Breathe that They may Live!

5LentA Ezekiel 37:1-14 by Annette Fricke

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath (ruah), prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath (ruah): Thus, says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds (ruah plural), O breath (ruah), and breathe upon these slain, that they may live” (Ezekiel 37:9). The Hebrew word ruah, meaning “breath” and “wind” as well as “spirit,” is repeated ten times in these fourteen verses -- four times in the climactic verse 9 alone.  Breath, wind and spirit are thought to be similar terms denoting the same thing.  They are all approximations descriptive of what some would say is the grace of God.  On our own, we cannot give ourselves life, but God can.

Ezekiel insists that individuals are both utterly free to make moral choices and responsible for the consequences of these choices. Each individual is given the chance to make decisions that may be life-giving or death-dealing (Ezekiel 18). Yet Ezekiel sees little evidence that Judeans will choose more wisely in the future than they have in the past. Though blessed with moral agency, they are no more able to use this faculty well than lifeless bones are able to get up and walk.

But Ezekiel discovers divine grace instead. This grace initiated the whole human enterprise by making humans from dust and breathing into them the breath, ruah, of life (Genesis 2:7). God likewise initiated the entire Israelite project, choosing to take slaves from Egypt, giving them God’s own law, and bringing them to a good land -- and doing this with minimal cooperation (Ezekiel 20:5-14). Now, Ezekiel says, God will take the initiative yet again: God’s spirit will bring new life to a people dead as stone, dead as bones.

Divine initiative and human action are interwoven throughout this passage. It is God who leads Ezekiel to the valley and directs his attention and speech. It is the prophet who sees, and describes, the utterly dry bones, and responds by doing as he is asked, ordering the desecrated bones to hear God’s word. As he does so, with no help from the bones themselves (what could the dead do?), God brings them together.

God adds sinews, tendons to attach them; flesh, muscles to make them strong, and skin to give them form. Yet still they lie lifeless. It is only when God tells the prophet to speak to the ruah -- the spirit, or breath -- and Ezekiel does so, that the spirit breath blows from the four winds and the bodies live and stand. Divine agency and human response appear interwoven, if not inextricable. Initiative comes from God, who makes sure the prophet participates. Ezekiel calls to the spirit; the spirit enters the people; they come to life, a vast multitude.  What was once desecrated, without life now becomes holy with life and the potential to serve God once again.

It seems quite logical that the original giving of the Holy Spirit in early Christian rituals was not by the laying on of hands, but breathing on a person.  We now associate breathing on someone with spreading germs.  But think for a moment about the qualities of wind or breath.  A cold wind penetrates to the bone, doesn’t it?  Anyone who has lived in a damp, cold, humid climate knows this to be the case.  It makes sense then that God’s spirit penetrates to the bone and that is how dry bones can come alive!

God’s Spirit, which is really God’s grace is what fills the gap between what we are made for and putting that grace into action.  We are not meant to be dead pew sitters, but alive in Christ people who think and move and take action in the world about us.  Just as Jesus reached out to others, that also is our mission.