Of Bones and Sticks

For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?—Romans 11:15

A verse by verse study in Ezekiel 37

Vivid imagery characterizes the book of Ezekiel. In many respects it is the Old Testament counterpart to the book of Revelation. Not only does the prophet see a number of graphic visions, he becomes an interactive participator in them. This is especially true in the two visions which comprise the thirty-seventh chapter of his writings.

The Sections of Ezekiel

The prophecy is directed primarily toward the Jewish people living in Babylonian captivity, though the book actually begins some six years before the fall of the last king, Zedekiah. Set at such a dramatic turning point in Jewish history, it is easy to see that the prophecy as a whole is concerned with the future of that nation.

The book itself divides naturally into four sections: (1) The first three chapters begin with his vision of the glory of God and show how this became the introduction of his personal ministry. (2) The second division (chaps. 4-24) delineate God’s judgments on Judah and Israel. (3) The next section (chaps. 25-32) details God’s judgments on the surrounding gentile nations. (4) The final part of the book includes a happy ending, a series of prophecies concerning Israel’s regathering and restoration as the People of God.

The chapter to be considered here lies in the last section and gives important details concerning the regathering of Israel.

The Setting

"The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest" (vs. 1-3).

The valley may have been the same plain where the Lord was wont to talk with Ezekiel (3:22, 23). In vision he sees the valley strewn with bones: not piled in heaps but scattered, as though the people had died in battle. The fact that they were unburied in the vision lends hope for resuscitation; buried bones, like those of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 39:12, 15 are put out of sight, not awaiting a resurrection.

The dryness of the bones stands in sharp contrast to the bones of a healthy man who has died as described in Job 21:23, 24: "One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. His breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow."

Ezekiel’s answer to the query, "Can these bones live?," is wise. The obvious response is, "No, of course not!" Ezekiel, however, does not challenge the power of the Almighty. His reaction is simply, "O Lord God, thou knowest."

A Command to Prophesy

"Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord" (vs. 4-6)

This vision, like so many in the book of Ezekiel, is interactive. Rather than giving the prophet the answer to his question, he invites the prophet to participate in furnishing the answer. The prophecy God gives Ezekiel to pronounce identifies three stages in the process of life returning to these dry bones.

"Hear the word of the Lord!" This is fundamental. No action can take place without there being first a hearkening to the word of God. Jesus’ words that there will be a resurrection of all follows the same order: "Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment" (John 5:28, 29 NAS).

Second, as described in the following verses, the mechanical action of bringing the bones back to life occurs in orderly stages. First, the bones come together; then sinews, muscles, and flesh. Now they are ready for the grand climax —the breath of life entering the still bodies so that they can live.

Finally, ". . . and ye shall know that I am the Lord." This is contrary to what many expect. There is a general concept that man must first know the Lord in order to obtain life. Here the order is reversed; they are resuscitated and then brought to know the Lord. This same order is given by the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 2:3, 4: "For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."

Bodies Reassembled

"So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them" (vs. 7, 8).

As the prophet delivers his message two forces react to bring the randomly strewn bones back together—a noise and a shaking. The former is caused by the latter. The word here translated shaking is oftentimes translated "earthquake" in the Bible. The noise is the sound of the quake. Earthquakes are symbols of social revolution. A notable example is in the "wind, earthquake, and fire" of Elijah’s prophetic vision at Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19).

The bones of this prophecy are identified as "the whole house of Israel" in verse eleven. In a miracle of our time, the house of Israel, scattered throughout the world and driven from country to country, has come back together in its ancestral homeland. No natural contributing factor has been more important in this regathering than the spirit of social revolution and demand for independence that has been encircling the globe since the American and French revolutions of the late eighteenth century.

It was not until 1878, however, that the Hebrew people had a place to go and reassemble themselves as a nation. In that year the Turko-Russian war came to an end at the Berlin Congress of Nations. Presided over by a British Jew, Lord Beaconsfield, the peace treaty there agreed upon recognized the rights of all—Jew or gentile—to own property in the area then called Palestine. No one responded more immediately than the Jewish community. Pressured by a series of pogroms in Russia, a contingent of Israelis departed for the new territory and established a beachhead in the colony of Petach Tikvah—"the door of hope." Further immigration was spurred when Theodor Herzl organized the World Zionist Congress in 1897.

From 1878 to 1948 the regathered exiles began forming the infrastructure of a government. In 1912 the Hadassah, under Elizabeth Szold, began to provide medical services for the returning exiles. In 1912 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, followed in 1918 by the Hebrew University, made top quality higher education available. Labor organized the Histadrut in 1920 and the defense forces began to be formed by the Haganah the same year. The political and economic underpinnings of statehood developed under the Jewish Agency, formed in 1929, with the first political party, Mapai, appearing the following year, in 1930.

From the bones of nothingness events were heading for the inevitable: statehood. The official announcement of statehood on May, 14, 1948 was greeted by diplomatic recognition from a number of countries, starting with the United States. Membership in the United Nations gave Israel a definite seat in the world family of nations. Yet one thing was lacking, "but there was no breath in them."

The Second Prophecy

"Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts" (vs. 9-11).

Ezekiel is now instructed to turn from the bones and prophesy to a new audience—"the wind." The specific wind is here identified with "the four winds." These "four winds" are identified in Revelation 7:1 with a force that threatens to "hurt" the whole earth and are held in check until the church of Christ is first "sealed in their foreheads." The term "four winds" is suggestive of conflicting blasts, as in a whirlwind or hurricane. Most expositors conclude that it is a picture of extremely severe trouble, trouble without specific direction, as in anarchy. This would seem to agree with the picture of "fire" in Elijah’s prophecy of 1 Kings 19.

Out of the midst of this whirlwind of anarchy another wind is to arise and become a "breath of life" to the bones now assembled in Ezekiel’s valley. This might well represent a final onslaught of trouble for the newly assembled nation such as described in the two following chapters of Ezekiel (chaps. 38 and 39). It also fits well with an event described in Jeremiah 30:7, "Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it." The response to this prophecy is immediate. The bones now assume life, with the final act calling to remembrance the giving of life to Adam in the Garden of Eden, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7).

God proceeds to explain the vision to Ezekiel by identifying the bones, not as individual Israelites, but as the hopes and prospects of that nation. These hopes, once burning so brightly within the Hebrew consciousness, had dimmed and seemed impossible of realization. In a similar vein, at the first advent, Jesus is described as "a root out of dry ground" (Isa. 53:2). As their fortunes turn, their hopes reawaken and grow multitudinously—"an exceeding great army." So total had been their scattering that they felt "completely cut off," as the idiom "cut off for our parts" signifies.

The Third Prophecy

"Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD" (vs. 12-14).

Now the prophet turns to his real audience, the people of Israel. They are at one of the darkest points in their history, just having been taken as a captive people to the city of Babylon, hundreds of miles from their beloved homeland. Their defeat by King Nebuchadnezzar had been so complete that their hopes of return were almost forsaken. Only a few kept the hopes burning brightly, like faithful Daniel, who prayed three times a day with his face toward Jerusalem (Dan. 6:10).

Like Jeremiah, much of what Ezekiel had to say was in prophecies of doom. Now he could say that this experience, like any chastening of God, was to have its end. How often they must have asked, "Will the Lord cast off for ever? and Will he be favorable no more?" (Psa. 77:7). Now the answer would come, as it had to the Psalmist, "For the Lord will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance" (Psa. 94:14).

Ezekiel appears to broaden the scope of the prophecy in these verses. Formerly he spoke of their national hopes being as dry bones which would come back to life. Now he speaks of a personal resurrection. The two thoughts are not contradictory. They complement each other. What good would it be to revive the hopes without reviving those who hope?

One enigma remains. Here he speaks of putting his spirit within them before placing them in their own land. Elsewhere he speaks of them already being in Jerusalem before he pours his spirit upon them (Zech. 12:9, 10). The harmony is in grasping the thought of what God means by "placing" them in their land. Strong’s Concordance defines the Hebrew yanach, here translated "place," as being to "allow to stay." Dwelling in the land is one thing,, it is another to have the land by covenant ownership. Abraham dwelt most of his life in this land, but as a "sojourner," "as in a strange country" (Heb. 11:9).

This thought seems well expressed in Ezekiel 20:38, "And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD."

When this personal resuscitation is accomplished he "puts his spirit in them," and as a result they recognize him as their delivering Lord. The words of the following chapters agree (see 38:23 and 39:7).

A Vision of Two Sticks

"The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions: And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand" (vs. 15-17).

Now the vision changes. The previous vision had been to "the whole house of Israel" (v. 11), but Israel, at the time, was divided into two kingdoms. The ten-tribe kingdom of Israel abided in the north and the two-tribe kingdom of Judah in the south. In this second vision he foresees the reuniting of the divided house. They would reunite as one nation.

Curiosity Satisfied

"And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these? Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand. And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all: Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwelling places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God" (vs. 18-23).

Watching Ezekiel playing with these two sticks must have seemed like a child at play to his viewing audience. Their curiosity prompted further inquiry. This produced the proper frame of mind for delivering the message behind the sticks. First, both nations would be scattered. Most of the ten tribe kingdom did not return to Israel from the Babylonian captivity, though a smattering of all tribes did. Judah, of whom more returned, would be again scattered by the Romans in both A.D. 70 and again in A. D. 135.

The scattering became more and more worldwide as they were chased out of one country after another. He speaks of this Diaspora as already beginning in the days of Ezekiel’s prophecy, early in the Babylonian captivity. After the dispersion has accomplished its work (and the gospel call comes to a close), he regathers them back to their native land.

This had not been their first captivity. They had been a tribute people to the Philistines, the Midianites, and other nations. From those periods of subjection they repented, but soon turned back to their idolatrous ways. This time, Ezekiel informs them, they will never return to idolatry.

This transformation will not come automatically but, as he prophesies, "I will cleanse them." This work is not yet accomplished, though Israel has returned to her land. Before that can happen they must become "one nation" with "one king."

One King, One Land, One Covenant

"And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (vs. 24-27).

Israel became divided by a dispute between two kings—Jeroboam and Rehoboam. Now they would be united under one king: David, not the David of old but that great descendant of his, Jesus of Nazareth, "the son of David."

They had been citizens of two lands: Judea and Israel. Now they return to the land of a more distant past—to the time when God had originally promised the whole of the land of Canaan to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob. They had had one covenant in the past, but it had not proved to be "a covenant of peace." Because of their inability to keep that covenant it had become a covenant of death instead of a covenant of life. Now they would be reunited under a "new covenant," as another prophet predicted:

"Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:31-33).

Matthew Henry, in his Commentary, phrases this new condition of Israel in glowing terms: "They shall be one, one nation, . . . They shall have no separate interests, and, consequently, no divided affections. There shall be no mutual jealousies and animosities, no remembrance, no remains, of their former discord. But there shall be a perfect harmony between them, a good understanding one of another, a good disposition one to another, and a readiness to all good offices and services for one another’s credit and comfort. They had been two sticks crossing and thwarting one another, nay, beating and bruising one another; but now they shall become one, supporting and strengthening one another."

The Gentiles

"And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore" (v. 28).

The beauty of God’s plan is that it is not only for one nation or one people. It is not just for the Jew, nor is it just for the church. It encompasses "all men." In his economy, Jehovah uses the same experience to sanctify his name both to his chosen people of the past, Israel, and to all other nations.

In the two succeeding chapters in Ezekiel we read that many of these nations shall join a coalition to attack Israel. It will seem to be successful. Zechariah, speaking of the same event, says, "the city shall be taken" (Zech. 14:2). But, in the end, God himself shall fight for and deliver Israel. Not all of the attacking forces will be killed, but we read in Isaiah 66:18, 19:

"For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles."

Not only will the gentiles return to their countries and tell the wondrous things they have seen, but Israelis shall become missionaries, spreading the same good news. We read of this in Micah 5:7, "And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the LORD, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men."

At the head of this restored Israel will be their ancient prophets (Isa. 1:26). These, too, will be intermediaries in spreading the news and the work of the incoming kingdom, the kingdom of the greater than David, to all the world. We read of them in Psalm 45:16, "Instead of thy fathers, shall be thy children, whom, thou mayest make princes in all the earth."

Then nation will not fight nation, but love will well up in every heart. Then sickness will be no more, the eyes of the blind will be opened and the lame man leap as an hart. Then death will give way to life. And, best of all, then men will not need to inquire of the Lord but all will know his name, "from the least to the greatest." What a time that will be!