1The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He took me out by the wind of the LORD and set me down in the valley, and it was filled with bones. 2And He made me pass by them all around, and, look, they were very many on the surface of the valley, and, look, they were very dry. 3And He said to me, “Man, can these bones live?” And I said, “O Master, LORD, it is You Who knows.” 4And He said, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, listen to the word of the LORD. 5Thus said the Master, the LORD, to the dry bones: I am about to bring breath into you and you shall live. 6And I will lay sinews over you and bring up flesh over you and stretch over you skin. And I will put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.’” 7And I prophesied as I was charged, and there was a sound as I prophesied and, look, a clatter, and the bones came together, one bone to another. 8And I saw, and, look, upon them were sinews, and flesh came up, and skin stretched out over them from above, but there was no breath in them. 9And He said to me: “Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, man, and say to the wind, ‘Thus said the Master, the LORD: From the four winds, come, wind, and blow into these slain that they may live.’” 10And I prophesied as He had charged me, and the breath came into them and they lived, and they stood up on their feet, a very very great legion. 11And He said to me, “Man, these bones are all the house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dry and our hope is lost. We have been cut off.’ 12Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: I am about to open your graves, and I will bring you up, My people, from your graves and bring you to Israel’s soil. 13And you shall know that I am the LORD when I open your graves and when I bring you up from your graves, My people. 14And I will put My breath in you, and you shall live, and I will set you on your soil, and you shall know that I the LORD have spoken and have done it,” said the LORD.
15And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 16“And you, man, take you one stick and write upon it ‘For Judah and for Israel joined to him,’ and take another stick and write on it ‘For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for the Israelites and all the house of Israel, joined to him.’ 17And put them together each to each as a single stick for you, and they shall be one in your hand. 18And when the sons of your people say to you, saying, ‘Will you not tell us, what are these to you?,’ 19speak to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: I am about to take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and those joined with him, the tribes of Israel, and I will set upon it the stick of Judah and make them a single stick, and they shall be one stick in My hand. 20And the sticks upon which you shall write shall be in your hand before their eyes, 21and speak to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: I am about to take the Israelites from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from all around and bring them to their soil. 22And I will make them a single nation in the land on the mountains of Israel, and a single king shall be their king, and they no more shall be two nations, and no more shall they be divided into two kingdoms. 23And they shall no more be defiled by their foul things and by their vile things and by all their trespasses. And I will rescue them in all the places of their habitation where they offended, and I will cleanse them, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. 24And My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have a single shepherd. And by My laws they shall go, and My statutes they shall keep and do them. 25And they shall dwell in the land that I gave to My servant Jacob, where your fathers dwelled, and they shall dwell in it, they and their children and their children’s children evermore, and My servant David shall be prince over them evermore. 26And I will seal with them a covenant of peace, an everlasting covenant shall there be with them, and I will set them [as a blessing] and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst evermore. 27And My dwelling place shall be over them, and I will be their God and they shall be My people. 28And the nations shall know that I am the LORD hallowing Israel when My sanctuary is in their midst evermore.”
CHAPTER 37 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
1. He took me out by the wind of the LORD. Throughout this prophecy, Ezekiel plays on the different senses of ruaḥ, which can mean “spirit,” “wind,” and “breath.” While many translators render the term here as “spirit,” the sense of “wind” fits much better with Ezekiel’s repeated pattern of being borne off physically by a palpable divine force. Compare 11:24, where it is precisely a wind that carries him to the place of revelation.
2. and, look, they were very dry. The remains of these dead are at a very great remove from life: they are not corpses but disarticulated bones and very dry, suggesting that the deaths occurred much earlier. This is an obvious way of amplifying the miraculous restoration to life.
3. Man, can these bones live? This prophecy is probably the most famous one in Ezekiel. Early Jewish and Christian interpreters took it as a prophecy of the resurrection of the dead, but it is quite doubtful that this is what Ezekiel meant. The scattered dry bones of the long dead are a symbolic image of the people of Israel in exile, its national existence violently ended by the conquest and destruction of the kingdom of Judah. The miraculous return to life of the bones figures the restoration of national existence in the homeland.
4. Prophesy to these bones. The startling extremeness of the prophecy of the bones is dramatically evident in the command to the prophet to address, as surely no prophet in the real world ever did, a message to dry bones.
5. breath. Here ruaḥ has to mean “breath,” not “wind” or “spirit.”
7. and the bones came together, one bone to another. This weird self-assembling of the disarticulated bones became the basis for the language of the famous Negro spiritual about this prophecy.
9. From the four winds, come, wind. The initial “winds” here has still another meaning: the four directions, or the four corners of the earth. In Genesis, God blows the breath of life into the inert clay of the first human. Here it is the four winds that perform this act of vivification, giving it a global scope that jibes with the implied idea that the exiles have been scattered to the four corners of the earth.
slain. Now we learn that these dead have met a violent end.
10. legion. The Hebrew ḥayil usually means “military force” (hence the King James Version’s “army”). Here it probably indicates the great number of the revived, but to translate it “multitude,” as some modern versions do, erases the martial connotation, that this vast number of the conquered dead has become a large army. “Legion” in English actually has both meanings.
12. I am about to open your graves. Ezekiel appears to have forgotten that the bones are scattered on the surface of the valley. Now the dead have been buried and will rise from their graves.
16. take you one stick. The Hebrew ʿets means “tree,” “wood,” or “stick.” Some modern interpreters see these as wooden tablets because we know that such tablets were sometimes used to write on. However, the joining together of the two to make one works better for sticks than for tablets, and in Numbers writing is inscribed on staffs, something close to sticks.
Judah . . . Joseph. These indicate the southern and northern kingdoms, sundered after the death of Solomon.
18. Will you not tell us, what are these to you? Unlike the visionary-allegorical prophecy of the dry bones, this is a rather traditional, and didactic, symbolic-prophetic show-and-tell. Its meaning is fairly apparent even before Ezekiel goes on to explain it.
22. I will make them a single nation. This is a utopian prophecy because by Ezekiel’s time there was no real trace of the northern kingdom, destroyed a century and a half earlier by the Assyrians.
on the mountains of Israel. Ezekiel, originating in Jerusalem, repeatedly imagines a mountainous landscape for his homeland, though in fact it extended to valleys and lowlands.
23. in all the places of their habitation. Many manuscripts show instead of the Masoretic moshvoteyhem, “their habitations,” meshuvoteyhem, “their rebelliousness.”
24. And My servant David shall be king over them. The reference is not to some sort of reincarnation of David but to a legitimate heir to the Davidic dynasty who embodies the ideal qualities attributed to him in the Book of Kings.
26. I will set them [as a blessing]. The received text has only “I will set them,” but it looks as if a predicate or adverbial qualifier such as the one supplied in brackets has dropped out of the text.
27. My dwelling place. This is a synonym for “sanctuary” in the preceding verse, and both terms refer to the Temple, which, restored, is to manifest God’s greatness in the world.