Ezekiel 32:4-5 – “I will leave you stranded on the land to die. All the birds of the heavens will land on you, and the wild animals of the whole earth will gorge themselves on you. I will scatter your flesh on the hills and fill the valleys with your bones.”
Today’s chapter is pretty graphic, and it is reasonable why someone who randomly opens to this part of the Bible would view God as an angry, destructive being. He’s still warning Pharaoh that the earthly things he’s relied upon to make himself seem powerful will not last. God will prove his power and might.
I highlighted verses 4 and 5 because there is some interesting foreshadowing that might be important later. One of the most famous chapters in Ezekiel, chapter 37, is all about a valley of dry bones that rises up as a great army. I can’t wait to get there in a few days. But put a pin in today’s chapter — God mentions filling valleys with the bones of Egyptians. We might want to pull that back up as an image.
Here’s your freedom for today:
God is more than meets the eye.
Reading one chapter or one section of the Bible doesn’t give you the whole picture — you really have to read the whole thing. Today God is filling up valleys with dry bones, and later he will call them back to life. Although chapter 37 refers to the people of Israel, we know that God’s end goal is to rise up a people out of all nations. God is only interested in destroying evil. He doesn’t want to destroy you or me or any person. He has created us for good and for relationship with him. Even if all he has left to work with is a valley of dry bones, he can still spring forth life and a redemption story out of that. Be careful not to judge God based on only part of the story. He’s complex, mysterious, and bigger than our minds can fathom.