The Redemption Road

Dry Bones and Resurrection in Ezekiel

Ezekiel 37:1–14 is one of the most memorable prophetic visions in all of Scripture. The Lord’s Spirit takes Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry human bones. God commands him to prophesy to them that they will live again and, step-by-step, tendons, flesh and skin cover them. Finally, God breathes life into these bodies and they become a vast “army” of people. The most natural understanding up to this point in the passage, as countless Jewish and Christian interpreters have recognized over the centuries, is resurrection of the dead.

The Lord continues, however, and explains to Ezekiel that the meaning of what he has seen is the resettlement of the people of Israel in their land - after the Babylonian exile in which they are now languishing. In the OT, explicit teaching about the bodily resurrection of all people is found only in Daniel 12:1–4, and many parts of the OT seem to know only of Sheol, a shadowy underworld, when they speak of life after death.

At the same time, Israel had neighbors who believed in bodily resurrection and an afterlife from as early a time as their slavery in Egypt (witness all the provisions left behind in the Pharaohs’ tombs).

Job 19:26; Ps 16:10; 73:24 and Isa 26:19 all point in a similar direction. Elijah and Elisha had already raised dead people back to the life of this world (1Ki 17:17–24; 2Ki 4:32–37). And the language of Eze 37:12 here (“I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them”) is so vivid that it invites application to more than just the restoration of the people to the land, even if that is undoubtedly the primary meaning of the passage.

Ver. 1. “The hand of the Lord was upon me.” “The abrupt commencement without and, points out that the fact here related is extraordinary and out of connection with the usual prophetic activity. The hand of the Lord denotes the overruling Divine influence.”

“The valley”—“the plain or valley near Tel Abib, familiar to Ezekiel as the scene of the vision of the cherubim. Now, however, to his horror, he found it full of dry, withering bones—the wreck of a vast host slain by the sword. Wandering over the wide expanse, the multitude of these ghastly relics of mortality and their bleached dryness, the very embodiment of death, filled him with awe.”

Ver. 3. “Can these bones live?” “Implying that, humanly speaking, they could not; but faith leaves the question of possibility to rest with God, with whom nothing is impossible. An image of Christian faith which believes in the coming resurrection of the dead, in spite of all appearances against it, because God has said it.

.Ver. 4. “Prophesy upon these bones”—prophesy over them; proclaim God’s quickening word to them.

Ver. 6. “Ye shall know that I am the Lord”—“by the actual proof of My Divinity which I will give in reviving Israel.”

Ver. 7. “And as I prophesied there was a noise.” God’s voice of power is followed by a rustling caused by the bones coming rustling up from the surface of the valley.”

Ver. 8. “The sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them; but there was no breath in them.” “So far, they were only co-hering in order as unsightly skeletons. The next step, that of covering them successively with sinews, skin, and flesh, gives them beauty; but still no breath of life in them. This may imply that Israel hereafter, as at the restoration from Babylon was the case in part, shall return to Judea unconverted at first.

Spiritually a man may assume all the semblances of spiritual life, yet have none, and so be dead before God.”

“There is reference to the first creation of man. There also the lower element comes first into being, then the higher. The prophet is penetrated with the thought that the real misery of the people is the moral ruin. The remedy, therefore, cannot stop at the restoration of the civic state. The main thing is a renewed outpouring of the Spirit and the restoration of union with God thereby effected, which was originally accomplished by God breathing into man the breath of life.”

Ver. 9. “Prophesy unto the wind”—the spirit of life, or life-breath. For it is distinct from “the four winds” from which it is summoned.

What is here spoken of is—the universal spirituality which pervades all creation. The Spirit is evidently here referred to under the symbol of the wind. His influence is supreme and operates in all parts of the earth.

Ver. 10. “So I prophesied, and the breath came into them”—such honour God gives to the Divine word even in the mouth of a man: how much more when in the mouth of the Son of God!

Though this chapter does not directly prove the resurrection of the dead, it does so indirectly, for it takes for granted the future fact as one recognised by believing Jews, and so made the image of their national restoration.

Ver. 11. “Our bones are dried.” “We are undone.”

“Reduced to ourselves.”

“It is over with us.”

“We are cut off for us. The for us points out how grievous the sad fact is for those concerned, how painfully they were affected by it.” There is nothing in us to give hope, like a withered branch cut off from a tree, or a limb from the body. The national state was as hopeless of revival as marrowless bones of reanimation. “Cut off,” separated, shut out from God’s help.

Ver. 12. “I will open your graves”—the abodes of the exile, since the Jews who were in exile considered themselves like dead men.

Ver. 14. “And shall put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live.” “The inspiriting and quickening for a home system which is to have permanence, and especially in the case of a people like Israel, will of necessity be spiritual and religious. “Wherever within the Christian Church a new state of death arises, there this prophecy always comes again into force, until at the end of days death be fully overcome.”

John 11:1. Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

2. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)

3. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you loved is sick.”

4. When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

5. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

6. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,

7. and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

8. “But Rabbi,”g they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you,h and yet you are going back?”

9. Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.

10. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

11. After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

12. His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.”

13. Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

14. So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead,

15. and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

16. Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

17. On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

18. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem,

19. and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.

20. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

22. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

23. Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24. Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;

26. and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

27. “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

28. After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.”

29. When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.

30. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.

31. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

32. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

33. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

34. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

35. Jesus wept.

36. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

37. But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

38. Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.

39. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

40. Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

41. So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

42. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

43. When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

44. The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

45. Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, an early church leader says:

AMONG all the miracles wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ, the raising of Lazarus is held to be the most wonderful.

But, if we mark Whose work it was, delight ought to be our feeling, rather than wonder. He raised a man to life again, Who made man: for this is none other than the Only-Begotten of the Father, by Whom, all things were made. If then by Him were all things made, what wonder is it if one was raised to life by Him, when so many are every day brought into existence by Him?

It is more, to create men than to resuscitate. Yet He deigned both to create and to resuscitate: to create all, to resuscitate some.

For, albeit the Lord Jesus did many things, not all are written: as this same Saint John the Evangelist testifies, that the Lord Christ both said and did many things which are not written: only those were selected to be written, which were seen to suffice for the salvation of them that believe. Thus thou hast heard that the Lord Jesus raised a dead man to life again: this sufficeth to let thee know, that if He would, He could raise all the dead.

And this, in fact, He hath reserved for Himself unto the end of the world. For whereas ye have heard, how by a great miracle He raised from the tomb one who had been four days dead,* the hour will come, as Himself saith, when all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.

He raised to life one that already stank; yet in the carcase, albeit stinking, there was still the form of the members: but He in the last day will at one word make ashes start into flesh. It was meet, however, that He should even now do some works, by which, as given tokens of His power, we may be brought to believe on Him, and be prepared for that resurrection which shall be unto life, and not unto judgment.

For so He saith; The hour shall come, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.

Physical and spiritual death.

Benediction: Beloved, the journey does not end here. As you travel God’s redemption road, go in the blessing of God who persistently breathes new life into dry and weary places, and watch for resurrection to happen when you least expect it. Amen.