The Valley of Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37-39

            Wrapping up this section of Ezekiel needs two comments. The first is about Ezekiel’s most famous vision: whether you knew it was his or not, almost everyone knows the vision of the valley of dry bones. The big question, of course, is what is this vision about. My answer makes some assumptions. I assume that understanding the fullness of God’s revelation is only possible after the ministry of Jesus, especially after His death and resurrection. That is the lens which brings the Scriptures into focus. So, for example, although there is evidence of the Trinity all the way back to Genesis 1, it wasn’t until the church reflected on the nature of God in the light of Christ that we came to confess it fully. In terms of Ezekiel 37, I think we need to recognize that Israel’s understanding of the afterlife was long in developing. In many of the psalms, for example, we find the word Sheol, the grave, the place of the dead, and it is a nasty place, described as dark and wet, like a dungeon. No one praises the Lord from there (Psalm 6:5, a psalm of David). Yet, by Psalm 116 (unattributed and undated), we read that the death of the Lord’s holy ones weighs on Him, and David himself hints at some kind of hope beyond death. Still, I don’t think Israel had really thought about bodily resurrection until much later, 150 years before Jesus or so. So, the vision of the valley of dry bones is, in its first instance, a prophecy about Israel’s national restoration. We can’t discount that this vision fired the imagination and understanding of later generations who came back here to better understand the fate of God’s people after their physical death. Even though I don’t think that’s what Ezekiel was talking about at the time, certainly in mature reflection we see here an image that draws us forward to the resurrection on the last day.

            The second comment is from chapter 38 and the naming of Gog, from the land of Magog. Probably this is some unknown ruler for what we name as Asia Minor, and the point is that the Lord’s justice will extend to the farthest nations. The problem is that Gog and Magog are named in Revelation 20, and dispensationalists have set all sorts of people’s hair on fire about some mythic, end-time battle called Armageddon. So, let the Ezekiel set the terms on which Revelation draws, and Armageddon becomes a sort of symbol for the world’s opposition to the Lord and His church, which extends until His return in glory. May be I’ll be able to comment on that when we get to Revelation later this year, but for now, let’s just see Gog of Magog as one more nation against whom the Lord speaks.