in this case for the year of resurrection. So it was the year of the tikumah.”
“What does resurrection have to do with the Jubilee?”
“Everything,” he said. “What is it that the Jubilee brings?”
“Return and restoration.”
“And what is resurrection but the ultimate restoration and the ultimate return, the return to what once was . . . but was lost. The words on the declaration are ancient. They come from a vision given to the prophet Ezekiel. He was taken to a valley of dry bones. There he heard the Lord say to him, ‘Prophesy over these bones.’ 1 So he did. The bones started moving together until they formed skeletons, a great multitude of skeletons. Then sinews came upon them, then flesh . . . And then they came alive.”
“Which is what I saw in the vision. What did it mean?”
“The dry bones were Israel, the ruins and hopelessness of a destroyed nation. But it was a prophecy of hope. God would gather them back together and raise them from the dead. He would resurrect them.”
“But in my vision there was only one resurrection. Why?”
“Ezekiel saw the resurrection of the people that made up the nation. But what you saw was the resurrection of the nation as a whole. The woman you saw lying on the ground wasn’t a person but the nation itself. You see, it wasn’t only that the people of Israel would be resurrected; it was that the entire nation would follow the pattern of resurrection. The nation itself would rise according to the template of the dry bones.”
“So that’s why she was so big,” I said.
“Yes. Nations,” he said, “follow the course of nature. They’re born. They grow; they become larger, stronger, and more complex. But a resurrection is the reversal of nature, the reversal of death, just as the Jubilee is the reversal of loss. The birth of nations is a natural phenomenon. But what happened to Israel was not natural. It appeared to be a birth. But it was ultimately a resurrection.
“A resurrection brings back, restores, and raises up what was dead. In AD 70 the nation or kingdom of Israel died. Death brings disintegration, the scattering of elements. So ancient Israel disintegrated, so much so that its remnants, its culture, its citizens, and its people were scattered in pieces throughout the earth. To disintegrate is natural. But to come back together is not. But against the laws of nature and history, the scattered pieces of ancient Israel began gathering back together again . . . the scattered bones of your vision, assembling piece by piece. So from the ends of the earth, the remnants of the ancient nation, the scattered people of Israel, began coming together: resurrection.”
“And then the bones began to form skeletons.”
“So too in the resurrection of Israel, the bones began to form a skeleton. The nation was first manifested in skeletal form, a skeletal culture, a skeletal government, a skeletal army, the framework of what was yet to come.
“With birth,” said the Oracle, “one grows into what one has not yet been. One develops from childhood to maturity. But a resurrection is different. One doesn’t begin from one’s beginning; one begins from one’s end, from the fully formed state of that which had once been. One becomes what one once was. So Israel wasn’t born as other nations but resurrected into the fully formed pattern of what it had once been in ancient times, an ancient nation coming back into the modern world.”
“And the sinews and skin that formed around the skeleton?”
“The skeletal nation began taking on flesh and blood. The pattern and framework took on flesh-and-blood reality. Israel was becoming a fully formed nation. So it all happened in reverse, as in a resurrection, as in a Jubilee.”
“How exactly did it happen in reverse?”
“In the world,” he said, “nations give birth to national anthems. But in Israel the anthem appeared when the nation was nothing more than a dream. The nation didn’t give birth to the anthem—the anthem gave birth to the nation. In the world a settlement becomes a town and then a city and is given a name. But in Israel the names of the cities came first, before the city existed. And then they came into existence or back into existence . . . as it was written, ‘And the city will be rebuilt on its ruin.’ 2
“In the world,” said the Oracle, “languages develop over time. But with Israel its native language, Hebrew, had been dead