Commentary on Ezekiel 37:1-14

The Valley of Dry Bones is perhaps the best-known text from the book of Ezekiel. In it, the Spirit of the Lord leads the prophet back and forth throughout a valley filled with bones. Or perhaps the Breath of the Lord leads him; the word is the same in Hebrew, rûaḥ. The Lord commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, and they respond; bones come together, tendons and flesh appear on them, and skin covers them (Ezekiel 37:4–8a). But still “there was no breath [or spirit] in them” (verse 8b). So the Lord commands the prophet to prophesy to the breath (or spirit), and he does. “I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered [the slain]; and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude” (verse 10a).  

If the Dry Bones text is the best-known passage from Ezekiel, the runner-up comes from the directly preceding chapter. This chapter also contains a kind of “Bio Rebuild”: The Lord promises there to remove the people’s heart of stone and to give them a heart of flesh. Many Christians have heard the phrase “heart of flesh” through its repetition by the apostle Paul, who quotes it, from the ancient Greek translation, in 2 Corinthians 3:3. This body imagery, like the enfleshment of bones, testifies to a radical divine restart. 

Like the Dry Bones, the Bio Rebuild process of this (second-best-known) Heart-of-Flesh prophecy climaxes with the endowment of breath or spirit—or perhaps Breath or Spirit, since it is the Lord’s Spirit. The Lord says: “I will put my spirit within you and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:27–28). 

The Bio Rebuild in both Ezekiel texts thus follows three distinct steps: The fleshly human avatar is put together. It is animated by breath. Then, once enlivened, it takes up residence in the place God created to be its home. Indeed, both prophecies, the Dry Bones and the Heart-of-Flesh, attend to the land. In Ezekiel’s view, Israel, the people, does not—cannot—experience vivification outside the land of Israel. 

The very final verse of the Dry Bones passage presents the threefold sequence: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil” (37:14). The Heart-of-Flesh prophecy similarly pictures Israel’s thriving in terms of life on the soil—agricultural abundance: “The land that was desolate shall be tilled, instead of being the desolation that it was in the sight of all who passed by” (36:34; see also 36:29–30). In fact, the Heart-of-Flesh prophecy compares the thriving of the land to the garden of Eden: “They will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined towns are now inhabited and fortified’” (36:31). 

This reference to the garden of Eden draws forward the creation quality of the national restart that both Ezekiel prophecies envision. The tripartite process parallels that of Genesis 2: There, in the beginning, the Lord God fashions a human body out of the soil; he breathes into its nostrils the breath of life; and he settles the human, now a “living being,” in the garden (Genesis 2:7–8). 

The prophet Ezekiel accesses this creation memory in order to declare the sheer divine source of Israel’s hope. The Lord alone can replace one heart with another and put flesh on dry bones. The Lord alone can gift breath or spirit; the Lord alone makes the earth livable; the Lord alone can take a scattered and demoralized nation and bring them home. 

This thoroughgoing insistence on the Lord’s power is a deep caution and a deep encouragement to us in this Lenten season. It is a caution because both creation and re-creation lie fundamentally beyond human ability. We cannot form our own bodies; we are, rather, “knit together in [our] mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13b). So likewise, we cannot create a new “heart of flesh” that is ready to follow God’s will. We cannot regenerate desiccated bones. 

Whether it is our own breath or the Spirit-Breath of God, we cannot produce it; we must receive it. These cautionary considerations hang over any efforts we make: to improve ourselves; to follow through on resolutions; to intensify our spiritual practice. However much or little these succeed, they simply do not amount to the radical divine restart that the Dry Bones and the Heart-of-Flesh imagine. 

The encouragement these prophecies offer consists in this: The Lord has committed to doing it, and the Lord will follow through. “I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it” (36:36b; compare 37:14). The book of Ezekiel emphasizes that the Lord accomplishes these recreative acts for the sake of the divine name—and that the Lord personally undertakes them and does not rely on any understudies or delegates. “I myself will search for my sheep and will sort them out” (35:11b); “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep” (35:15). The Lord promises: “I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you” (37:6). 

God’s power and God’s promise are our surety as we consider our limitations and infirmities: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely. … The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this” (1 Thessalonians 5:23a, 24).