Ezekiel 37:1-14 - link to the NRSV text
Many of us have our own “valley of
dry bones.” We have circumstances,
relationships, communities and groups that are torn asunder and falling
apart. We have families shattered by
betrayal and anger and abuse and addiction. We have churches divided over theology or worship style or ministry
goals. We have a country separated by
partisan politics, by rhetoric, by the color of the state, and by our stubborn
refusal to even hear the other side and to try and work together for a common
good. Sometimes we’ll look around at
these shattered relationships, these crushed dreams and hopes, and we’ll assume
that’s the end of the story.
This may have been the same kind of
thinking that many of the Judean exiles may have been feeling in Babylon,
especially after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Is our relationship with God over now that
God has allowed this to happen? Have we
been abandoned to our fate? Is there
anything left to cling to? The future
of God’s people was in jeopardy. The
Temple was gone; the dwelling place of the Almighty was razed to the
ground. Many of the Judeans most likely
would have felt abandoned, cast off. Or
as our reading from Ezekiel for this Sunday puts it, “Our bones are dried up,
and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (v. 11).
It’s within this context of exile
and fear of the unknown future that we have to examine Ezekiel’s famous vision
of the valley of dry bones. Many
interpreters have assumed that the text speaks of individual resurrection from
death, but to do so misses the rhetorical point that the text is trying to
truly make.
Ezekiel describes his experience as
a visionary journey, where Ezekiel is taken from his present location to
another place where he experiences the revelation from God. In this case, Ezekiel says that the “hand of
the LORD” picked him up and placed him in a valley of bones. God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the
bones and to tell them to “hear the word of the LORD” (v. 4). The results of this will be that God will
bring the bones back together, restore to them their flesh, and breath into
them so that they will live. All of
this is so that the bones will know that “I am the LORD” (v. 6).
Ezekiel then performs two prophetic
actions. His first prophetic act
restores the flesh and muscle as promised, but there is no breath (Hebrew, ruach)
in them. God commands Ezekiel to now
prophesy to the breath and command it to enter the bones so that they may
live. The breath obeys; the bones live
and stand together as a “vast multitude” (10). This dual prophetic action in some ways mirrors God’s own actions in the
creation story: God forms a man from the dust of the ground, and then breathes
into it the breath of life (Genesis 2:7).
God then explains to Ezekiel the
meaning of the vision: the bones are the exiled house of Israel, cut off and
dried up, with no breath or life. God’s
word through Ezekiel, that they shall live and know that the LORD has acted, is
in contrast to Israel’s words of defeat and despair. This is repeated twice in verses 12-14, that Israel will be
restored from the “grave” and thus they shall know “I am the LORD” and that “I,
the LORD, have spoken and will act.”
The prophetic vision here is one of
restoration, of recreation, and maybe even reconciliation. As possible rebellion against Babylon
loomed, there were different views on what the kingdom should do. The prophet Jeremiah, seeing the coming war
and ensuing destruction that would be caused, urged the kings to submit to
Babylonian rule, believing that whatever befell Judah as a result of the war
was punishment for Judah’s apostasy and failure to live up to the commands of
justice and righteousness commanded by Torah. His viewpoints caused several clashes with the authorities and
Judean nationalists, even including an arrest and jail time in a cistern
(Jeremiah 38:1-13).
So maybe those things that divide
us and leave us as the “dry and cut off bones” of the body of God’s people are
not insurmountable. Maybe we can be
restored, we can be reconciled to each other and to God, and we can be
recreated and resurrected into the kinds of communities, families, countries,
or people that God desires us to be. Our fatalistic words of hopelessness and abandonment are not the final
word, for God’s word still comes to our valleys and brings us up from our
graves (v. 13). But it takes more than
just speaking to our brokenness, more than just commanding restoration and
reconciliation, more than just saying that resurrection is possible. It requires the breath of God moving in and
among the bones; it needs the spirit of God infusing us with new life, moving
us to better ways of living and being.
Ezekiel’s vision is not one that is
regulated strictly to some distant time past, but one that speaks in the face
of all places of spiritual and emotional exile and death. Restoration is possible, but true
restoration will only occur when the spirit of God moves and is put within the
communities and circumstances that need it. Then we shall live and we shall know that “I, the LORD have spoken and
will act” (v. 14).
Shalom,
Geoff
