The Hope of Israel and the Resurrection

The hope of Israel is tied directly to the resurrection. Nowhere in the Old Testament is this made more explicit than in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14). Here, the image of the resurrection is used to describe the restoration of "the whole house of Israel" to its homeland. When Israel returns from its exile in Babylon, it will be as though the dead have been raised to life. The dead, dry bones will be reconstituted, "bone to its bone" and there will be "sinews on them" along with flesh and skin. Then God will send his Spirit and breathe upon them, as he did when he first created Adam, and they will come to life.

These words, spoken to a people in exile, offered comfort and hope. God would eventually bring them home. But this is to be no ordinary homecoming. "Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people," God says. "And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people."

But is this simply a metaphor for the return to the Promised Land? Many, no doubt, thought so after they did, in fact, return after seventy years of exile in Babylon. But the careful reader would have grasped the deeper meaning of Ezekiel's vision. It was a vision involving "the whole house of Israel," not just the two souther tribes who had been carried off to Babylon. God promised his people a return to "the land of Israel," not merely the region of Judah, where the southern tribes had lived.

Read it all at Columbia Faith and Culture Examiner.