YHWH Strengthens
The Breath That Raises the Dead. The Resurrection Declared in a Name.
Part 7 of 14
The Name
His name was Yechezkel (Ezekiel).
It means: YHWH strengthens, or YHWH will strengthen.
The name does not describe a quality Yechezkel possessed. It declares what the presence in him was doing. YHWH strengthening, not through human capability, not through political power, not through the military might of Israel which had just been destroyed and its people carried into Babylonian exile, but through the divine presence acting in and through the vessel that bore its name.
Yechezkel received his commission in one of the most overwhelming opening visions in all of prophetic literature. A storming wind out of the north, a great cloud with flashing fire, four living creatures, wheels within wheels, a crystal expanse, a throne of sapphire, and above it all the appearance of the glory of YHWH. He fell on his face. And the voice said: Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you. The Spirit entered him and set him on his feet.
YHWH strengthens. Not the prophet strengthening himself for the task. The Spirit of the presence entering the vessel and standing it upright. The name declared the mechanism before the commission began. Everything Yechezkel would see and speak would be by the strength of the one whose name he carried, not his own.
YHWH strengthens. The Spirit entered him and stood him on his feet.
The name declared the mechanism. The vision confirmed it from the first moment.
Exile
The Context That Makes the Vision Necessary
Yechezkel (Ezekiel) prophesied among the exiles in Babylon. Jerusalem had fallen. The temple had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The ark of the covenant was gone. The priesthood was scattered. The sacrificial system, the entire apparatus through which YHWH had been approached and known in Israel for centuries, was finished.
From a purely human perspective, the covenant was over. The nation had failed. The land was lost. The people sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion. There was no temple to go to. No sacrifice to offer. No high priest to intercede. If YHWH’s presence was in the temple, and the temple was ash, then where was YHWH?
The answer came through the prophet whose name meant YHWH strengthens. And it was not the answer anyone expected. YHWH had not been left behind in the ruins of Jerusalem. He had gone into exile with his people. The vision of the chariot, the merkavah, showed the divine presence mobile, not fixed. Mounted on wheels. Able to go wherever the exiles went. The God who had been domesticated into a building was declaring through Yechezkel that he had never been contained by the building.
The presence that inhabited Yechezkel was making the same declaration that the open temple doors would make a thousand years later. I am not in the building. I am here. With you. In exile. In Babylon. And I will strengthen what appears to be beyond strengthening.
The Valley of Dry Bones
The Central Vision
The thirty-seventh chapter of Yechezkel (Ezekiel) contains the vision that defines this entire document and anchors the name YHWH strengthens to its ultimate declaration.
The hand of YHWH was upon Yechezkel and he was brought out by the Spirit and set down in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones. And they were very dry.
Very dry. Not recently dead. Not recently scattered. Old. Desiccated. The kind of bones that have been lying in the open for years under a Middle Eastern sun. No moisture. No tissue. No life. No possibility of life by any natural mechanism. The vision is of total, irreversible, absolute death.
YHWH asked: Son of man, can these bones live?
Yechezkel answered: O Lord YHWH, you know.
Then YHWH said: Prophesy over these bones.
Say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of YHWH. Thus says the Lord YHWH to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live. And you shall know that I am YHWH.
Yechezkel prophesied. There was a sound, a rattling, and the bones came together. Sinews appeared. Flesh covered them. Skin covered the flesh. But there was no breath in them.
YHWH said: Prophesy to the breath.
Say to the breath: Thus says the Lord YHWH; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live.
Yechezkel prophesied. The breath came into them. They lived. They stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Very dry bones. No moisture. No life. No possibility. Then breath came. They stood on their feet.
YHWH strengthens, and what YHWH strengthens, death cannot hold.
The Breath
Ruach and What It Declares
The Hebrew word translated breath throughout this vision is ruach. It is the same word used in Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters before creation. It is the same word used when YHWH breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life and he became a living being. It is the same word used throughout the Psalms and prophets for the Spirit of YHWH.
Ruach is not simply air moving through lungs. It is the animating presence of YHWH himself, the divine breath that creates life where there was none, that sustains what would otherwise collapse into death, that raises what has fallen beyond all human capacity to raise.
When the breath came into the dry bones and they stood on their feet, the vision was not describing the resuscitation of a physical army. YHWH explains the vision immediately afterward. These bones are the whole house of Israel. They say our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are indeed cut off.
Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord YHWH; Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am YHWH when I open your graves and raise you from your graves.
The vision is resurrection. Not metaphorical revival. Not political restoration only. Resurrection, YHWH opening graves, YHWH raising what is in the graves, YHWH bringing the dead out of the place of death into life. The presence that inhabited Yechezkel was declaring through the valley vision the central act of the full appearing, the resurrection of Yeshua from the tomb, through which all of humanity was constituted in the new life that the dry bones prefigured.
Paul Reads the Valley
In the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul builds the most concentrated argument about resurrection in the entire New Testament. He begins with the resurrection of Yeshua as the established fact, appeared to Kefa (Peter), then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred at once, then to Yakov (James), then to all the apostles, then to Paul himself.
Then he makes the argument that is the theological conclusion of the valley of dry bones. If Yeshua was raised from the dead, then the dead will be raised. If the dead are not raised, then Yeshua was not raised. And if Yeshua was not raised, the entire proclamation is empty.
But Yeshua was raised. And therefore the resurrection of all is secured in his.
Paul then says: The last enemy to be abolished is death. He must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. And when death is defeated, when the last enemy is placed under the footstool, then the Son delivers the kingdom to the Father, so that God may be all in all.
The ruach that came into the dry bones was the same ruach that raised Yeshua from the tomb. The same breath. The same divine strengthening. The same YHWH who said I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, opening the specific grave in the garden outside Jerusalem, raising the specific body that had been laid in it, and through that raising securing the resurrection of all.
The vision Yechezkel saw in the valley was not a picture of the resurrection. It was the presence of the one who would accomplish the resurrection, showing through his prophet, in advance, what the full appearing would do when the time of the reign was complete.
I will open your graves and raise you from your graves. YHWH said it through Yechezkel. YHWH did it through Yeshua. The same breath. The same strengthening. The same presence in two moments of the same reign.
The New Heart
Written Before Paul Wrote Romans
In the thirty-sixth chapter of Yechezkel, the presence declares something that stands alongside Yirmeyahu’s (Jeremiah’s) new covenant declaration as the most theologically concentrated promise in the entire prophetic tradition.
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.
I will remove. I will give. I will put my Spirit within you. The verbs are all divine. The initiative is entirely YHWH’s. The new heart is not achieved by human effort, religious practice, covenant obedience, or correct belief. It is given. The heart of stone, the hardened, resistant, incapable heart, is removed not by the person’s repentance but by YHWH’s act. And the Spirit placed within is the same ruach that would breathe life into the valley of dry bones.
Paul writes in Romans 8: You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
And: The Spirit of him who raised Yeshua from the dead dwells in you.
The Spirit that raised Yeshua is the Spirit YHWH declared through Yechezkel he would put within his people. The same ruach. The new heart. The removal of the heart of stone. The divine act preceding and producing the human response, not rewarding it. YHWH strengthens before the strengthened one has done anything to merit strengthening.
The name declared it. The visions confirmed it. And the full appearing accomplished what the name and the visions had announced.
The Glory Departing and Returning
In chapters 10 and 11 of Yechezkel, one of the most devastating passages in all of prophetic literature unfolds. The prophet watches the glory of YHWH depart from the temple. Step by step. From the inner sanctuary to the threshold. From the threshold to the east gate. From the east gate to the mountain east of the city. And then it was gone.
The presence had left. The building stood. The rituals continued, for a time. But the presence that gave the building its meaning, the presence that made the rituals something more than empty performance, the presence whose name the prophet bore, had departed.
But Yechezkel does not end there. In the final chapters, 40 through 48, the vision reverses. The prophet is brought to a high mountain and shown a new temple. And in chapter 43, the glory of YHWH enters the new temple from the east, the same direction it had departed. I will dwell in their midst forever.
The departure and the return. The glory leaving the cedar house. The glory filling the new dwelling. YHWH strengthens, the same presence that had been in the building, that had departed, that had gone with the exiles into Babylon, that would return, declaring through Yechezkel that the departure was not permanent and the return would be complete.
In the framework of this series, the glory that departed from the cedar house at the cross, confirmed by the Talmud’s record of the eternal flame going out, the scarlet thread staying red, the doors standing open, returned in the resurrection. Not to a building. To all of humanity. The new dwelling Yechezkel (Ezekiel) saw was not a physical temple yet to be constructed. It was the humanity made new by the ruach of YHWH, the dry bones standing on their feet, the new heart given, the Spirit placed within, the glory dwelling in its people forever.
Yechezkel (Ezekiel). YHWH strengthens. A manifestation of the divine presence through a named vessel, set on his feet by the entering Spirit, shown the departure of the glory from the cedar house, brought to the valley of very dry bones, commanded to prophesy the breath that raises the dead, shown the new heart given and the heart of stone removed, and given the vision of the glory returning to dwell in its people forever.
The breath that came into the dry bones and stood them on their feet was the same breath that raised Yeshua (Jesus) from the tomb and through that raising secured the resurrection of all. YHWH strengthens. The name declared it. The valley confirmed it. The empty tomb accomplished it.
I will open your graves and raise you from your graves. And you shall know that I am YHWH.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams