The Valley of Dry Bones: Can These Bones Live?

The hand of the Lord is on Ezekiel, and the spirit carries him out and sets him down in the middle of a valley. It is full of bones — the remains of a vast army, long dead. He is led around among them and given time to look: they are very many, and they are very dry. All moisture is gone. All possibility of natural life is gone.

God asks: Son of man, can these bones live? Ezekiel's answer is exactly right for someone who knows who he is talking to: O Lord God, you know. He does not say yes. He does not say no. He leaves the question with the one who asked it.

God tells him to prophesy to the bones. To speak to the dead. O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you. Ezekiel speaks to the bones.

A rattling. The bones come together, bone to its bone. Sinews appear, and flesh, and skin. But there is no breath. The bodies lie in the valley — formed, complete, but inert.

God tells him to prophesy to the breath itself, calling it from the four winds: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live. Ezekiel prophesies, and breath enters them. They stand on their feet — an exceedingly great army.

God gives the interpretation immediately, foreclosing any ambiguity: these bones are the whole house of Israel. The people are saying: our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are clean cut off. Tell them: I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. I will put my spirit in you and you will live.

The vision is national restoration — the resurrection of a people from exile — spoken in the language of bodily resurrection. It plants a seed. Later Jewish theology, and then Christian theology, will read it backward and forward: the metaphor of national renewal becomes the basis for beliefs about individual bodily resurrection that neither Ezekiel's original audience nor Ezekiel himself may have held.