Metaphor and place

Between 1650 and 1675, twenty years after the establishment of Massachusetts Bay, Natick came together as a Praying Town. One of John Eliot's favorite texts provided a metaphor for the coming together of Natick, and a point of convergence between the English religion and Native belief. Ezekiel 37 contained a message that gave play to Eliot's millennium-driven preoccupation with the conversion of Israel and his conviction that New England Indians were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The text uses the analogy of bare, dry bones to refer to unconverted Israel; prophesied conversion is given visual content by describing “bone joining bone,” “the sinews and the flesh come upon them,” and the spirit being breathed into them “that they may come to life.”