149. The Word also uses bones as a symbol for a person's sense of self and specifically for a sense of self brought to life by the Lord. In Isaiah:

Jehovah will satisfy your soul in the barrens, and he will make your bones ready; and you will be like a well-watered garden. (Isaiah 58:11)

In the same author:

Then you will see, and your heart will rejoice, and your bones will be like sprouting grass. (Isaiah 66:14)

In David:

All my bones will say, "Jehovah, who is like you?" (Psalms 35:10)

This appears still more clearly in Ezekiel, where it talks about bones that will take on flesh and have breath enter them:

The hand of Jehovah put me in the middle of the valley, and the valley was full of bones. And he said to me, "Prophesy over those bones, and you are to say to them, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of Jehovah. This is what the Lord Jehovih has said to these bones: "See? I am bringing breath into you, and you will live. And I will put tendons on you and bring flesh up over you and draw skin over you and put breath in you, and you will live. And you will know that I am Jehovah."'" (Ezekiel 37:1, 4, 5, 6)

[2] Human selfhood, viewed from heaven, looks completely bony, lifeless, and hideous — inherently dead. But once the Lord gives it life, it appears to have flesh. Human selfhood is in fact nothing more than a dead trifle, even though it seems to its owner to be significant and indeed all-important. Anything living in us comes from the Lord's life. If his life withdrew from us, we would fall dead as a stone. We are merely organs designed to receive life, but the nature of the organ that we are determines how we respond to that life.

Only the Lord has autonomy. By his own power he redeems us and by his own power he saves us. This autonomy or selfhood of his is life, and it causes our selfhood, which is inherently dead, to come alive. The Lord's words in Luke symbolize his selfhood:

A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have. (Luke 24:39-40)

Another sign was the fact that not a bone of the Passover lamb was to be broken (Exodus 12:46). ¹

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