dry’ (37:2). The Israelites had been in exile for over ten years and the vision is meant to signify that what hope they had once possessed is now gone. They were, just as these bones, ‘very dry’. It is a picture of deadness and desolation. The question is asked: ‘Can these bones live?’ (37:3). The answer is, of course, negative as far as any inherent power in the bones themselves is concerned. They are utterly dead and lifeless. Any possibility of life must come by the intervention of an outside force