Choral / 2024

Can Then These Dry Bones Live

Composer

In this chapter of Ezekiel, the prophet has a vision of a valley filled with dry bones, onto which god in stages adds flesh, skin, and at last the breath of life.

At the offset, when the charnel ground is still devoid of motion, god asks Ezekiel whether the bones can live again. Ezekiel, as is typical for these kinds of questions, replies that surely the Lord alone can know such a thing.

This setting is a very miniature version of classic two-section Renaissance polyphony, with a prima pars and a secunda pars each covering one phrase of the text. I have added a slight poetic gloss to the KJV, massaging the lines into iambic pentameter:

Can then these dry bones live, O son of man?
O Lord, I answered, you alone do know.