Perhaps you’ve heard of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones, where the Spirit of the Lord sets Ezekiel down and commands him to prophesy over the bones, and to the breath, so they might live. After a rattling sound, bone comes together with bone, flesh appears, and the dead come back to life, an exceedingly great army. You may have heard this story read from Ezek 37:1-10, with its accompanying interpretation: You are the dead ones, brought out of your sin and misery because of God’s Spirit giving you faith in Jesus Christ. Seems clear, right? Perhaps not so much.
Context matters. If we learn to read the Bible for what it is—and not as a collection of independently assembled inspirational stories—we’ll discover that some of our most familiar passages don’t actually mean what we’ve always assumed.
Caitlin Tobias (2014), Creative Commons
Remember What You’re Reading
We’re helped here by the historical context. The prophet Ezekiel was living in Babylon with the early Jewish exiles (Ezek 1:1). These people had been carried off before the nation of Judah’s final fall to Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel spoke of God’s glory departing the temple in Jerusalem (Ezek 10:1-22) and going to reside in exile with God’s people (Ezek 1:1-28).
Ezekiel prophesied to a broken people, who were devastated by the Babylonian conquest and captivity. They were too crushed even to admit that their own idolatry had caused this turn of events. Therefore they persistently resisted Ezekiel’s message (Ezek 3:7-11).
And to these defeated, exiled people, Ezekiel promises a coming day (Ezek 36:22-32). A day when God will vindicate the holiness of his name (Ezek 36:22-23). A day when he will sprinkle them with water to cleanse them from the filth of their idolatry (Ezek 36:25). A day when he will give them new hearts of flesh to replace their dead hearts of stone (Ezek 36:26). A day when he will put his own Spirit within them and enable them to obey him (Ezek 36:27).
Ezekiel leaves no doubt about when this day will come. It is the day when “I will take you from the nations…and bring you into your own land” (Ezek 36:24). The day when they “shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers” (Ezek 36:28).
The exiled people, dead in their idolatry, will be raised to new life when God restores them back to their land.
Read a Little Further
We’re also helped by the immediate literary context. It’s all too easy for us to read only Ezek 37:1-10, because it feels like it could have been written to us. But the next few verses remind us that, though this may have been written for us (1 Cor 10:11), it was not written to us:
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 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.” (Ezek 37:11-14)
The Lord himself makes the interpretation clear to Ezekiel. There is no reason for us to be unclear on this ourselves. The dead bones coming back to life are a picture of the exiled people being brought back into the land of Israel, placed in their own land. A people without hope are resurrected to new hope.
Reflect on the New Covenant
Some might ask: “But doesn’t all that simply find greater fulfillment in the new covenant, when those dead in sin believe on Christ and are raised to new life?” And I would say: “Yes! Of course!”
But look at what we miss if we ignore the context of Ezekiel and jump right to today.
- The restoration after the exile was no minor blip on the timeline of God’s redemptive purposes. It warrants further theological reflection as the resurrection of God’s people.
- This means that the death and the resurrection of God’s people have significant corporate implications. These things are not only for individual believers, but also for the entire body of God’s people.
- This explains why the disciples were so baffled when Jesus took this key Old Testament idea of death and resurrection, and applied it to himself, an individual (Mark 9:9-10).
- We, too should expect some corporate implications today from our “death and resurrection” as those who are “in Christ.” For example, Ephesians 2:1-10 summarizes the theology of the Christian’s death and resurrection in Christ. But Ephesians 2:11-22 goes on to unfold the corporate implications of this theology in the community life of the church. Paul had far more in mind than the salvation of individuals.
Even if our intentions are good, let’s not miss what God has communicated about himself and his rescue of us.
Context matters.
For more “context matters” posts, such as the widow’s mite, the faith hall of fame, chief of sinners, and quick to listen, slow to speak—click here.
Thanks for your post, KW is a very helpful website. I’m still not proficient on Biblie study yet and I find profit in everything that I’ve read so far in here.
I have some questions about this story. The text says that the raised dry bones were a “vast army”. I assume this means an enourmous number of people, rather than they formed an actual military army. Is this correct?
Also, is there any explanation on why there was such a valley? It sounds like a mass grave, and from what I remember, Israelites wouldn’t leave their own to rot in open air unless they wanted to shame the dead person and/or his/her family. So I get to think that they were either stray Israelites (it would fit the pattern for the story) or gentile (that would point to the new Israel?). I don’t know what to make of this, but at the same time, I don’t know if questions like this are useful on Bible study. What do you think?
This story reminds me a little the story of the people that were raised when Jesus died, which is such a powerful symbol, a literal embodiment of the death of Christ bringing life to the dead. However, both stories bug me because I never saw any follow up on them, as to what happened to those “brought back” people. I understand that they display God’s power in a way that I will never aprehend not seeing them in real life, but… How come a “vast army” of people came back to life, and go back to their previous houses and actual descendants, go back to farming, sheparding… and nothing else is mentioned by the authors? How come this doesn’t change Israel’s ways in any way? Is it literally “they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”? How can this be?
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and questions, Emmanuelle. I think such questions are really important in Bible study, but we have to keep ourselves focused on answering only those questions answered by the text. If the text doesn’t answer some of our particular questions, we may need to let those go.
Yes, the point of the phrase “exceedingly great army” does seem to highlight the sheer number.
I’m not sure what to make of the observation that this took place in a valley. But I’m not convinced it was a literal event that happened. “He brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley” in verse 1 suggests that this was a prophetic vision and not a literal event. See the similar phrase in Ezek 8:3 and Ezek 42:1 for other such visions.
Oh, I hadn’t thought about it as a vision. I thought he’d been physically taken by the Spirit and placed in the valley. Thanks for clarifying that using similar examples. My questions are dismissed now. 🙂
Thanks for your kind reply.
Thanks, and I agree context is important. I agree it’s imoortant to understand the nuance of Old Testament stories (such as individual v corporate implications) and not jump right to the New Testament..
However, what I think the real actual danger Is people reading the Old Testament as is, and then coming up with their own application completely independent of Christ. This would mean reading Ezekiel, exegeting using only Ezekiel, and applying them to modern life (without reference to the NT). Because that would be a Christ-less theology.
So, It’s a good thing if people are automatically reading the Old Testament through a systematic theology framework, i.e. reading in the context of the New Testament. If people can read Old Testament narrative and put a Christ-lens on it, that’s good theology and we need to see more of it.
Hope that makes sense.
So like, I was gonna share a devotional of Ezekiel 37:1-14 in a mission trip with students who will share the gospel to stranger and when I read this passage I got three main points:
1.It’s solely by God’s grace and initiative alone.
throughout the text God was doing all the work removing the pressure on us “I will cause breath to enter you, ” “I will lay sinews upon you,” “will cause flesh to come upon you” “cover you” “put breath in you”
2. Our role is to obey
Like Ezekiel all he did was obey “So I prophesied as I was commanded.”
3. God does the growing/ He will do the rest
And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 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.”
My question is, yes I know this was specifically catering for Israelites who we exiled and disobedient to God. But is it a misinterpretation if we look at it also as like the lost people and God putting His Spirit in them when they accept Him, raising them from their old lives and helping them recognise that He is the Lord?
Thanks for your comment and these good questions. The points you developed for your devotional certainly sound theologically accurate and likely helpful to members of a short-term mission team. I think the most important question is: Are those the points Ezekiel wanted his audience to come away with from this text?
One caution is that we should be careful not to de-historicize a text, as though it were written to communicate timeless theological principles, and the historical circumstances of the text don’t really matter. Doing that can harm the people we teach, as it trains them to read Scripture in this way (where the historical fats don’t matter, and we use the text as a theological allegory for our time).
That said, you can still get to many of these points by way of *application*. I would recommend helping the students on your trip to see the experience of the Jewish exiles, having been laid waste by the judgment of God, and longing for resurrection in their land. Once we see and feel what they would have seen and felt from this text, we can then go on to draw parallels to our situation today (through the lens of what Jesus has done).
The Gospels do, after all, declare Jesus to be the herald of God’s resurrecting power (John 11:25) who finally brought the exile to an end (Mark 1:1-3). So it is fully appropriate for those who follow Jesus to continue applying these “return from exile” texts, such as Ezekiel 37, to our situation. We just need to do so without doing violence to their context.
The Words JESUS SPEAKS ARE SPIRIT AND THEY ARE LIFE JOHN 6:63-70… Yes Context is critical but if ANY MAN SPEAK LET HIM SPEAK AS THE ORACLES OF GOD 1 PETER 4:11…. We Don’t want OUR HUMAN INTELLECT TO HAVE TOO MUCH INFLUENCE. I believe PAUL DECLARED NOT MANY WISE MEN AFTER THE FLESH ARE CALLED 1 COR. 1 26-29. IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKENS THE FLESH PROFITS NOTHING