The Valley of Dry Bones
In the previous chapter – the prophecy to the mountains of Israel – the LORD repeats the promise of the New Covenant that He gave earlier through Jeremiah. It’s not a verbatim quotation, but both describe the same thing: a whole new approach to God’s law.
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Jeremiah 31:33 ESV
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
Ezekiel 36:26-28 ESV
Instead of God’s rules being something hard on the outside them (stone tablets) that cannot change their equally hard (stony) hearts, God is going to put His own Spirit (the Spirit of the Law) inside of them and give them new hearts that are alive. The Law at Sinai was written on stone – and God’s people have never been able to obey it. And it has taken them centuries to realize this and agree with God about it.
In this New Covenant, God will deal with the HEART. He will write His laws on the hearts of His people and He will put His own Spirit inside of them. And since you cannot divide up God and separate out His “Spirit” from the rest of Him, God is saying that He is going to be within them.
This is absolutely radical and unprecedented.
The Valley of Dry Bones is a vision of what this New Covenant is going to do.
Ezekiel 37 makes me think of this:
😐 Wow. That’s creepy.
🤓 This was children’s entertainment in 1929?
😒 No wonder we’re all so messed up.
Well, cartoons weren’t specifically for kids in 1929. They were more for general audiences. This animated short included sound, which was groundbreaking for the time.
🤓 Ground-breaking? As in, skeletons coming up out of graves?
🙄 How about we get back to Ezekiel?
Good idea.
You may remember this from back in Jeremiah:
“Israel is a hunted sheep driven away by lions. First the king of Assyria devoured him, and now at last Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has gnawed his bones.”
Jeremiah 50:17 ESV
In the post covering Jeremiah 50 there was this picture:
And I said, Nobody is going to look at the critter being gnawed by that lion and think, “Yup, there’s a chance it might still be alive.”
Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones is happening roughly 10 years after that message from Jeremiah. Here’s what the bones look like now…
If the carcass above had no chance of survival, how much more now? The vultures have picked it clean. The bones are bleached and broken and scattered. They are so disarticulated you can’t even tell what kind of critter it used to be.
That’s Israel. And verse 11 makes it clear that God isn’t just talking about recently dismembered Judah. He is speaking of “the whole house of Israel.” The people of the northern kingdom have been scattered to various nations and intermarried with them for over a century already.
This is an IMPOSSIBLE situation.
That’s the point.
No rational person is going to be able to make the claim that the nation of Israel just had a “little 3rd quarter downturn” and then bounced back. No one can even say, “Well, they had a momentary national crisis but then they recovered.”
They are D-E-A-D graveyard DEAD. AND bleached and dry and broken and scattered. One “recovers” from the flu or a sprained ankle or eating Taco Bell. One does not “recover” from being a dead.
Except in Ezekiel’s vision, they do.
In the first “phase” of the prophecy, the bones assemble, and then ligaments, muscle and skin appear on them.
So there are bodies lying there, but they are not alive.
Time for phase two:
“Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”
Ezekiel 37:9-10 ESV
“Breath” in Hebrew is ruach. Wind. Spirit.
The Hebrew letters are: Resh, Vav, Chet.
Ideas packed in these letters:
- Beginning And End – Certainly the breath, the spirit, the transference of oxygen (even in the womb) marks both the beginning and the end of life.
- Head of the (first) Man joined to Outside – “And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” God took something that was outside of the body of man and joined it to his head. Breath. Spirit.
When Ezekiel prophesies, it’s essentially a repeat of what God did in the Garden of Eden. First, a body is formed. And then the breath (Spirit) comes into the body and makes it alive.
And then we have this New Covenant refrain again:
“And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
Ezekiel 37:14 ESV
God formed man, breathed life into him, and then put him in his homeland, Eden.
That’s EXACTLY what is happening here on a national level in Ezekiel’s vision.
I think that the meaning of this text has more layers than a Texas banana puddin.’
Verses 12-13 speak of coming up out of graves. 🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦
🤓 Hmm. Groundbreaking.
😑 You’ve been waiting for the chance to use that again, haven’t you?
🤓 Dead right.
🙄 Ugh…. You’re killing me.
🤓 You sure that’s the phrase you wanna use?
🪦💀🪦💀🪦💀🪦💀
Y’all have been hanging out on YouTube with Lauren the Mortician, haven’t you?
As I was saying…
I think these verses about opening graves and the breath of life are primarily a metaphoric way of speaking of the reconstitution of the nation of Israel after the 70 years of Exile (which happened in 536-517BC when Cyrus allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple).
Layer 2: The national-political “resurrection” was not the fulfillment of the Spirit coming to dwell within God’s people. THAT wouldn’t happen until the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. When the Holy Spirit was given, the breath/wind of the Spirit came into the Body and made the Body alive.
- Ever since the birth of the Church (the Body of Christ Who is the 2nd Adam), believers have rested in the promise of Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Romans 8:11 ESV
Layer 3: the rebirth of Israel in 1948.
Layer 4: Jewish people coming to faith in Messiah Jesus.
Layer 5: the final resurrection of the dead.
I think that any or all of these events could be suggested here.
As further proof that God had the whole house of Israel in view (and not just Judah), He has Ezekiel exercise some carpentry skills in wood joinery.
Ezekiel takes 2 sticks. He writes “Judah” on one and “Joseph” on the other.
It is important to remember that Joseph was given the blessing of the firstborn: the double portion. Joseph was Jacob’s firstborn son by Rachel. Reuben, (the eldest and firstborn by Leah), forfeited that right when he attempted to usurp Jacob’s role as leader by sleeping with his concubine, (see Gen. 35:22, 49:3-4).
Jacob assigned Judah as the bearer of the royal scepter, conqueror, and family leader, (see Gen. 49:8-12).
These two names represent the entirety of the family of Jacob (Israel). And Ezekiel joins the two sticks together to make a single staff. When Yahweh restores His people, there will no longer be competition or conflict between the north (Joseph) and the south (Judah). They will be one people.
Here is something VERY important to keep in mind when reading prophecy:
There can be centuries between verses.
For example, when Jesus reads from Isaiah in the synagogue, He stops mid-verse. If you look up Luke 4:16-21 and compare what Jesus read to Isaiah 61:1-2, you’ll see that Jesus read half the sentence “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” and just stopped. The sentence goes on to say, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” But the day of vengeance is not being fulfilled at that time so Jesus didn’t read it.
We’re still waiting for “the day of vengeance of our God.” And it’s been 2000 years.
Now let’s look at the end of Ezekiel 37.
“My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever.
I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
Ezekiel 37:24-28 ESV
It’s really easy to tell that this prophecy has not yet come to pass.
- David is not alive and reigning as prince in Israel today. Nor has he done so at any point in the past since about 3000 years ago.
- While it’s true that Israel came back from the 70 years of Exile, it is NOT true that they “dwelt there forever” after that point. The Greeks ruled over them for about 200 years in the 300s-100s BC and many Jews left the land. In 70AD when the Roman general Titus leveled the temple, the last vestiges of a government for Israel were dissolved and all Jews in the land were killed, enslaved, or driven out.
- Can people “sleep in the woods” without any “evil beasts” prowling about as the Covenant of Peace talks about in Eze. 34:25-28? How is the annual precipitation in Israel? Are there “showers of blessing” bringing fruitful harvests or are they irrigating?
- Yes a second temple was built but is the sanctuary of the LORD currently (and permanently) in the midst of God’s people in the land, or is that something that John saw as future in Rev. 21-22 AFTER the final judgment?
Ezekiel 37 contains things that, while applicable in Israel’s future in his time, are yet future for us. And, in my opinion, that’s going to be the nature of the rest of the book.
To The Reader 