Dry Bones and Resurrection – Ezekiel 37:1-14

A text – Ezekiel 37:1-14

37 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.”

A reflection:

The dry bones – probably the most famous passage in the Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was in exile, along with many of his countrymen, in Babylon. This, as I understand it, was the second exile the people had experienced. In the first, a couple hundred years earlier, the people were taken from their home country without the promise of returning, so they faded away into their lands of exile, and were afterward referred to as the Lost Tribes of Israel, if I have the history correct. They were as good as dead to the faith, it seems, and from this death of such a host of people, the vision in our passage comes.

God brings Ezekiel out to a bone-filled valley and has him walk amongst the bones, perhaps just to certify that they were really dead. They are very dry. God asks Ezekiel whether the bones could live. Ezekiel knows God pretty well by now – that even such things as very dry bones could be brought to life again if God wanted them to be. Then God gives Ezekiel the words to say, and Ezekiel says them. The bones become flesh and blood persons, but persons without breath. Then God gives Ezekiel the words to call breath/wind/spirit (they are all the same word in Hebrew – Ruach, pronounced roo-akh) – and Ezekiel says those words. The flesh and bone and blood people live again. A multitude.

God can break death and lostness and defeat, God tells Ezekiel. God has the power to create, even today, God tells us. God wants us to know that his power to give life triumphs over the grave and the dryness of bones. God tells us these things. God proved it when Jesus raised Lazarus, this week’s Gospel text. And God proved it again when God raised Jesus himself. God is Lord over death. We are afraid of death, but we needn’t be. God loves us and will bring us to God’s own self. What has tasted death will live again. We live, as Luther said, in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection. Sure and certain!

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for Ezekiel’s vision and Jesus’s signs, especially the raising of Lazarus. Help us never to be afraid of death but instead to remember in our pain of loss that we will live again because you love us. Amen