By the Rivers of Babylon: Ezekiel at the River Kebar and the Valley of Dry Bones
The exiles sat down by the canals of Babylon and hung their harps on the willows. There the priest Ezekiel saw the Chariot—and a valley full of dry bones that stood up and lived.
Psalm 137 is the shortest and most exact document of the age: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows we hung up our harps… How shall we sing the Lord's song on foreign soil? If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget itself." A glass is still broken at every Jewish wedding so that even at the happiest hour the ruined city is remembered.
In the fifth year of Jehoiachin's exile the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi stood by the river Kebar and the heavens opened: a storm out of the north, four living creatures, wheels within wheels, the likeness of a throne. That vision of the Chariot became the most guarded text in Jewish tradition.
At first his message was harsh: he drew the siege on a brick and lay on his side for months, so the exiles would stop expecting a quick return. When Jerusalem fell, his language changed. He was brought "in spirit" to a valley of very dry bones. "Son of man, can these bones live?" He prophesied; there was a rattling, bone joined to bone, sinews and flesh came up, breath entered them, "and they lived and stood on their feet, a very great army."
How we know
On the chronology
Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.
Sources
Tanakh
- Tehillim 137 — “by the rivers of Babylon” — the voice of the exiles themselves
- Yechezkel 1; 11:16; 37 — the Merkavah, the “small sanctuary”, and the dry bones
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Chagigah 2:1 — the ban on expounding the Account of the Chariot in public
- Sanhedrin 92b — the dispute over the dry bones: a parable or an actual resurrection
- Megillah 29a — the “small sanctuary” — the synagogues of Babylonia
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
Ezekiel · Daniel · Babylon · Ezekiel · Psalms · Daniel · Resurrection of the dead