Day 239. Ezekiel 1-4

The literature we call "apocalyptic" interprets history in terms of its end. It uses dramatic, bizarre, and highly personal imagery to convey its message. It speaks to an insider group, often persecuted and downtrodden, to the exclusion of the outside world, and often employs a "code" that only the initiated—the insiders--can understand. It might be too much to say that the prophet Ezekiel invented apocalyptic, but he does contribute to its images and ways of speaking that are employed right through the Book of Revelation. Each prophet is called in a manner appropriate to the message he is commissioned to deliver, and Ezekiel's calling is if anything apocalyptic.
The prophet Ezekiel belonged to priestly—and therefore high-caste—family from Jerusalem. He may himself have been a priest in the Jerusalem temple before he was taken to Babylon among the first group of hostages—this first deportation included King Jehoiachin, together with such religious and political leaders who were considered useful to keeping the peace back in Jerusalem. The vision that begins our reading can be precisely dated to June 6, 593 B.C, five years after the exiles arrived. We are told that his call takes place "in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar" (1:3), where the prophet felt "the hand of the LORD" heavy upon him.
What he sees in this inaugural vision is hard to describe, although the prophet is at pains to do so. In fact we can feel him laboring to describe the indescribable. The four living creatures he sees are cherubs—much like the seraphs that Isaiah reports seeing in the narrative of his calling 6:2-7. We hesitate call them angels because they bear so little resemblance to any modern conception of angels. They are awesome, terrifying mythical beings—combining human and animal attributes. They exist with the sole purpose of praising the ineffable God and doing his will. This absolute singleness of mind is reflected in Ezekiel's description of their movements—"They moved straight ahead; wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went" (1:12). They are not responsible for their direction, God is. They have no will of their own.
We are told that they arrive on a "stormy wind . . . out of the north" (1:4); in the Bible this is often the direction from which invasion and historic change come. The wheels beneath them form a sort of celestial war-chariot, the rims of which "were full of eyes all around" (1:18). In apocalyptic literature a multitude of eyes is a symbol of knowledge or awareness. The cherubs remind us of those that surmounted the Ark of the Covenant, which was also conceived of as the throne of God—"a mercy seat" on which he was thought to sit.
Above the cherubs and the wheels there is a dome "shining like crystal" which represents the firmament of heaven which God created on the second day of creation to separate the celestial realm from earth—see Genesis 1:6-8. Ordinarily this dome shuts out the vision of God, but the prophet is uniquely blessed in being able to see "above the dome and to glimpse "something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire. And seated upon the likeness of the throne he sees "something that seemed like a human form" (1:26). All this is surrounded by the brilliance of God--"Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was appearance of the splendor all around," the prophet says. "This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD" (1:28). The prophet falls on his face in awe and terror, and he hears someone speaking—thus begins his dialogue with the LORD.
It begins with the much needed gift of courage. The spirit sets the prophet on his feet (2:2) give him the guts necessary to accept the call. And this call will take all the audacity he can muster--"Mortal," says the LORD, "I am sending you to the people of Israel, a nation of rebels" (2:3). The prophet is left under no illusions about those to whom he is called to speak—they are an "impudent and stubborn" bunch—they always have been (2:4). But God bids the prophet—"Do not be afraid of them, and do not be afraid of their words . . . for they are a rebellious house" (2:6). He is to combine courage and absolute obedience—"do not be rebellious like that rebellious house." He is the pizza-man; he is to deliver what he has received—no more and no less. And to symbolize this he is told to open his mouth and eat what he is given to eat. And in a vision he sees a hand stretched out and "a written scroll was in it . . . and
written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe" (2:9-10).
So the prophet obeys—it is the sort of thing that happens in dreams. He fills his stomach with the scroll, and in his "mouth it was a sweet as honey" (3:3). Then God again warns the prophet that this is a rebellious people he going to speak to—they "will not listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me" (3:7). In the face of their stubbornness God tells the prophet that he is to be more stubborn still—more single-minded; he is given a forehead "like the hardest stone, harder than flint." He is not responsible for the message, God is. He must go to the exiles, to his own people, and say to them—"'Thus says the LORD GOD'; whether they hear or refuse to hear" (3:11).
Then he is lifted up and borne away, going "in bitterness in the heat of [his] spirit, the hand of the LORD being strong upon [him]" (3:15), to the "exiles at Tel-abib"—a community of those exiles who had been transported from Jerusalem. The stress and shock of his call cause the prophet to sit "among them, stunned, for seven days" (3:15). Then he is given a message—an ultimatum, of sorts. If he does not speak the words he is given faithfully he must take the consequences—he will die. But if he speaks the word faithfully, and his hearers "do not turn from the wickedness," it is they who will die, but the prophet "will have saved [his] life" (3:19). His responsibility ends with his absolute obedience. "Let those who will hear, hear," says the LORD, "and let those who refuse to hear, refuse" (3:27)
Then again we are told that the "hand of the LORD was upon him"—this expression means that he feels acutely God's immediate presence—he finds himself isolated and unable to speak except when the LORD gives him a message. Then the prophet will say—"Thus says the LORD GOD" (3:27). He is constrained, as if with cords (3:25). He has no words of his own. He is the LORD's mouthpiece, nothing else.
Then he is ordered to act out the role of a small child. He is ordered to make a model of a city under siege out of a brick and to heap up earth around it to represent siege ramps. This child's play has a serious purpose. He is to set camps against his toy city and "battering rams against it all around" (4:2). He is then ordered to lie n his left side, "and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon [himself]" (4:5), bearing their sins. And he is to lie thus for three hundred ninety days, "equal to the number of years of [Israel's] punishment"-- the years since the northern kingdom of Israel was carried off into exile by Assyria. Then the prophet is ordered to recline on his right side for forty days, each day equal to a year—the length of Judah's exile in Babylon. He is commanded to eat bread made from a mixture of grains for those 390 days, together with a fixed allotment of water to symbolize the rationed food and water
given to the citizens of a city under siege. But when the LORD commands that this bread be baked using human dung—again a siege expedient--Ezekiel pulls up short, saying that he has "never defiled himself" by eating anything ritually unclean (4:14). He is, after all, a priest. And the LORD relents and allows the bread to be baked using cow dung instead. It is a visual parable. The LORD interprets the prophet's strange diet thus —"Mortal, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. Lacking bread and water, they will look at one another in dismay, and waste away under their punishment" (4:16-17).