Can we find consolation in darkness so deep, as bodies pile up, and hope seems impossible?
Sometimes the prophetic visions can imagine the impossible light at the end of the tunnel.
Ezekiel’s Vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones is his famous response to this kind of historical despair. It’s one of the most known of the biblical prophecies, popular and important in several religious traditions, while it is interpreted in radically different ways.
Christian thinkers see it as a precursor to the resurrection of Jesus. In Muslim tradition it is alluded to in the Quran, found in the parable about the future Day of Judgement: “Look at the bones, how We set them together, then clothed them with flesh.” ( 2:259)
Ezekiel’s original intent is allegorical - this vision imagines national revival of the bruised nation. But for many Jewish readers, these verses became the primary source for the concept of the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead. In modern times this chapter inspired the anthem of the Zionist dream.
What is this vision all about?
In the aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction, Ezekiel is brought in his mind to a vast valley full of dry human bones. He is instructed by God to imagine these remains coming to life, and as skeletons begin, assemble, bone to bone, he is next guided in how to reanimate them and revive their spirit as well:
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלַ֔י הִנָּבֵ֖א אֶל־הָר֑וּחַ הִנָּבֵ֣א בֶן־אָ֠דָ֠ם וְאָמַרְתָּ֨ אֶל־הָר֜וּחַ כֹּה־אָמַ֣ר אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִ֗ה מֵאַרְבַּ֤ע רוּחוֹת֙ בֹּ֣אִי הָר֔וּחַ וּפְחִ֛י בַּהֲרוּגִ֥ים הָאֵ֖לֶּה וְיִֽחְיֽוּ׃
Then (YHWH) said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, O mortal! Say to the breath: Thus said YHWH: Come, O breath, from the four winds, and breathe into these slain, that they may live again.”
Ezekiel 37:9
And as these dead begin coming to life, Ezekiel comprehends the vision’s meaning:
וַיֹּ֘אמֶר֮ אֵלַי֒ בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם הָעֲצָמ֣וֹת הָאֵ֔לֶּה כׇּל־בֵּ֥ית יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל הֵ֑מָּה הִנֵּ֣ה אֹמְרִ֗ים יָבְשׁ֧וּ עַצְמוֹתֵ֛ינוּ וְאָבְדָ֥ה תִקְוָתֵ֖נוּ נִגְזַ֥רְנוּ לָֽנוּ׃
And I was told, “O mortal, these bones are the whole House of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed.’
Ezekiel 37:11
Robert Alter explains that the basic meaning of this chapter refers to national aspiration:
“ Early Jewish and Christian interpreters took it as a prophecy of the resurrection of the dead, but it is quite doubtful that this is what Ezekiel meant. The scattered dry bones of the long dead are a symbolic image of the people of Israel in exile, its national existence violently ended by the conquest and destruction of the kingdom of Judah. The miraculous return to life of the bones figures the restoration of national existence in the homeland.”
But as the exile continued, and even afterwards, as more Judeans came back to populate the land in later generations, a very different set of interpretations took Ezekiel’s vision to be not about national restoration - but about individual resurrection. Within three centuries of his prophecy, the idea that all or at least some human bodies do not compose but will relive again at the end of days - became quite popular. Many scholars suggest that Ezekiel’s vision was the cornerstone of this belief that kept growing but was also quite a serious source for contention.
Where did this idea emerge from? In earlier biblical books there is only Sheol - some sort of underworld, without much clarity about the procedures. There are allusions to the notion of resurrection in a vision of Isaiah and the pages of Daniel - the last persona in the Bible - but today’s chapter is the one that set the tone to a historical debate that has not yet been settled.
Prof.Devorah Dimant suggests that
“Despite the paucity of biblical evidence for resurrection, or perhaps because of it, the question of whether resurrection of the dead will occur was the focus of intense debate during the last centuries of the Second Temple era...The Pharisees accepted resurrection while the Sadducees rejected it.. Eventually, guided by the Pharisees, Rabbinic Judaism adopted the principle of resurrection and a future life as a key element of Jewish faith.”
It’s hard for us to imagine this today - but for hundreds of years the debate over the validity of resurrection as a major tenant of Jewish faith ruptured relations between competing Jewish camps. Recent archaeology reveals that this debate was even part of more marginal Jewish groups during the Second Temple period - including the sects hiding in the Dead Sea caves of Qumran.
One of the scrolls found in fragments in those digs revealed what is now known as the Scroll of Pseudo-Ezekiel - a creative interpretation of today’s chapter by an unknown 2nd century BCE scribe. The gist of the scroll lays out the basic tenets for the resurrection of the dead - but only for righteous individuals. Eventually, the rabbinic approach won the argument, and the belief in the resurrection of the dead was inserted into our prayer books, and later, by Maimonides, as one of the 13 articles of faith. Although it is official dogma, many voices over time have questioned its claim, and in recent centuries, liberal Jewish voices, inspired by science and free-thinking, continue to challenge this vision as anything other than allegory.
Two thousand years after being first debated as a death related doctrine, the Dry Bones prophecy got reinvented again as political poetry.
Naphtali Herz Imber , Galician born, was an early modern Hebrew poet who lived in Palestine for a few idealistic years in the 1880’s. While living in Jerusalem he published his first book of Hebrew poems, named Barkay or “Morning Star”- which included a poem called Tikvateinu “Our Hope”. Imber named the poem after the verse in today’s chapter - in which the scattered bones of the people are too tired for hope.
After it was set to a popular Central European folk tune, Imber’s poem was sung at the 6th Zionist Congress in 1903. Its name was changed to Ha’Tikvan- The Hope - and it quickly spread to become the anthem of the Zionist movement, and later - the State of Israel.
However this vision features in the fictions and the faiths of people everywhere, this is an enduring image that has empowered people in peril to see beyond the pain of mortality, personal losses and collective collapse. Whether it is about personal possibilities of rising from the dead or collective capability to rebuild nations - Ezekiel’s words live on, beyond their original spoken intent, the printed page, to give a breath of fresh air, another chance of life, a sense of hope and purpose when all seems lost and death is the final frontier.
At this bleak moment, as the war over land, safe dignity, justice and hope in the holy land and its surroundings keeps adding victims to the horrific pile of corpses - how can hope be raised up for all people who so badly need to hold on to visions of better days? Ezekiel wraps up the chapter with a future vision of ‘Brit Shalom - Brit Olam - a covenant of peace that will be eternal, between the people living on the land and their shared divine source. Maybe we can help this vision grow, bone to bone, breath to breath, by holding on to its possibility.
As Krista Tippett wrote:
“Hope is a muscle, a practice, a choice that actually propels new realities into being. And it’s a muscle we can strengthen”.
@kristatippet
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