The hand of the Lord brings Ezekiel out and sets him down in the middle of a valley full of bones, leading him back and forth among them so he can see how many there are, and how completely dry. God then asks him a question that has only one reasonable answer by any natural measure: “Son of man, can these bones live?”
Ezekiel does not say no, but he does not claim to know either. And then he is told to preach to the bones before anything about them has changed.
He Refused to Answer With Either False Confidence or Flat Denial
“Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” Ezekiel does not pretend certainty he does not have, and he does not rule out the possibility simply because it looks impossible. He hands the question back to the one who asked it, which turns out to be the only honest answer available to him.
The Instruction Came Before Any Visible Change
“Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!'” Ezekiel is told to speak to bones that show no sign of responding to anything. The command to prophesy is given while the valley still looks exactly as lifeless as it did when he first arrived.
The Bones Responded in Stages, Not All at Once
“As I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone… tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.” The restoration happens visibly but incompletely at first. Fully formed bodies lie in the valley with no life in them, an intermediate stage that would have been easy to mistake for the whole miracle.
He Had to Prophesy a Second Time for the Breath to Come
“Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.'” The bodies forming was not the end of the assignment. A second specific act of prophesying, aimed now at the breath itself, is required before the vast army stands up alive.
“So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast army.”
Ezekiel 37:10
He spoke to bones that could not hear him, in a valley that gave him no reason to expect a response. He had to speak twice before the valley stood up as an army.
