Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.”
Ezekiel 37:11 NIVUK
There are sayings in other languages that don’t make too much sense in ours.
For example, in Sweden, if you have nothing to worry about, you say that ‘There is no cow on the ice.’
In Polish, if you have no sense of music, they ask you if an elephant stomped on your ear.
In Romanian, if something is very easy, they say that it’s like a flower behind your ears.
To a non-Jewish ear, this feeling that your bones are dry seems a little nonsensical. After all, around 60% of an adult human body is made up of water. How can your bones be dry?
But if we explore Jewish traditions then we understand the true meaning of this phrase.
Many Jewish Rabbis believed that, once someone has died, their spirit hovers above the body for three days. After seven days, the final funeral rites are carried out.
But the Jews here believe their bones are dry. This does not mean that they are very thirsty. Instead, it means that they are dead and have been dead for a long time. Hence in verse 12 God says that He will open up their graves.
In other words, hope is so far from these exiled Jews that they consider themselves as dead to it.
That is the brutal truth of these words. They have, in effect, given up.
And, given what we know from their history, it isn’t hard to see why.
Maybe your situation is similar. Maybe you used to have hope, but you gave that up a long time ago, and now you only know sadness. A very depressing rock band whose main song writer killed himself wrote a song with the title ‘From Despair to Where?’ Maybe that’s exactly how you feel.
These verses have the answer.
Because while these exiled Jews felt like their bones were dry, this is the Lord’s response:
He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
Ezekiel 37:3-4 NIVUK
Now here is where we could make a big mistake. You see, we might think, ‘Oh, I only need to hear the Word of the Lord. So if I get someone to read the Bible to me, then my situation will turn around’.
Not so!
The Bible is not a good luck charm. Hearing someone reading it might calm our soul (depending on what they are reading), but it will not magically change everything for us.
You see, the word ‘hear’ can also be translated as ‘obey’.
The Jews were not only being commanded to hear the Word of the Lord like some form of music, but also to obey it. This can be seen in Ezekiel’s vision by the fact that the bones don’t just lie there on the ground when Ezekiel prophesies to them. No, they move and come together (Ezekiel 37:7).
They obey the Word of the Lord.
But why is obedience so important to their recovery?
The simple reason is that disobedience was the root cause of all their troubles, and for decades they seemed to want to do anything but repent and obey God again.
Look at this tremendous, yet also sad, verse from Isaiah:
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
Isaiah 30:15 NIVUK
The call from every one of the righteous, godly prophets in the lead in to the Exile was to repent. Every single one. The reason why the Exile took place was because they did not repent (2 Chronicles 36:13-16).
Now please understand me: I am not saying that the root cause of all our problems is our own sin. Often it is, but often it isn’t.
What I am saying is that the way out of our problems begin when we give up on the defeatist attitude that many of the Jews had in Ezekiel’s day, when we give up trying to trick and connive our way out of trouble like many of the Jews before them, and when we seek to obey the Word of the Lord instead.
The Word of the Lord is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path (Psalm 119:105). When we decide to use it to guide us through the troubles of life, we know for sure that we will make it to the other side.
Questions
Why was obedience the only way the Jews could see their people restored?
How hard is it to obey if you are in the habit of disobeying?
How can you obey the Word of the Lord in your situation? How could He lead you through it?
Comments