The Valley of Dry Bones

There were words for the other neighbors too. Moab and Seir had said, “Look, Judah is like all the nations.” So Moab’s border towns would be opened to the peoples of the east, and the Lord would judge Moab. Edom had taken revenge on Judah, so the Lord would wipe out its people and animals and lay its land waste. Its people would fall by the sword. The Lord would use his people Israel to take his revenge on Edom. The Philistines had taken revenge too, with scorn and a hatred that never ended. So the Lord would take great revenge on them and destroy the people left on the coast. Again and again his words ended, “Then they will know that I am the Lord.”

Then the word came against Tyre. Tyre had said of Jerusalem, “Aha! She is broken, the gateway of the peoples! Now that she is laid waste, I will be full again.” So the Lord said, “I am against you, Tyre. I will bring many nations up against you, the way the sea throws up its waves. They will destroy your walls and break down your towers. I will scrape away your dust and make you a bare rock, a place for spreading nets in the middle of the sea. The nations will plunder you.” The Lord would bring Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the king of kings, from the north against Tyre, with horses and chariots, horsemen and a great army.

“So, son of man, I have set you to keep watch for the people of Israel. Listen to what I say, and give them my warnings. Suppose I tell a wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and you don’t speak up to warn him to change his ways. Then that wicked man will die in his sin, but I will make you answer for his death. But if you warn him to change his ways and he doesn’t, he will die in his sin. You, though, will have saved your own life.”

When the Lord first called Ezekiel, he had given him this same task, in almost the same words.

And the Lord said, “Son of man, tell the people of Israel, ‘You say, “Our wrongs and our sins are on us, and we are wasting away in them. How then can we live?”’ Tell them, ‘As I live, says the Lord God, the death of the wicked gives me no pleasure. I would rather the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! Why should you die, people of Israel?’”

The evening before that man arrived, the Lord’s hand had been on Ezekiel. By the time the man came in the morning, the Lord had opened Ezekiel’s mouth, and Ezekiel was no longer mute.

It happened as the Lord had said. At the start, the Lord had made Ezekiel’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, so that he couldn’t speak to correct the people. He could speak only when the Lord opened his mouth to give him a message. Later the Lord had told him about the day when he would take from the people their strength and their joy, their sons and their daughters. On that day someone who escaped would come to tell Ezekiel about it, and his mouth would be opened. He would be mute no more.

The Lord said to him, “Son of man, your own people talk about you by the walls and in their doorways. They say to each other, ‘Come and hear what message has come from the Lord.’ They come to you the way people do and sit in front of you as my people. They hear your words, but they don’t do them. With their mouths they show much love, but in their hearts they are after what they can get for themselves. To them you are like a very lovely song, sung by someone with a pleasant voice who plays an instrument well. They hear your words, but they don’t do them.

“When this comes, and it is coming, then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

“‘So, you shepherds, hear the Lord’s word. My shepherds didn’t search for my sheep but fed themselves, and my sheep became food for every wild animal. So I am against the shepherds. I will hold them responsible for my sheep and stop them from feeding the flock, and they won’t feed themselves any more. I will save my sheep from their mouths, so my sheep won’t be food for them any more.’”

“I will make them a covenant of peace,” the Lord said. “I will put an end to the harmful animals in the land, so they can live safely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. There will be showers of blessing in their season, fruit on the trees and crops in the land. I will break the bars of their yoke and free them from those who made slaves of them. The nations will no longer prey on them, they will no longer go hungry, and no one will make them afraid. They will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they are my people. You, my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are people, and I am your God.”

“On the day I make you clean from all your wrongs,” the Lord said, “the cities will have people again and the ruins will be rebuilt. The land that lay empty for all to see will be farmed again, and people will say, ‘This land that lay empty has become like the garden of Eden! The ruined, empty cities now have walls and people in them.’ Then the nations left around you will know that I, the Lord, have built the ruined places and planted what lay empty. I, the Lord, have spoken it, and I will do it.”

He led Ezekiel all around among the bones. There were very many of them in the open valley, and they were very dry.

“Son of man,” he said, “can these bones live?”

“Lord God,” Ezekiel answered, “you know.”

Then the Lord said to him, “Prophesy over these bones. Tell them, ‘Dry bones, hear the Lord’s word! The Lord God says to these bones: Look, I will make breath come into you, and you will live. I will lay sinews on you, grow flesh on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you will live. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

So Ezekiel prophesied as he had been commanded. As he was prophesying, there was a noise, and then an earthquake. Then the bones came together, bone to its bone.

He looked, and there were sinews on them. Flesh had grown on them, and skin covered them over. But there was no breath in them.

Then the Lord said to him, “Prophesy to the wind. Prophesy, son of man, and tell the wind, ‘This is what the Lord God says: Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe on these who were killed, so that they may live.’”

So Ezekiel prophesied as he was commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived. They stood up on their feet, a very great army.

Then the Lord said to him, “Son of man, these bones are the whole people of Israel. They are saying, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. We are completely cut off.’

“So prophesy and tell them, ‘The Lord God says: I will open your graves, my people, and bring you up out of them, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. You will know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves and brought you up out of your graves, my people. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. Then I will place you in your own land, and you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and done it, says the Lord.’”

“When your people say to you, ‘Won’t you show us what you mean by these?’ tell them, ‘The Lord God says: I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel with him. I will put them together with the stick of Judah and make them one stick, and they will be one in my hand.’ The sticks you have written on will be in your hand, where they can see them.

“Then say to them, ‘The Lord God says: I will take the people of Israel out from among the nations where they have gone, and gather them in from every side and bring them into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. One king will be king over them all. They will no longer be two nations. They won’t be split into two kingdoms any more. They won’t make themselves unclean any more with their idols, their disgusting things or any of their sins. I will save them from all the places where they lived and sinned, and I will make them clean. So they will be my people, and I will be their God.’”

He told Gog to be ready, with all the companies gathered to him, and to be their guard. In the latter years Gog would come like a storm, like a cloud covering the land, against the mountains of Israel, which had lain in ruins so long. Its people would be living securely there, brought back from war and gathered out of many peoples. Gog would make an evil plan. He would go up against a land of villages without walls, against people living at rest with no walls, bars or gates, and he would take plunder. He would come from his place in the far north with many peoples, all riding horses, a mighty army. The Lord would bring Gog against his own land, so that the nations would know the Lord when he showed himself holy through Gog before their eyes.

But on the day Gog came against the land of Israel, the Lord’s anger would rise. There would be a great shaking in the land, and the fish, the birds, the animals, every creeping thing and every person on earth would shake at his presence. Mountains would be thrown down, and every wall would fall. Every man’s sword would be against his brother. The Lord would judge Gog with disease and bloodshed. He would send pouring rain, great hailstones, fire and sulfur down on Gog and his hordes. He would make himself known in the eyes of many nations, and they would know that he is the Lord.

Again the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy against Gog. The Lord would turn Gog around and lead him on from the far north onto the mountains of Israel. He would strike the bow out of Gog’s left hand and make his arrows fall from his right. Gog would fall on the mountains of Israel, he and all his hordes and the peoples with him. They would fall in the open field, and the Lord would give them as food to hungry birds of every kind and to the wild animals.

The people who lived in Israel’s cities would go out and use the weapons as firewood: shields large and small, bows and arrows, war clubs and spears. They would burn them for seven years, and take no wood from the fields or the forests. They would plunder those who had plundered them. The Lord would give Gog a place for burial in Israel, the valley of those who pass through, east of the sea. There they would bury Gog and all his great crowd and call it the Valley of Hamon Gog. The people of Israel would spend seven months burying them, to make the land clean.

The Lord would set his glory among the nations. Then all the nations would see his judgment and the hand he had laid on them. From that day on, the people of Israel would know that he was the Lord their God. The nations would know that Israel’s people had gone into captivity for their own wrongs. They had been unfaithful to him, so he had hidden his face from them and given them into their enemies’ hands, and they had all fallen by the sword. He had done to them as their uncleanness and their sins deserved.

But now, the Lord God said, he would end the captivity of Jacob and have mercy on all the people of Israel. He would be jealous for his holy name. They would forget their shame and all the ways they had been unfaithful to him, when they were living securely in their land, where no one would make them afraid. He would bring them back from the peoples, and many nations would see him show himself holy among them. Then they would know that he was the Lord their God, who had sent them into captivity among the nations and gathered them back to their own land, leaving none of them captive any more. “I won’t hide my face from them any more,” he said, “because I have poured out my Spirit on the people of Israel.”