March 1

Ezekiel 37

1 The hand of the LORD was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and placed me in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones. 2 He made me walk all around among them. I realized there were a great many bones in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said to him, “Sovereign LORD, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and tell them: ‘Dry bones, listen to the LORD’s message. 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: Look, I am about to infuse breath into you and you will live. 6 I will put tendons on you and muscles over you and will cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will live. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. There was a sound when I prophesied – I heard a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 As I watched, I saw tendons on them, then muscles appeared, and skin covered over them from above, but there was no breath in them.

9 He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath – prophesy, son of man – and say to the breath: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these corpses so that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as I was commanded, and the breath came into them; they lived and stood on their feet, an extremely great army.

11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are all the house of Israel. Look, they are saying, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope has perished; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Look, I am about to open your graves and will raise you from your graves, my people. I will bring you to the land of Israel. 13 Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, my people. 14 I will place my breath in you and you will live; I will give you rest in your own land. Then you will know that I am the LORD – I have spoken and I will act, declares the LORD.’”

15 The LORD’s message came to me: 16 “As for you, son of man, take one branch and write on it, ‘For Judah and for the Israelites associated with him.’ Then take another branch and write on it, ‘For Joseph, the branch of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ 17 Join them as one stick; they will be as one in your hand. 18 When your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what these things mean?’ 19 tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Look, I am about to take the branch of Joseph that is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes of Israel associated with him, and I will place them on the stick of Judah and make them into one stick – they will be one in my hand.’ 20 The sticks you write on will be in your hand in front of them. 21 Then tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Look, I am about to take the Israelites from among the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from round about and bring them to their land. 22 I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel, and one king will rule over them all. They will never again be two nations and never again be divided into two kingdoms. 23 They will not defile themselves with their idols, their detestable things, and all their rebellious deeds. I will save them from all their unfaithfulness by which they sinned. I will purify them; they will become my people, and I will become their God.

24 “‘My servant David will be king over them; there will be one shepherd for all of them. They will follow my regulations and carefully observe my statutes. 25 They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, in which you fathers lived; they will live in it – they and their children and their grandchildren forever. David my servant will be prince over them forever. 26 I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be a perpetual covenant with them. I will establish them, increase their numbers, and place my sanctuary among them forever. 27 My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. 28 Then, when my sanctuary is among them forever, the nations will know that I, the LORD, sanctify Israel’” (Ezekiel 37, NET).

I was excited to see Genesis 12 followed by Exodus 14, and now that we’re having Ezekiel 37 follow, I’m even more excited, even though this sequence was kind of given to us arbitrarily in our selection of chapters. I’d hazard a guess that Ezekiel is one of the more under-read books in the Bible being both long and difficult with the sheer amount of bizarre apocalyptic imagery being more of a cause for curiosity than for edification a lot of the time.

Ezekiel fits into the Bible as one of the prophets whose job it is to minister to a broken people who have been taken into exile in Babylon. Moses had led the people successfully out of Egypt and his successor Joshua had helped them to take the land God had promised their ancestors. For the next number of centuries, they ended up in a cycle you can read about in Judges where a judge was appointed to rule over the different tribes in a bit of an ad hoc way, often being raised up by God in response to some rival religious or cultic group taking power over Israel as Israel struggled with effectively working as a theocracy. The end of the Judges cycle comes in the book of 1 Samuel with Samuel, the final judge, being harangued into appointing a king over Israel who, by that point, wanted to be like the other nations. Being like the other nations ended in consequences like the other nations experienced. The kingdom of Israel ends up splitting in two near the beginning of the Iron Age and the split kingdoms proceed to fall into idolatry. God warns them repeatedly through the prophets that what the Torah had said, that worshipping gods made with their hands would lead them down dark and evil paths that would lead to the destruction of the nation and their forfeiture of the land, was still true. Nonetheless, they persevered, and God informs them that the disasters of Assyrian captivity (for the northern kingdom, Israel, who you just read about above as “Ephraim”) in 722 BC and then Babylonian captivity (for the southern kingdom, Judah) in 586 BC are judgements approved of, even orchestrated by, God for the failure of Israel to live into its promise as a chosen people.

Into this calamitous time, Ezekiel is asked to speak God’s encouragement and promises to this broken people. It is interesting as you read Ezekiel to see just how many of the Old Testament hits he plays. He grabs imagery from Isaiah and some of the other apocalyptic prophets. He reiterates a bunch of themes from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. And in the chapter right before the one we read this week, Ezekiel takes the image from Moses’s prophetic warnings near the end of Deuteronomy, about Israel needing its heart circumcised (Deuteronomy 30:6), describing how the moral transformation God wanted from them was not mere outward conformity to the rules he laid out, but a condition coming out of a heart, an internal life, transformed to love God and to recognize the life-giving wisdom of His rule, and further elaborates on this image as having their hearts of stone turned into hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).

In chapter 37, Ezekiel’s vision is further elaborated as he sees that this transformation is actually also a resurrection and he gives this marvelous foreshadowing imagery talking about the eschatological (end times) vision of the new creation. A people who have been utterly destroyed, their bones laid bare by the ravenous appetites of their enemy, are clothed once again in flesh, are made whole again.

But it’s not enough that their bodies are restored; as in the Genesis account, they need to be indwelt by the Spirit for this to matter. The Hebrew word ‘ruakh’ (using English characters) is the first key term in this text. It’s that same word, this Hebrew ruakh, that gets translated as “spirit,” “breath,” or “wind” in English. The image is the same for all of these, the force of the air, unseen itself, but highly visible by the effect it’s having on the world. God’s breath, wind, His Spirit is summoned by God through Ezekiel’s prophecy to indwell these resurrected people, and it’s through this indwelling that they’re made right with God.

That “dwelling” is the second key term for me, especially so when you think about John’s gospel and his magnificent first chapter (I’m particularly looking forward to this one a little later in this course of study!) and his description of how Jesus’s life on earth was God setting up his dwelling place among us (John 1:14). Put these ideas together, the breath of God being breathed upon the ones who were dead and are now made alive, and the dwelling of God on earth among, in the midst of, His people. It all comes together in Acts 2 when, as Jesus had promised his disciples, the wind rushes into the upper room, the fire representing God’s Spirit splits into tongues and goes to each of the believers there to indwell them and empower them to begin the project we’re still working on today, building up the body of Christ, the Church.

The remainder of Ezekiel, chapters 38-48, describe a rebuilt heavenly temple, a place where the people of the LORD can live in harmony with one another, can engage in proper worship, and find the thirsting of their souls slaked by streams of Living Water. I pray this week that you let Ezekiel’s prophecies excite your imagination, call you to repentance, and encourage you to let Christ and His mighty Spirit make His dwelling in your life.

Next week's text is Philippians 4.