Ezekiel 37: 1-14 The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones

¹ 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. ² He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³ He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” ⁴ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. ⁵ Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶ I 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.”

⁷ So 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. 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 in them. ⁹ Then 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.” ¹⁰ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

¹¹ Then 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.’ 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 And you shall know that I am the LORD, 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, 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.”

The valley of the dry bones along with the imagery of Ezekiel’s initial call are the two portions of this large book that many people are familiar with. For both Jewish and Christian readers this reading appears at critical points in the life of the communities of faith. For Jewish readers this is the reading to accompany the Torah reading (Exodus 33: 12-34:26) on the sabbath of Passover week. Christians who utilize the revised common lectionary encounter it on the fifth Sunday of Lent in year A and the day of Pentecost in year B.[1] Beyond the utilization in worship is this passage in the memory and imagination of people who come back to its imagery of life out of death and hope from hopelessness.

Ezekiel is moved by the powerful force of the hand of the LORD coming upon him and transporting him to an unidentified valley. The valley is not named but it is presumably known to Ezekiel since he refers to it as ‘the’ valley. This valley full of ‘very many’ bones that are laying unburied would be a shocking scene for a person from a priestly household that would know the importance of the proper treatment of the human corpses for the people. Yet in this image he walks through a boneyard of a vast number of people who were unburied and have been long left to be picked over by scavengers whose bones have lost all their connective tissue and internal life.  As Daniel Block states, “the picture is one of death in all its horror, intensity, and finality.” (Block, 1998, p. 374)

We cannot know the inflection of Ezekiel’s answer to the LORD on whether these bones can live, whether his answer to God is delivered with conviction or resignation, whether it is immediate or whether the prophet struggles to answer this question. From the perspective of a mortal these dried out bones in this valley of death are as far removed from life as could be imaginable. Yet, as Tova Ganzel also notes Ezekiel’s answer also is an encapsulation of the prophetic message throughout the book. (Ganzel, 2020, p. 323) Ezekiel has throughout the book been the obedient and submissive prophet, and throughout the book God has known what Ezekiel and other mortals have not.

Bones that are without life have been an image of despair in the scriptures[2] and yet here the prophet is to be a part of a movement from despair to hope. The prophet is commanded to speak the words that come from God and participate in God’s act of recreation. Just as God creating the world by speaking in Genesis 1, now the prophet is involved in the recreation of a people through sharing these creative words. Initially dry bones become bodies, enfleshed and whole again but without breath. The words have done what they could do on their own, but for life to return the breath/wind/spirit is needed.

Throughout this passage the Hebrew ruach is behind the words for breath, wind, or spirit and can mean all three. The prophet calls out to the ruach to come from the four directions and come into the mouths and nostril and enter into the lungs reanimating these newly regenerated bodies. From dry bones of conquered people to a new beginning for the people of Israel. The very large and uncountable number of bones has become a vast multitude that we learn is the whole house of Israel, both those who suffered recently under Nechuadrezzar’s conquest as well as those who were exiled by the Assyrians a century and a half earlier.

Ezekiel’s imagery is probably not imagining the generalized resurrection that Daniel 12:1-2 and later the New Testament would utilize, but it does significantly expand the imagery of life from death in the Hebrew Scriptures.[3] Ezekiel’s reference for the imagery of the dry bones likely emerges from the curses of Deuteronomy 28: 25-26:

The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out against them one way and flee before them seven ways. You shall become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth. There shall be no one to frighten them away.

2 Samuel 21 shares the story of David allowing the Gibeonites to enact revenge against the sons of Saul by impaling them and allowing the birds and animals to feed on them, but Rizpah (the mother of two of the seven sons exposed this way) chases the birds and animals away and the bones are eventually buried. The desolation of the people in the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem, and the inability to provide proper burials for so many people who lost their lives would have been viewed as a curse upon both the people and the land. But now there is a reversal of the curse. Where previously the people moaned the rhyming (in Hebrew) three-line lament: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely now bones and flesh are renewed, and hope is restored. A people who lost hope in their future and God now through the prophet are given a vision of a new and vibrant life back on their own soil.

Most of Ezekiel’s visions are dated but this one is left without a date. Elie Wiesel, a well-known holocaust survivor, claimed that this vision has no date because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live once again. (NIB VI: 1504) Christians and Jewish faithful need to remember that God’s creative words and spirit can take the hopeless valley full of death in all its horror and regenerate both a people and hope. Bones can once again become bodies, bodies can once again breathe, boneyards become filled with a vast multitude making a new beginning as God’s reconstituted people.

Ezekiel 37: 15-28 Two Sticks As A Sign of a Reunified People

¹⁵ The word of the LORD came to me: ¹⁶ Mortal, take a stick and write on it, “For Judah, and the Israelites associated with it”; then take another stick and write on it, “For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with it”; ¹⁷ and join them together into one stick, so that they may become one in your hand. ¹⁸ And when your people say to you, “Will you not show us what you mean by these?” ¹⁹ say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am about to take the stick of Joseph (which is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with it; and I will put the stick of Judah upon it, and make them one stick, in order that they may be one in my hand. ²⁰ When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, ²¹ then say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land. ²² I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms. ²³ They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

²⁴ My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes. ²⁵ They shall live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, in which your ancestors lived; they and their children and their children’s children shall live there forever; and my servant David shall be their prince forever. ²⁶ I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore. ²⁷ My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ²⁸ Then the nations shall know that I the LORD sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is among them forevermore.

Ezekiel continues his hopeful message with a sign act joining two sticks[4] into one symbolizing the reunification of the tribes of Israel into one nation under one ruler. Judah and ‘Joseph’ or ‘Ephraim’ were the designations for the twelve tribes unified as Israel under King Saul, David, and Solomon. In the aftermath of Solomon’s reign, the nation split with the northern tribes, with Ephraim being the strongest tribe that the kings of ‘Israel’ or ‘Samaria’ emerged from splitting from the people of Judah who remained under the line of Davidic kings. Many prophets had hoped for the reunification of the people into one people, one kingdom, but the people of ‘Joseph’ had disappeared among the nations a century and a half ago. Yet, the concern here is to reinforce the reunification of the people as one nation, hence the use of the Hebrew goy.[5] One people under one king in one kingdom.

It is unusual for Ezekiel to refer to a leader of the people as king (melek) but a restored nation without a restoration of a common ruler was probably beyond Ezekiel’s imaginative capacity. Even in this passage he will revert to his preferred ‘prince’ (nasi). Yet, just as God was the one who would reinvigorate dry bones into a vast multitude or give the people a new heart and new spirit, now God will bring together two nations long divided into one and will not divide them again. They will return to the land, they will be cleansed from their past transgressions, apostasies, and they will never return to the idols of the other nations. The covenant of peace will be an everlasting covenant, and God will dwell among them.

The placement of God’s sanctuary among them is a means for God to dwell among God’s people. It is from this central place in the midst of the people that the people will be made holy, and that God shall be with them. For Ezekiel the people are now one kingdom under one king (who serves as God’s prince) living in obedience with one sanctuary. Ezekiel’s conclusion of his book will be dedicated to this new temple with a new sanctuary, but here we have a renewed people in the land reunited into a covenant of peace.

[1] It is also utilized on the Easter vigil, but relatively few churches still do a liturgical vigil of Easter and even fewer members participate in this liturgically important but underattended service.

[2] See for example Proverbs 17:22, Psalm 31:10, 102:3.

[3] Isaiah 26:19 and Hosea 6:1-3 do utilize ‘resurrection’ imagery but Ezekiel’s vision is much longer engagement with this language.

[4] There is some debate about how best to translate this word which could refer to trees, branches, scepter, staff, or even tablets. Many commentaries go into exhaustive detail on this while I am intentionally noting this and moving on.

[5] The Gentiles, or the nations, are often referred to as the goyim in Hebrew, and it is common to speak of the people or land of Israel, but here Ezekiel is emphatic that it is one nation.