Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.'” Ezekiel 37:9 NLT
One of the most vivid allegories of the Bible is found in Ezekiel 37. There Ezekiel is taken to a valley where a terrible battle had taken place. So many hundreds of warriors had died, and the defeat had been so devastating that the bodies had not even been buried. The devourers had eaten what flesh they could, and the rest had decayed so that nothing was left but a field of bones. This is death to the nth degree. Death, death, death.
That was Judah in Babylon, defeated and destroyed, nothing but a field of bones: dead, dead, dead. But Yahweh told Ezekiel to command these bodies to live, and when he did, the bones came together and were clothed with flesh. God seemed to be saying that he could reconstitute Judah. It would not lose its identity in that valley of death, Babylon.
But what then? Those bodies were just reconstituted corpses. They were still dead. Suppose, against all the odds, the Judeans could survive as a people and go home again, so what? Could they really come alive to God again? Yes! Yahweh tells Ezekiel to speak to the wind, the breath, and when he did, those corpses began to breathe and live. Judah could become a living, breathing reality again in God’s great plan of world redemption.
There is a wonderful word play going on here, because in the Bible the same Hebrew word is used for “wind,” “breath,” “spirit,” and “Spirit.” What is Ezekiel 37 telling us? It is telling us that Death cannot compete with God! It is not the end of everything. Through the same Spirit that breathed the world into existence, God is able to defeat the death brought about by sin, and to give new life to those who were “dead in trespasses and sin.” The world knows nothing of this. There is no hope for those whom sin has defeated and killed. A lie! There is hope and the Spirit sent to us by Jesus is the proof of it. Come to him and live forevermore!
Called To Be Transformed 