A New Life
Ezekiel 37:1-14
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Key Verse: Ezek. 37:4 –
“Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.”
Have you ever been so lonely or down or tired that you felt almost dead to the world? You may have watched others busily going about their occupation or recreation or homelife with apparent purpose, but you felt left out or adrift.
Today’s lesson is about a whole population of people who had been forced to leave their homes and march hundreds of miles before being assigned to resettlement camps in a new land.
The people in question were the most wealthy, educated, or skilled residents of Judah. When their king grew tired of paying the tribute he demanded, King Nebuchadnezzar brought his army and took both payment and people. An initial wave of royals and other elites were taken captive in 597 BCE, though Jerusalem was spared.
When the new king he appointed withheld payment a decade later, Nebuchadnezzar’s armies returned and destroyed Jerusalem before putting thousands more on the long march to Babylon. Only the poorest of the people were left to work the land for their Babylonian taskmasters.
How would you feel if you’d been in their position, not only losing everything but faced with an uncertain future?
A moribund people (vv. 1-3)
A Hebrew named Ezekiel knew how it felt. Ezekiel had served among the temple priests in Jerusalem before being deported in the first wave of exiles. He had been spared the sight of the temple in flames, but still had to wonder what purpose he could serve in Babylon.
Any wonderment ceased a few years later when he experienced a mind-boggling vision of God that led him into a prophetic ministry lasting more than 20 years. [DD]
Ezekiel’s fellow exiles may have considered him to be highly eccentric, and not just because he incorporated the roles of both priest and prophet – two groups that didn’t usually get along. Ezekiel’s inaugural vision of God was filled with fiery wheels, strange creatures, and a rainbow aura surrounding a flying sapphire throne – so strange that some modern writers have claimed he was visited by an alien spaceship. [DD] Would you have believed Ezekiel?
Ezekiel came to believe that God had not given up on Israel, and he sought to assure the exiles that they God had something good in store for them: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,” he prophesied, “. . . and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (36:26-27).
That sounded hopeful, but the people remained morose. Despite being integrated into the Babylonian culture and economy, the Hebrews still longed for their homeland, especially during the first years, before the generation of adults who had been captured had begun to die out. If v. 11 is an accurate reflection, they were saying things like “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (v. 11).
It’s no surprise, then, that God would show Ezekiel a vision of hope that began with a valley of dry bones. While Ezekiel tells the story as an actual event, phrases like “the hand of the LORD was upon me” suggest a visionary experience taking place in a trance-like state (see also 1:3; 3:22; 8:1; 40:1). The story describes a symbolic vision, not a mass resurrection.
Ezekiel speaks of being brought to a valley filled with disarticulated skeletons. There were “very many” bones, and they were “very dry” (v. 2), indicating that their owners were also very dead. Inhabitants of the ancient Near East sought to be buried or placed in secure tombs where their bones could remain together. The thought of having one’s skeleton scattered across the land would have been innately disturbing. [DD]
The image suggests the aftermath of a battlefield where thousands had been slain (vv. 9-10), perhaps suggesting both Judah’s defeat by the Babylonians and the Northern Kingdom’s earlier destruction by the Assyrians.
In the midst of a lifeless and apparently hopeless scene, Ezekiel was asked: “Mortal, can these bones live?” A modern scientist might envision a way to extract DNA from the bones and at least replicate the genome, but Ezekiel saw only bones that were deader than dead. He had no answer beyond the obvious response: “O Lord GOD, you know” (v. 3). [DD]
A lively sermon (vv. 4-10)
The succeeding verses tell the familiar story of how God told Ezekiel to preach to the congregation of dead bones, promising that he would reassemble the skeletons, then return to them muscle and sinew and skin before breathing once again the breath of life into their bodies (vv. 4-6).
When Ezekiel did as commanded, he felt the earth shaking with the rattling of bones as the skeletons reformed, then watched as flesh and skin reappeared like a time-lapse video of decomposition run in reverse (vv. 7-8).
At last, Ezekiel stood among a massive collection of perfectly formed bodies, but they were still dead. God then instructed him to “prophesy to the breath” that it might come from the four winds, re-enter the corpses, and return the “vast multitude” (or “vast army,” NIV11, HCSB) to life (vv. 9-10). [DD]
The Hebrew term ruach can be used to mean “wind,” “breath,” or even “spirit.” The image calls to mind the creation story of Gen. 2:7, but on a far grander scale. Instead of breathing life into one man, God whistled up the four winds to inspirit a host of bodies and return them to life. [DD]
But what was the meaning of this resurrected multitude? Was Ezekiel now standing before a zombie army of the living dead, or did the scene suggest something more? We can only imagine the questions running through the stunned prophet’s mind before a word from God connected the dots for him.
A hopeful prophecy (vv. 11-14)
The dried bones represented the “whole house of Israel,” God said – a phrase probably intended to include the Northern Kingdom of Israel (conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE) as well as the southern kingdom of Judah, who first fell to the Babylonians in 597 BCE and suffered several subsequent deportations.
The people had given up, thinking themselves as good as dead, “cut off completely” from home and from hope (v. 11). God, however, had not given up on Israel. In language reminiscent of the Exodus, God promised to raise the Hebrews from their metaphorical graves, restoring them to life and to the land of promise (vv. 13-14).
The new life God promised would come about through the active power of God’s Spirit: “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” (v. 14).
As the Holy Spirit would later bring new life to the dispirited disciples on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), the presence and power of God’s Spirit promised new life to the exiles, and the hope that they might yet return to their homes in the land of promise.
Ezekiel’s prophecy echoes a theological understanding of the exile as God’s punishment for Israel’s collective sin and rejection of the covenant. God had the power to “kill and make alive” (Deut. 32:39, 1 Sam. 2:6), to punish and forgive. The vision of 37:1-14 seems to elaborate on the promise of 36:26-27. Although Israel had proven incapable of keeping the covenant, God’s grace would renew life and the promised Spirit would motivate obedience: “I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (36:27).
What the Hebrews could not do for themselves, God would do for them.
How might this strange vision of Ezekiel speak to us?
We do not live as captives in Babylon, but we can still feel separated from God and cut off from hope. We may know very well what it is to feel dry of bone, numb of heart, and dead of spirit. We may be exiled by grief or despair or loneliness. We may have lost hope that our family will ever be whole or that our life will ever make sense.
Like Israel, we may sometimes feel as if our emotional ribs have been picked clean by vultures and left to dry in the sun.
One might argue, however, that the people in deepest exile are those who have no worries, who think everything is fine, whose indifference to God has left them too blind to see that they are dying inside, that their spiritual bones are turning to dust.
In Ezekiel’s vision, things did not begin to change until there was a great shaking and a rattling. It could be that our pathway to renewed life must also begin with a shaking of priorities that rattles the framework of a fruitless faith.
God does not want us to be exiled forever. Our own efforts may leave us feeling dry as dust, but Jesus, even more than Ezekiel made it clear that God desires to bring us new life through the presence of the Spirit (John 14:15-16).
As we are born anew through Christ, the Spirit enables us to see the world through the lens of Jesus’ love, so that we may also become life-giving agents of change to others.
And there’s nothing crazy about that.
Adult Teaching Resources
Download the PDF of teaching resources for this lesson.
This PDF contains the Teaching Guide, Digging Deeper, and Hardest Question pages.
Read Scripture online: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Youth Teaching Resources
Parent Prep
Loneliness is hard. I think it is even harder now that everyone seems to be connected through their phones. The connectedness of the phones offers false promises: students can stay in touch, they know what each other is doing, they can check-in when they aren’t there, but they can’t experience community. When our students are lonely they need community. Their community might look different from yours, but help them understand where they can find true community.
Additional Links/Resources
Read Scripture online: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Download the PDF for youth teaching resources using the button below. This PDF contains the Teaching Guide for this lesson:
Video
Encourage youth to check out this video ahead of the lesson.
“Resurrection” from The Iron Giant
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