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Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones

Who Ezekiel was, why the exiles lost hope, the Hebrew word for breath, wind and spirit, the Babylonian ration tablets, and how the vision points to Christ.

In Ezekiel 37 the hand of the LORD sets His prophet down in a valley full of bones that are "very dry" (Ezekiel 37:2), and God asks, "Son of man, can these bones live?" (Ezekiel 37:3). Here is who Ezekiel was, what the vision meant, what history tells us about the exile, and how it points to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who Ezekiel was

Ezekiel was a priest, "Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi" (Ezekiel 1:3). In about 597 BC Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took Jerusalem and carried away King Jehoiachin with "ten thousand captives" (2 Kings 24:14). GotQuestions.org notes that Ezekiel, who had trained for the priesthood in Jerusalem, was among them. He lived with the exiles by the river Chebar, and there, in "the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity" (Ezekiel 1:2), "the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God" (Ezekiel 1:1).

A people without hope

For a few more years Jerusalem still stood. Then, in the twelfth year of the captivity, a man who had escaped brought Ezekiel the news: "The city is smitten" (Ezekiel 33:21). Jerusalem had fallen and the temple was destroyed. The exiles felt that their nation was dead, and God quoted their own words: "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts" (Ezekiel 37:11).

What the vision means, in its own words

God explains the vision Himself: "these bones are the whole house of Israel" (Ezekiel 37:11). Then He makes five promises:

Breath, wind and spirit

One Hebrew word runs through this chapter: ruach. As GotQuestions.org explains, it can mean wind, breath or spirit. The spirit of the LORD carries Ezekiel into the valley (37:1), breath enters the bones (37:5), Ezekiel calls to "the four winds" (37:9), and God promises, "And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live" (Ezekiel 37:14).

Notice the order. The bodies were whole, "but there was no breath in them" (Ezekiel 37:8). Only God's breath made them live, just as at creation: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). GotQuestions.org notes that both Ezekiel's vision and an act of the risen Lord Jesus look back to that verse: "he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20:22). Jesus used the same picture with Nicodemus, comparing the Spirit's work to the wind, "so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).

How GotQuestions.org reads the vision

We follow GotQuestions.org here. The vision is God's promise to restore the nation of Israel, and that new life depends on God's power, not on the people's circumstances. It has been fulfilled in part: Persia took Babylon in 539 BC, and Cyrus let the exiles go home. Today the Jewish people again live in the land, which GotQuestions calls a partial regathering. The full promise, a people reunited, cleansed and spiritually alive under the Messiah, is still to come, when God gives Israel true life through Jesus Christ and He reigns in His kingdom.

And who is "David my servant"? GotQuestions.org explains that the promise points to the Messiah, the greater Son of David. David himself will be raised with the Old Testament saints, but the King is Jesus Christ alone.

The exile in history

A Babylonian Chronicle tablet in the British Museum records that Nebuchadnezzar seized "the city of Judah" in early 597 BC, captured its king and appointed a king of his own choice, just as 2 Kings 24 describes.

Robert Koldewey's excavations at Babylon (1899 to 1917) also found tablets near the Ishtar Gate recording oil and grain handed out from Nebuchadnezzar's storehouses. Several name Ya'u-kinu, "king of the land of Yahudu": Jehoiachin, king of Judah, along with his sons. They are now in Berlin. Some lines are broken and partly reconstructed, but the identification is widely accepted. The king by whose captivity Ezekiel dated his visions appears on these ration lists.

How it points to Christ

The promised King is Jesus. The angel said of Mary's son, "the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:32-33). He is the one shepherd: "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep" (John 10:11).

And He is the giver of life. The bones lived when they heard the word of the LORD, and Jesus said, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live" (John 5:25). That valley pictures every one of us before Christ: "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). Can these bones live? In Jesus, "the resurrection, and the life" (John 11:25), the answer is yes.

Sources

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