JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

vironment was thoroughly Jerusalemite, the prophet would
not have sensed any incongruity between his ostensible and
his real audience. Whatever anomaly attaches to an exiled
Ezekiel’s prophecy arises out of the anomalous coexistence
of two Jerusalemite communities hundreds of miles apart at
this juncture of history.
That Ezekiel was far from Jerusalem during his career
as a prophet is the most plausible explanation of his Temple
vision in chapters 8–11. This congeries of strange cults and
sinister plotting going on all at once at different locations in
the temple precinct is evidently a montage whose elements
are drawn principally, but not exclusively, from the syncretistic
cult fostered by Manasseh and eradicated by Josiah (cf.
II Chron. 33:7; II Kings 23:11; we do not know whether Josiah’s
reforms completely survived his death). As the report of a divine
vision, the account had powerful significance even to an
audience removed from its scene.
influences upon the prophet
Of the man Ezekiel all that is known is that he was a priest
(1:3), married to a woman who died during the siege of Jerusalem
(24:15ff.). He was, presumably, among the aristocrats
who were deported with King Jehoiachin in 597. By then he
had acquired the priestly learning and attitudes that characterize
his prophecy: knowledge of the layout of the Temple and its
regimen; of the historico-religious traditions of Israel, and of
the idiom of priestly writing of the Pentateuch that dominates
his prose (critics dispute the direction of the influence: some
attributing to Ezekiel the invention of certain priestly idioms;
most allowing the influence at least of the Holiness Code (Lev.
17–26) upon the prophet – the issue is a pivot of pentateuchal
criticism); and sensitivity to the “clean” and the “unclean” (e.g.,
his frequent allusion to menstrual uncleanness, niddah), and,
above all, to the awesome holiness of God.
Passion and a fertile imagination, tending to the baroque,
shine through his writings. He is the master of the dramatic,
representational action (which has a portentous, mysteriously
causal character; in 24:24 the prophet is called a prefiguring
“sign,” mofet). He was famous for his (often lurid) imagery
(21:5). His actions and his images are more numerous and
more complex than those of any of his predecessors. As a visionary
too he has no peer; indeed he innovated a genre: the
transportation-and-tour vision, so common in later apocalypse.
It is no wonder that people flocked to his “entertainments”
(33:32).
Ezekiel was immersed in the whole range of Israel’s prophetic
tradition. Archaic models inspire him – prophesying
under seizure by “the hand of YHWH” (cf. Elijah [I Kings
18:46] and Elisha [II Kings 3:5]), transportation by the “wind
of YHWH” (cf. Elijah, I Kings 18:12; II Kings 2:16). He is the
only prophet after Moses who not only envisions the future
but lays down a blueprint and a law for it. He reflects nothing
of the eschatological vision of the unity of humankind under
God introduced into Judahite prophecy by Isaiah (2:2ff.; 18:7;
19:24f.; Mic. 4:1ff.; Hab. 2:14; Zeph. 3:9; Jer. 3:17), but holds on
ezekiel
to the earlier view that, while God rules over all, His special
grace and holiness are, and will be, confined to Israel.
Yet Ezekiel was deeply indebted to classical, literary
prophecy as well. Instances of this have been pointed out in
the analysis of the contents of the book. It need be remarked
here only that by far the most striking affinities of Ezekiel’s
prophecy are with Jeremiah. The two have in common a vocabulary
and a stock of concepts and figures (eating God’s
words (Jer. 15:16), the harlot sisters (3:6ff.), the bad shepherds
(23:1ff.), the lookout (6:17), and many more) beyond what may
be explained by mere contemporaneity. That Ezekiel had heard
(of) Jeremiah before 597 is to be assumed (cf. Ezek 9:4); that he
continued to receive word of his prophecies afterward is likely,
since such word did reach the exiles (Jer. 29:24ff.).
ezekiel’s message and its effects
For Ezekiel the key to the agony of Judah was to be found in
the curses attached to God’s covenant (as in Lev. 26; Deut. 28),
which, since the age of Manasseh, had cast a pall over Judahite
religious thought (cf. II Kings 21:10ff.; 22:19ff.; 24:3). As
Ezekiel saw it, the entire history of Israel was one continuous
breach of covenant, for which the fall was the just and predicted
punishment. In the face of nihilistic cynicism (18:1, 25),
he insisted on the justice, the reasonableness, and the regularity
of God’s dealings with men. That is the ground of his denunciation
and of his call to repentance as well.
What was not anticipated in the early curses was the aspersion
cast on God’s power by their operation. It had been
assumed that with punishment would come contrition (Lev.
26:41) and repentance (Deut. 30:1ff.), to be followed by reconciliation
and restoration. That seems to be the presupposition
of Ezekiel’s call (to the exiles) to repent (18:30ff.). But in view
of the injury to God’s reputation (cf. 36:20, a projection onto
others of an inner-Israelite reaction?), the idea took hold of
the prophet that Israel’s rehabilitation could not depend on
the gamble that Israel would indeed repent. Frustrated by the
people’s obduracy, the prophet announced a compulsory new
exodus (20:32ff.), underlying which was the necessity of vindicating
God’s power. Contrition would come later (20:43; cf.
16:61; 36:31) and was no longer a precondition of redemption.
As for repentance, God would see to it that after the people
were restored they would remain permanently reconciled
with, and obedient to, God; not they, but He would make
them a new heart (contrast 36:26 (= 11:19) with 18:31). Then
they could enjoy eternal blessedness that would serve as a witness
of the power of their God to the world.
The doctrine of God’s stake in the preservation and restoration
of Israel appears in the Second Isaiah (43:25; 48:9, 11); it
must have contributed to the exile’s will to resist assimilation
to their environment and to their faith in a national future.
The effect of Ezekiel’s denunciation may be detected in
his audience’s acknowledgment of their sin in 33:10 at the time
of the fall (contrast 18:1), and even more clearly in the version
given by the Chronicler of Zedekiah’s reign (II Chron.
36:11ff.). II Kings 24:18ff. knows nothing of the defilement of
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 643