Dreaming About Dead Animals: The Bible Gives It No Meaning

Biblical Dream InterpretationSee all 70 articles in this series

Scripture records no dream of dead animals, and gives no meaning to one. There is no verse to consult, and we will not supply a reading the Bible withholds.

But the question underneath — what do we do when we are shown something dead? — is one the Bible answers at length, and in a valley.

It does not. Scripture records many dreams and interprets only a few, and each interpretation is given by God through a named servant, for one person, about one matter.

Pharaoh does dream of cattle — seven fat and seven gaunt — and Joseph tells him they are years of plenty and famine. But notice what happens there. The meaning is not derived from what cattle generally signify. It is revealed, specifically, once, because a nation was about to starve. Joseph does not consult a table; he says outright that the interpretation belongs to God.

That is the pattern, and it is why no table exists.

Let us go instead to Ezekiel, because he was shown death on a scale none of us has dreamt.

God sets him down in a valley full of bones, and walks him through them — very many, and very dry. Not a fresh battlefield. An old one. Whatever happened here finished a long time ago.

And then God asks him a question: Son of man, can these bones live?

Ezekiel’s answer is the most honest sentence a person has ever given in Scripture. Sovereign Lord, you alone know.

He does not say yes, because he can see the bones. He does not say no, because he knows who is asking. He hands the question back.

We might take that as the model for a troubling dream, and for a great deal else.

We are not obliged to produce a meaning. When something dead shows up — in the night, or in a diagnosis, or in a relationship that has gone quiet — the faithful response is not always interpretation. Sometimes it is: You alone know.

That is not a failure of faith. It is the prophet’s own answer, and God did not correct him. He simply told him to start speaking to the bones.

I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.

Since we are here, the plain facts are worth having.

Under the law, contact with a dead animal made a person ceremonially unclean until evening. It was not a sin and not an omen — a matter of ritual purity, dealt with by washing and the passage of time. Farmers and butchers and anyone who found a carcass on the road handled this constantly. It was ordinary.

Israel’s neighbours read omens in animals; inspecting a liver for the will of the gods was a respected profession. Israel was forbidden it. Not because the future does not matter, but because a people who can read signs stop asking, and God wanted to be asked.

Let us not interpret the dream. But let us notice if something in us has gone quiet — a hope we have stopped naming, a prayer we no longer bother praying, an affection that feels like an old bone.

If so, we need not pretend it is alive. Ezekiel did not. He stood in a valley of very dry bones and said honestly that he did not know.

And then he did the only thing he was told to do, which was to speak to them.

May we be spared the exhausting work of decoding what God has not encoded.

May we be honest about what looks finished.

And may we keep speaking to it anyway, since we are not the ones who decide what can live.

Are dead animals significant in the Bible?

They are a matter of ritual cleanliness rather than omen. Leviticus 11:39-40 sets out what to do about a carcass, which is a practical rule, not a sign.

What is the valley of dry bones?

Ezekiel 37, where the prophet is set down in a valley full of bones and asked whether they can live. His answer — “Sovereign Lord, you alone know” — is the model for what to do with something dead.

What should I do after a dream like this?

Notice what it disturbed. James 1:5 gives the method Scripture actually recommends — ask God for wisdom, rather than for a decoding.

• Dreaming About Frogs: No Fixed Biblical Meaning
• Dreaming of Dirty Water: The Bible Gives It No Meaning
• No One in the Bible Dreams About Eggs — but Jesus Talks About One

More from this seriesBiblical Dream InterpretationSee all 70 articles