The Valley of The Bones: Surah Baqarah, an explanation | Mufti Abu Layth

people another uh ilmi section we've got to cover it's incredibly important i've been asked again about this the verse of now this is important this is a verse in surah baqarah that a lot of people have been confused about it i have answered this in the past and i was asked again recently about my clip i did try to find it but i i don't know where i've answered it it wasn't set aside as a separate clip and i couldn't really find it so after a

number of searches i just thought you know i'll just go over it again and this time set it aside so here is the verse that look uh okay or the person who passes by this desolate um settlement and and it is destroyed its absolute ruins uh and he says how will god bring this back to life uh after its death after its death so god gives him death for a hundred years and then brings him back and he's asked how much did you uh were you out for and he says just a

day allah loves it's been 100 years have passed look at your food and your drink it has not gone it has not gone stale like it has not gone rancid it has not gone off there is it's still there as though you just left it

and look at your donkey because he rolled in on this donkey um why look at your donkey because the donkey right uh there is in many you see now this is actually quite interesting why the donkey i would assume the understanding i'm going with is that the donkey is untouched it's not destroyed or anything many people understood that all the donkeys also dead because i'm assuming the donkey is with the food and the drink that it's not

kind of it still looks intact still looks like it's only been a day now look at the bones now which bones are we talking about here people assume that oh this must be the bones of the donkey but allah stopped talking about the donkey already because he said and we'll make you a sign for people now look at the bones how we bring these bonds together

then they will have flesh added to them um when it became clear to him he said i know that indeed allah is all-powerful right now this many people have been confused who is this verse speaking about what is this verse speaking about so people have felt that this verse is speaking about some people said usaid and it's not jose jose was osiris uh and i've got a video explaining that some people said maybe it was i don't know it was somebody or they've come up with different interpretations

and how can this be that he was dead and brought back to life now first of all who was this person this person most likely this is ezekiel from the bible the prophet ezekiel now he's somebody who is uh in the kingdom of judah he's there when it's um in its before the temple is attack before the temple is destroyed uh nebula before he comes in and destroys the temple

the kingdom of judah and jerusalem fall into certain trouble for a few decades before they're falling into trouble uh they they start switching allegiance they're first with the assyrians then they switch to the pharaohs and they switch back they switch back there's there's a lot of upheaval going on uh they quite they've lost power they're incredibly insecure then what happens is the king is uh deposed and replaced and he's set there by the egyptian king

this happens then you've got that the babylonians right so when the king is deposed the babylonians they do attack and what happens is as a punishment they take away certain jews exile them but they haven't destroyed the temple at this stage so i believe this is um it's in 590 is it 593 or something uh bc but it's it's it's around that time they get sent into exile amongst the people that go into exile

is ezekiel now he starts to receive prophecies visions he's one of the clear so in the old testament you will find he's in the same time as jeremiah you'll find isaiah jeremiah and ezekiel are the main kind of prophets of these visions and things like this so he's there he starts to receive these visions and this is in the bible you've got the book of ezekiel and he has many visions many initially his visions are that god won't save the temple and he won't save the

uh the israelites so a lot of the jews hate on him for this including the rabbis and things like this so he's he's also he's not a loved kind of prophet because what he's telling people doesn't bring them hope then after seven years or so nebula goes and he destroys the temple so his vision start to actually you know when he was telling people that god is not going to save us it starts to eventuate and be realized so people you know some people obviously see this as maybe he's telling the truth here he starts to give more visions about look basically because we don't have a worldly foundation we need to

establish a spiritual one and he contributes to this as does jeremiah and other people that establishing all of a sudden we don't have a temple but we have a spiritual foundation and what ezekiel contributes is with his visions along the way one of the most powerful visions he has is this valley of the bones okay now this is found in uh in the bible in the book of ezekiel you will get this a summary of it is right here from the book of ezekiel chapter chapter 37 god brings ezekiel to a valley full of dry bones

now this is in a dreamlike vision now god then commands him you see in the bible it's slightly different god is commanding him and god asks him he in the quran he's asking god so he's asking god but there god is asking him that that about these bones and god reveals to him to carry out a prophecy to them like to prophesize to them when whenever he's asked to do his prophecy it is to spread his hope vision of hope

uh these bones start to then get covered in flesh and skin and god reveals that these these dead bodies that are all arising are the people of israel who are in exile and god tells him and then he he kind of says i don't see any life to them though you know they okay they've become people but i don't and then god breathes his life into them and and they become this strong army now this is a message to show the people that um that god will

he god will rescue he will restore the israelites like there is hope for them now he has shown this message and told that look yes what you're looking at is a valley of bones it is dead bones but they come together but you do your prophecy so he's actually this holy bible uh you will see that oh sorry that sent off any reverberations of sound you will see in 37 he mentions that the hand of the lord

was upon me and carried me out in the spirit of the lord and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones and caused me to pass by them round about and behold they were very many in the open valley and lo they were very dry and said unto me son of man can these bones live and i answered o lord god thou knowest again he said unto me prophecy upon these bones and say unto them o ye dry bones hear the word of the lord thus saith the lord god unto these bones behold i will cause breath to enter into you

and ye shall live and then he goes on and the bones come together and and then he says but you know they're not all kind of that he doesn't see them as uh um but then god breathes into them and he sees them as an army so he says then he said unto me son of man these bones are the whole house of israel behold they say our bones are dried and our hope is lost see it's a it's an alleg it's a parable our bones are dry our hope is lost like how can we ever be restored we don't have no strength

we are we are cut off for our parts therefore prophecy and say unto them thus said the lord behold o my people i will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the land of israel i will bring you into the land of israel and ye shall know that i am the lord when i have opened your graves o my people and brought you up out of the graves i shall put my spirit into you and you shall live and i shall place you in your own land and you shall know that i the lord have spoken it and performed it

see remember he says and then it becomes clear indeed the lord is all-powerful and you see so this is a vision and it mentions that um i'm just seeing yep and then it just goes on to say how they shall you know god should restore the kingdom and so on and you do see that what happens um about 70 years later in exile king cyrus does

free the israelites and they do go back and then eventually they establish the the whole temple again now from the becoming from their point of weakness to once again coming back and they don't just go back all of a sudden they they they kind of go in in stages there's this kind of flow uh and then the restoration of the temple and then a kind of restoration of some authority and power it takes around the period of close to 100 years now it's interesting that he is shown in this vision

that he is put he is given death now this death is a metaphor of being brought back to life now this does come in many times in the quran allah does mention that being brought back to life it's not about a physical it's about that being brought back to the call and you see that the verse of the quran as well that um that oh you who have faith

reply to allah and his messenger that when they call you or when he calls you lima to what gives you life now why does allah say that to what gives you life obviously because here life does not mean actual life but it means that life through the faith the life of faith is being restored um there is the other verse as well our mankind mate

how about the person who was dead and we gave him life and a light and he walks around with it is he like the one who we have not given light to this was not an actual giving life that is being used and there are other verses in the quran as well this vision that he was shown it had a purpose to it the purpose was that you see you the perp room just the purpose was that you the people of israel you've lost all hope you see yourself as nothing but bones

god will bring you back he will breathe life back into you but you have to hold on you must not give up you must have hope the reason why the food in my understanding allah mentions in the quran i'll bring up the if i can the um same verse right so the reason allah says that look at your food and your and the donkey it remains the same why does allah mention this in my understanding that is being mentioned to show

that you see your restoration will not depend on you having some new sources or resources or the of the age technology see your donkey is the same donkey that you traveled in on your food is the same food but uh it will take close to 100 years for you to come back to life but know that allah is all-powerful this was the vision it was of ezekiel

and the verse begins uh it begins now it's interesting that here you will see and i'm not just and the reason i did have some of these uh the faster around was to show you it's not you see because people sometimes think nobody else has ever said these things but when you do look up you do find other people have also expressed these kind of uh beliefs it's interesting mawlana abdel karim al-athari does as well he highlights that you will see in this verse that this

calf is lit tashby it's because it's a vision it's not like oh like the person it's like saying uh he gives the example do you not see the person who as though he passed by a valley of dry bones now in a valley of ruins so i hope that shed some light this was not an actual event this was a vision and the reason we know this is because it's interesting that allah says in the uh he mentions in that verse and i'll

bring it up again here you can see it right here that he mentions that look that we may make you a sign now it is interesting that how else could this be a sign because if you think about it it must for it to have been a sign it must have been documented somewhere because otherwise if him coming back to if this was real there was nobody else there if he came and told people that oh by the way i was knocked out for 100 years and i was brought back to life and my food and my donkey was still nobody would have believed him anyway how could have he been a sign

for people because think about it people did not believe the prophet you know the prophet is telling people after you uh you know you you die and you'll be brought back to life there'll be another life people are saying oh that kara jamba though that's really difficult you know why don't you do this um you know they say uh who will bring halal you know who's going to bring these uh these bones back to life as in surah yasin who's going to do that he mentioned this is what they were saying god doesn't show it here he doesn't show in front of the prophet like a miracle by

saying oh look here here's an example and here these people are clearly asking for a sign if one man just came and said oh this happened to me nobody would believe him anyway after this verse ironically just to establish that allah brings the verse of ibrahim al-islam after this verse you'll see that he says show me how you bring the life the dead back to life

i want contentment for my heart i'm you know i don't have does anybody have that absolute certainty they just have faith that's what he's saying and the prophet said more deserving of this than ibrahim so how can it be that one man just comes how can he be a sign for people the way it was a sign is that it was his visions were documented he used to express his visions they we still do find them in history in the old testament because otherwise they would have been some you know some people would have noticed

this some way there would be some mention of it throughout history cool i hope that helps and the reason i say that is because if you say just look no allah just did it as a miracle for this person then why not repeat this as a miracle when the father of quraish were asking the prophet why not repeat it ever why do this as a miracle when nobody's around it defeats the purpose it was the valley of the dry bones or the valley of the bones in the book of ezekiel and his vision i hope that helps