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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, | |
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This is the well-known prophecy referred to as the "Valley of the Dry Bones"
prophecy. It is also the basis of the famous campfire song "Dem Dry
Bones". It's unknown as to whether the valley is tied to a specific location in Israel or simply some valley Ezekiel is seeing that is full of bones. In the great Valley of Megiddo, the last great king of Judah was killed in battle (Josiah) and all the nation mourned for him. After Josiah's death, the nation steadily declined and then went into the Babylonian Captivity. The Valley of Megiddo is also the future site of Armageddon, where Jesus will utterly destroy the gather armies of the entire earth. |
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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. | |
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The description indicates that God is showing Ezekiel a land that has been
desolate for a long time, and the inhabitants had been shamefully destroyed
(not even being buried) long before, and that is left of them is their
skeletons dried out and bleached from many years in the open air. It's also intriguing to picture massive piles of ashes and stacks of dried, burnt bones of the Holocaust victims of Israel in this passage. It was out of the Holocaust that the modern nation of Israel was reborn after World War II. |
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And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest. | |
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Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. | |
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Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: | |
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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. | |
| God is describing (in vision) to Ezekiel that He will resurrect the "long-dead" nation of Israel in the future, bringing them back to life and He will give them an awareness of Him. | ||
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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. | |
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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. | |
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This verse is interesting from a symbolic point of view, because it describes
how when God resurrects Israel, He will first bring the nation back and they
will have all the "physical components" needed to live, but not really be
alive. The Bible uses the term "breath" in many cases to indicate the presence of God's Spirit being with a person. Having the "breath of life" in the physical sense is the same as "being indwelt by the Spirit" in the spiritual sense. Therefore, this verse seems to indicate that when Israel is reborn/regathered as a nation, they will be spiritually dead to God at first, and then after a time, God will "breath on them" and give them His Spirit, and they will believe and call on Him again. This perfectly describes the current rebirth/regathering of Israel today. As a nation, they are spiritually dead to God - in fact, many Israelis believe that God is completely finished with them, as indicated by the Holocaust and the current persecutions. They ask, "Where was God in Auschwitz and Dauchau? Where was God when 6 million of His people were slaughtered?" But God keeps all of His promises, and soon He will breath spiritual life into them and draw them to Himself. |
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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. | |
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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. | |
| Ezekiel is describing here what he sees after God has put His Spirit on the nation of Israel again. The Hebrew word for "army" also means "host" or "multitude", and is not necessarily specific to the military sense of the word "army". | ||
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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. | |
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Israel (for the most part) still feels this way towards God, that He has cast
them off and that they are on their own, struggling to survive in a world that
seeks their utter destruction. But God has NOT forsaken them nor cast them off. He has protected them and fought for them in 1948, 1967, 1973, and even today through the waves of terrorism that have swept over the nation. |
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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. | |
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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, | |
| God declares that the nation of Israel will once again acknowledge Him as their God (instead of their idols) after He has regathered them from all the nations of the world hand planted them into their own land: the ancient lands of Israel. | ||
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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. | |
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During the Tribulation, God will pour out His Spirit on 12,000 people from each
of the 12 tribes of Israel, and through them they will preach to all the Jews
and Gentiles on the earth. These are the 144,000 witnesses in
Revelation.
After the Tribulation, God will pour out His Spirit on the rest of Israel and they will cling to Him. |
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The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, | |
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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: | |
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And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand. | |
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These two verses have been famously misused and misinterpreted by Joseph Smith,
the founder of the Mormons, in an attempt to prove that the Book of Mormon is
one stick and the Bible is the other, and that God is validating the Book of
Mormon by this verse, and thus the whole of Scripture must be made up of both
the Bible and the Book of Mormon. This is one of the most-easily disproven interpretations in the Bible because God Himself gives His own explanation of the verse in v19. If God or someone else in the Bible provides an interpretation of a passage, there is no need to re-interpret the passage, especially in this radical of a fashion. |
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And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou [meanest] by these? | |
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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. | |
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At the end of the reign of King Solomon in about 950 BC, the 12 tribes of
Israel (who were collectively the nation of Israel) had a civil war and divided
themselves into the 10 northern tribes (who continued to call themselves the
nation of Israel) and the 2 southern tribes (Judah and Benjamin) allied
together as the nation of Judah. After the division and the subsequent civil wars, the house of Israel (the 10 northern tribes) went into exile under the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC. Later, the house of Judah went into exile to Babylon in 586 BC. When Cyrus of the Persian Empire allowed the Jews to return to Israel, a mixture of people and families from each of the 12 tribes returned to the land of Israel. However, Israel was never a sovereign nation again until May 14, 1948, fulfilling the 430 years of punishment of Israel and Judah. |
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And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. | |
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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: | |
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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: | |
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In 1948, David Ben-Gurion used these passages in Ezekiel to declare Israel as a
new sovereign nation for the first time since 604 BC.
And when the nation came back into existence in 1948, it came back as the nation of Israel once again, and not as two separate nations like they had been in the past. |
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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 dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. | |
| During and after the Tribulation, Israel will forsake their religion of works and Law, and call upon Jesus their Messiah to save them, when all the nations of the world gather together against them in the Valley of Armageddon. | ||
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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. | |
| Most likely, David will not be resurrected to rule over them; this is probably speaking of Jesus ruling over Israel as their king, and David is figuratively the "root" of Jesus, since he was the first king of the line, while Jesus is the final king of the house of David. | ||
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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. | |
| The language "and my servant David shall be their prince forever" is a further indication that their king will be Jesus (who is the Eternal One), not David. | ||
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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. | |
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My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. | |
| After Israel is regathered to the land, God will setup another temple/tabernacle in the land (see Ezekiel 40-45 for more details). This may not be the same temple as that which is defiled at the middle of the Tribulation. | ||
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And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore. | |
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In Isaiah 2:3, all the heathen nations of the world will go up to worship the
Lord at Jerusalem during the Millennium. And the heathen nations will be
faithful to the Lord, who will also be ruling from Israel. Also, after the Lord sets up his tabernacle in the land once again, Israel will never again be exiled, and the temple will never again be destroyed. |
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King James Version (KJV)
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