stages are wholly God's work. The prophet's part was to prophesy to
the bones first; and his word, in a sense, brought about the effect
which it foretold, since his ministry was the most potent means of
rekindling dying hopes, and bringing the _disjecta membra_ of the nation
together again. The vivid and gigantic imagination of the prophet gives
a picture of the rushing together of the bones, which has no superior in
any literature. He hears a noise, and sees a 'shaking' (by which is
meant the motion of the bones to each other, rather than an
'earthquake,' as the Revised Version has it, which inserts a quite
irrelevant detail), and the result of all is that the skeletons are
complete. Then follows the gradual clothing with flesh. There they lie,
a host of corpses.

The second stage is the quickening of these bodies with life, and here
again Ezekiel, as God's messenger, has power to bring about what he
announces; for, at his command, the breath, or wind, or spirit, comes,
and the stiff corpses spring to their feet, a mighty army. The
explanation in the last verses of the text somewhat departs from the
tenor of the vision by speaking of Israel as buried, but keeps to its
substance, and point the despairing exiles to God as the source of
national resurrection. But we must not force deeper meaning on Ezekiel's
words than they properly bear. The spirit promised in them is simply the
source of life,--literally, of physical life; metaphorically, of
national life. However that national restoration was connected with
holiness, that does not enter into the prophet's vision. Israel's
restoration to its land is all that Ezekiel meant by it. True, that
restoration was to lead to clearer recognition by Israel of the name of
Jehovah, and of all that it implied in him and demanded from them. But
the proper scope of the vision is to assure despairing Israelites that
God would quicken the apparently slain national life, and replace them
in the land.

II. We may extend the application of the vision to the condition of
humanity and the divine intervention which communicates life to a dead
world, but must remember that no such meaning was in Ezekiel's thoughts.
The valley full of dry bones is but too correct a description of the
aspect which a world 'dead in trespasses and sins' bears, when seen from
the mountain-top by pure and heavenly eyes. The activities of godless
lives mask the real spiritual death, which is the condition of every
s