The Valley Where the Bones Stood Up

Ezekiel was still thinking about God's promise of new hearts when the hand of the LORD took hold of him. The Spirit carried him off and set him down in the middle of a valley full of bones.

Ezekiel lived far from home in Babylon, where God's people had been carried off as captives. The bones had belonged to people who were killed long ago, and nobody had buried them. The sun had baked them white, and the wind had scattered them, a rib here, a jawbone there.

God led him back and forth among them. Crunch, crunch, went the sand under his sandals. Not one bone moved.

"Son of man," God said, "can these bones live?"

Ezekiel looked at the bones. Then he looked at them again. (This is the kind of question where a wise man does not say "No.")

"O Lord GOD," he said, "you know."

"Then preach to them," said God. "Say: Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! I will put breath in you, and you will live. I will give you muscles and skin, and you will know that I am the LORD."

So Ezekiel stood in a field of skeletons and preached. (He had never preached to a crowd that lay so still.)

While he was still speaking, a noise began. A rattle, then a clatter, then a clacking all over the valley, as bones skidded across the dirt hunting for one another. Toe bone found foot bone. Knee found hip. Skull clicked onto neck. Muscles wrapped around the bones, and skin stretched over the top, until the valley was full of bodies.

But they did not breathe.

"Speak to the breath," God said. "Say: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these people who were killed, so that they may live."

(In Ezekiel's language, breath and wind and Spirit are all one word, ruach. That day God was using all three.)

Ezekiel said it, and wind came from every side and blew into the bodies. Chests rose. Eyes opened. They climbed to their feet, a huge army, standing where the bones had been.

Then God told Ezekiel what it meant. "These bones are my people. They keep saying, 'Our bones are dried up. Our hope is gone.' So tell them: My people, I will open your graves and bring you up out of them. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live, and I will bring you home to your own land. I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will do it."

God kept his word, and the people went home, but home still had graves in it. People grew old there and died and were buried. The bones in Ezekiel's vision had stood up. The real graves stayed shut, and God's people waited hundreds of years for someone who could open them.

At last another man came. He called a dead friend out of a tomb by name, and the friend walked out. Then he was killed. His body was laid in a rock tomb with a stone across the door. On the third day the grave stood open, and he was on his feet, alive. That evening he breathed on his friends and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

Jesus says a day is coming when everyone in the graves will hear his voice and come out. On that day the bones in every valley in the world will stand up.