated spirit at the beginning and end, both a reference to God’s Spirit, all the rest are translated breath. However it’s translated—wind, breath, spirit—its essential meaning has to do with life. Thus, it’s not surprising that the second most frequent word in these verses, used six times, is live. To a people who described themselves as lifeless, God promised life, in the now, not in some distant future resurrection.
But breath and thus life didn’t happen right away to these dry bones. Ezekiel had to preach a second sermon, this time, not to dry bones, but to the breath or wind. He was to command ruach, saying, ‘Come from the four winds [i.e., the ends of the earth], O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ As he preached, ‘the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.’
This two-stage process to life is a clue to an interpretation of this vision. Behind it is the story, not of resurrection, but creation, specifically the creation of the first human in Genesis 2, also a two-fold process. First, God formed the human creature (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah), but only after God breathed into it did the creature become a living being. This background story suggests the passage is about creation, a new creation, which is how Paul understood salvation in Jesus. To the Corinthians he wrote, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is [not there will be in some distant future, but right now] a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ (2 Cor 5:17). In other words, we get to start over. We’re not taken back to the old familiar life, to the way things were. It’s all new and we must courageously find new ways to live and flourish in our messy and troubled world.
But before that can happen, before we can truly live, we too need breath, that is, the spirit. Perhaps the writer of John’s Gospel had this passage in the background when he told the story of Jesus’ first resurrection appearance to the disciples. John writes that Jesus ‘breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”’ (Jn 20:22). The Greek term for spirit, pnuema, has the same meaning as ruach--breath, wind, spirit. Jesus breathed life into his disciples then and into us now . As promised, God has put his spirit within us, breathed into us so we can now live. That same Spirit, says Paul, ‘who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you’ and ‘will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you’ (Rom 8:11). The courage to live this new way that hopes and trusts in God, even though circumstances remain the same comes from the Spirit breathed into us. It doesn’t mean our circumstances will magically change. The exiles remained in Babylon for another 60 years or so. The change, the newness begins inside us, and gives us courage to live and flourish in our messy situations and even when those around us choose death rather than life.
This message of hope is reinforced in the interpretation God gave to Ezekiel. ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.’ Not everyone ever created, just the house of Israel; not an ‘end time’ resurrection’ but a present reality. It’s a promise to God’s people then living in Babylonian exile, that they would live again, back in their homeland. But the promise goes beyond them to us today, to all those who experience spiritual dryness, feelings of hopelessness and being cut off from the familiar, we too will live again and experience joy and hope despite the mess our world and community is in.
Mortal, can these dry, disintegrated bones live? Can we live despite the hopeless, senseless circumstances around us today? The answer God gave Ezekiel is a hope-filled, Yes. Our disintegrated selves will come together; our breath-less beings will receive breath/the Spirit and live; our graves will open, and we will be restored. God promised, ‘I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.’ We will be made new to start over, to live a life no longer defined by the past or what we fear in the present or what might come in the future. And we will know, deep within that the Lord has acted, even though and when our circumstances remain unchanged.
Can these bones live? Can I live? O Lord GOD, you know.
[1] Brueggemann, Walter. A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 2017, p. 72.
[2] The hand of the LORD comes upon him 8 times; 4 times it lifts him elsewhere.
[3] Ezekiel: An Introduction and Commentary by John B. Taylor. Tyndale Series 1969, p. 237
Jackie L. Smallbones
March 2023
Not to be copied without permission of Jackie.
‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ To describe these words as depressing is an understatement. We don’t want this feeling and would urge the complainers to find a more positive, optimistic perspective for their health and happiness, and ours. But ten years after a devastating defeat by the Babylonians that destroyed their country and put them in exile in Babylon, that’s how the Jewish exiles felt and how they honestly described themselves. If they’d been asked, ‘Can these bones live?’ I suspect their response would be, ‘I don’t think so.’
Few of us come anywhere close to the experience of these exiles, however, most, if not all of us have experienced stuff that made us feel spiritually dried up, hopeless, cut off, disintegrated dry bones lying in a valley. We’ve despaired over personal losses, failures, disappointments, tragedies, doubts, and over the state of our nation as policies and practices are put in place that aim more towards death than life. We can identify with these exiles, even if only on a spiritual level. We too have lamented and wondered: Can we live again? So we come to this ancient text asking: Can Ezekiel’s vision and message of hope to those Jewish exiles give hope and assurance for us as well? I believe it can because, as Brueggemann writes, ‘the core truth of our faith is this: the God of the gospel brings life out of death.’[1]
Many of us are familiar with this macabre, gruesome vision of a valley full of dry bones, perhaps the only chapter in Ezekiel we know about. But I suspect few of us ever think to turn to it for comfort, for restored hope that life can and will change, that we can and will live again. I never did. Ezekiel wasn’t high on my Bible reading list because I was incorrectly taught that most of it was about ‘end times’. The valley of dry bones, for instance, was a vision of the future resurrection of all people at the end of time. Interpretations like this did nothing to restore hope as I struggled with present trials. Then, when I did finally read all of Ezekiel (so I could teach a class on it), I found his writing style repetitive, monotonous, boring, and I recommended it to insomniacs! I continued to ignore this long book and, as a result, never discovered the artistry of his many repetitions, his spiritual depth, and his message of hope for our dry souls today.
Yes, there is a message of hope and it’s given in two parts in this chapter. First (vv. 1-10), the vision of a valley of dry bones and, second (vv. 11-14), the interpretation, where the image changes to bodies in graves. It all began, says Ezekiel, when the ‘hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD.’[2] He was set in the middle of a valley of bones and silently led all round it. He saw that ‘there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.’ It was an apt vision of the state of his community in their utter despair—dried up, hopeless, cut off. They never imagined they’d live again, and all Ezekiel’s messages to them thus far had done nothing to give them hope they’d ever laugh, play, flourish again. We’ve been there, experienced our own defeats, failures, crises, setbacks, whatever and wondered: Can we live again? And then God asks what seems to us an absurd question, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I wonder, how would you respond?
If you’re wise, you’ll answer as Ezekiel did: ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’
This isn’t the response of a defeatist, nor of a person whose faith in God has waned. It’s the response of a person who knows and trusts God and knows God often works in hidden and surprising ways. Ezekiel had no idea whether or how these very dry bones could live. But he knew enough about his God to know God could be trusted to bring life from death.
God accepted his answer and promptly gave him a mission as absurd as the question itself. ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.’ The message included two basic promises from God: ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live,’ and ‘you shall know that I am the LORD.’
Ezekiel accepted, without hesitation, his absurd mission. He began to preach God’s word to dry lifeless, deaf bones and God immediately began to work. Ezekiel’s description of what happened is graphic, house-of-horrors graphic! ‘Suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.’ As he looked, he saw the bones being covered, just as God had said, with muscle, flesh, skin. Disintegrated, scattered dry bones correctly connected into many human forms. If you’ve ever felt scattered and disintegrated, this is the image to reflect on. It’s a wonderful image that, despite its macabre nature, can give hope that our many parts, our many selves, can come together into an integrated whole; that Christ’s divided and divisive Church can again live in unity.
But Ezekiel noticed a major problem. The bones had come together, they looked like an alive united whole, ‘but there was no breath in them.’ Twice God had assured Ezekiel about this, promising the dry bones, ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live,’ and again ‘I will put breath in you, and you shall live.’ The repetition hammers the point deep into us. But breath hadn’t come. And where there’s no breath, there’s no life.
The word breath occurs often in these few verses, one of Ezekiel’s many repetitions. It’s the Hebrew word, ruach, which is used ten times. It’s not an easy word to translate because, as John Taylor explained, “No English translation can do justice to its variety of meaning.” It’s root meaning, he wrote, “denotes the sense of ‘air in motion’, i.e. wind or breath,”[3] and also, spirit. In this passage it’s translated spirit at the beginning and end, both a reference to God’s Spirit, all the rest are translated breath. However it’s translated—wind, breath, spirit—its essential meaning has to do with life. Thus, it’s not surprising that the second most frequent word in these verses, used six times, is live. To a people who described themselves as lifeless, God promised life, in the now, not in some distant future resurrection.
But breath and thus life didn’t happen right away to these dry bones. Ezekiel had to preach a second sermon, this time, not to dry bones, but to the breath or wind. He was to command ruach, saying, ‘Come from the four winds [i.e., the ends of the earth], O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ As he preached, ‘the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.’
This two-stage process to life is a clue to an interpretation of this vision. Behind it is the story, not of resurrection, but creation, specifically the creation of the first human in Genesis 2, also a two-fold process. First, God formed the human creature (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah), but only after God breathed into it did the creature become a living being. This background story suggests the passage is about creation, a new creation, which is how Paul understood salvation in Jesus. To the Corinthians he wrote, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is [not there will be in some distant future, but right now] a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ (2 Cor 5:17). In other words, we get to start over. We’re not taken back to the old familiar life, to the way things were. It’s all new and we must courageously find new ways to live and flourish in our messy and troubled world.
But before that can happen, before we can truly live, we too need breath, that is, the spirit. Perhaps the writer of John’s Gospel had this passage in the background when he told the story of Jesus’ first resurrection appearance to the disciples. John writes that Jesus ‘breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”’ (Jn 20:22). The Greek term for spirit, pnuema, has the same meaning as ruach--breath, wind, spirit. Jesus breathed life into his disciples then and into us now . As promised, God has put his spirit within us, breathed into us so we can now live. That same Spirit, says Paul, ‘who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you’ and ‘will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you’ (Rom 8:11). The courage to live this new way that hopes and trusts in God, even though circumstances remain the same comes from the Spirit breathed into us. It doesn’t mean our circumstances will magically change. The exiles remained in Babylon for another 60 years or so. The change, the newness begins inside us, and gives us courage to live and flourish in our messy situations and even when those around us choose death rather than life.
This message of hope is reinforced in the interpretation God gave to Ezekiel. ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.’ Not everyone ever created, just the house of Israel; not an ‘end time’ resurrection’ but a present reality. It’s a promise to God’s people then living in Babylonian exile, that they would live again, back in their homeland. But the promise goes beyond them to us today, to all those who experience spiritual dryness, feelings of hopelessness and being cut off from the familiar, we too will live again and experience joy and hope despite the mess our world and community is in.
Mortal, can these dry, disintegrated bones live? Can we live despite the hopeless, senseless circumstances around us today? The answer God gave Ezekiel is a hope-filled, Yes. Our disintegrated selves will come together; our breath-less beings will receive breath/the Spirit and live; our graves will open, and we will be restored. God promised, ‘I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.’ We will be made new to start over, to live a life no longer defined by the past or what we fear in the present or what might come in the future. And we will know, deep within that the Lord has acted, even though and when our circumstances remain unchanged.
Can these bones live? Can I live? O Lord GOD, you know.
[1] Brueggemann, Walter. A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 2017, p. 72.
[2] The hand of the LORD comes upon him 8 times; 4 times it lifts him elsewhere.
[3] Ezekiel: An Introduction and Commentary by John B. Taylor. Tyndale Series 1969, p. 237
Jackie L. Smallbones
March 2023
Not to be copied without permission of Jackie.
