Ezechiel

EZECHIEL (Heb. Jēḥezqēl «God is strong» or «God strengthens»). - Third of the great writing prophets, who lived among the exiles of Babylon in the troubled period in which the new Israel was being prepared.

I. TIME AND ENVIRONMENT

Nebuchadnezzar forced Jerusalem, which had rebelled against him, to surrender; he deported to Babylon King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the court, 7,000 of the most influential, 1,000 craftsmen, and several other persons; he stripped the temple of its most precious furnishings (2 Kings 24:14, 16). E. was among the deportees (Ez. 1:1-3).

They were settled, at least for the most part, along the great canal (nar-kabari), which, leaving the Euphrates near

Babel, headed southeast and, after passing through Nippur, rejoined the same river. They were assigned to field work (cf. the names Tel 'Abhibh, "hill of ears of grain," in Ez. 3:15; Tel 'Harid, "hill of the plow," in Eid. 2:59, etc.), but they enjoyed a broad autonomy. They formed colonies, in which the elders held a certain authority (Ez. 8:1; 14:1; 20:1). Jeremiah's advice to build houses and plant gardens (Jer. 29) and the great prosperity of the exiles at the time of the return show how the exiles were permitted to improve their condition and become property owners and well-to-do. E. has a house of his own (3:24 ff.; 8:1). But to the quiet of their surroundings there corresponded the gravest turmoil of souls. The deportees hoped for a comeback of Jerusalem against Babel and for their immediate return. The overvaluation of the Egyptian ally played an important part in this dream, but they were chiefly animated by erroneous ideas about God and about worship. Yahweh could not allow Jerusalem to suffer the fate of Samaria (721) and of Nineveh (612), because with it his worship and his very "name" would also perish. Hence the superstitious confidence in the Temple: Yahweh might allow a temporary punishment, but never let his dominion be conquered by Marduk! For his prestige, he had to punish the Chaldeans who had laid their sacrilegious hands on the furnishings of the sanctuary; whereas the destruction of Jerusalem would have been the breaking of the covenant of Sinai: all the promises sworn by God to Abraham, to the patriarchs, to David would have proved vain. Moreover, by the law of solidarity, the merits of the righteous had to save the nation from chastisement; divine justice could not destroy it, when from Abraham onward and down to their own generation (Ez. 9:4) so many years and so many Jews had loved the Lord and venerated him as could happen in no other people. False prophets and chauvinistic priests fed these erroneous conceptions (Jer. 29:31-32; Ez. 13). Thus the deportees took no care at all to reform their grave morals; they even believed they had atoned enough by undergoing that deportation and expected from Yahweh the reward of an immediate, triumphant return. They awaited salvation from Judea.

When in 587 Jerusalem, after a siege of about 18 months, during which the Pharaoh, who had set out to its aid, was defeated (Ez. 30:21 ff.), was taken, plundered and burned, harsh reality laid bare their foolish illusions, and, shaking their religious ideas, would have induced them to adhere to the worship of Marduk and Bel, who appeared more powerful than their God. This temptation was already strong far from Judea and from the Temple, and near the great Chaldean cities, in which the saqqurat towered, with their varied and sumptuous cult. God's merciful plan to purify Israel from idolatry and from the other grave sins through the sufferings and humiliations of the exile (Lev. 26; Deut. 28) would thus have foundered. To avert this danger, to prepare the exiles for the grave disaster of 587, to prevent them, as had happened to the deportees of the kingdom of Samaria (721), from being absorbed by the sea of the nations and disappearing forever, to prepare them for conversion and make of them the new Israel, heir of the promises, the Lord chose from among the deportees themselves, as his spokesman, E. In a sublime vision, which recalls that of Is. 6, this priest, son of Buzi (1:3), in 593, along the banks of the great canal, receives from God the mission of "watchman for the house of Israel" (3:17). He will carry out his long ministry (about 22 years) at Tel 'Abhibh. The last date of his prophecies (29:17) brings us to Apr. 571. It is not likely that he lived until 561, the year of Jehoiachin's release, of which he says not a word. Unlike Jeremiah, E. had a wife, whom he lost in the 6th year of the exile (24:1, 16 ff.). According to an ancient tradition, E. was killed by a leader of the people, whom he had reproved for his idolatry (PG 25, 160; 43, 401; PL 83, 143).

II. PROPHETIC ACTIVITY AND DOCTRINE

Since Yahweh is omnipresent, he is not bound to the Temple or to the worship of Jerusalem, and he manifests himself as absolute sovereign of heaven and earth as well as mighty in Babylon, a land held to be the domain of Marduk. All the splendors and all the powers venerated by the Chaldeans (kêrâbhlân) serve him as a footstool. God concerns himself with the conversion of the exiles despite their perversity, and he dominates E. with his irresistible action (1, 3b; 2, 2; 3, 12, 14, etc.); he communicates his words to him (2, 9-3, 3); he sends him as his representative to the exiles to make of them the new people of God. This is the meaning of the sublime inaugural vision (chaps. 1-3), which is repeated (3, 23; 8-10...) and fills the whole book with itself (43, 2 ff.). For 7 days E. remains mute, meditating on the goodness and majesty of Yahweh, on the perversity of his fellow exiles, who will not spare him contempt and persecutions (2, 55; 8; 3, 8, 26). Then he begins his mission.

It was necessary to shake the torpor of those rebels; words would have been in vain: to strike their minds forcefully, E. performs a series of symbolic actions, depicting the siege of Jerusalem, the torments of the besieged, the destruction or the exile of the few survivors. Among other things he is seen lying motionless on his left side, the more uncomfortable position, for a longer period of time; and then on his right. He will explain to them that the Lord has fixed 390 days (the siege) because Jerusalem expiated the sins of the past, and then continued the expiation for 40 years in exile (chaps. 4-5). Two prophecies follow (chaps. 6-7) of the same tenor: the punishment is imminent, for too many are the sins of idolatry, the murders, the injustices. Before such precise predictions, the community of the exiles began to worry: after about 11 months from the initial vision, some elders gather in the prophet's little house, and ask why ever such a punishment. And E., in an interior vision, is transported to Jerusalem and sees in the temple the idolatry practiced there (8, 5-16), as in all Palestine (8, 17); therefore Yahweh has the temple and the city destroyed (chap. 9). Only the few righteous will be saved. Thinking along with the exiles that the "remnant" must be among the Judeans then in the homeland, E. prays Yahweh not to destroy Israel completely; Yahweh answers that the remnant to which he will bless, and which will form the Israel of tomorrow, are precisely the exiles of 597. Judah and Jerusalem are doomed to ruin, salvation will come only from the exiles who will be converted. Yahweh therefore abandons Jerusalem; E. narrates everything to those present (chaps. 8-11). But the restoration promised for the future does not please the rebels, who dream of a material, immediate revenge; thus they mock the announcements of misfortune that will fade with time, and the promises made for distant epochs (12, 21-26). E. insists on the imminence of the punishment and on the certain fulfillment of the word of God. He vividly announces the fate that will befall Zedekiah, his flight, his capture, his blinding and his deportation to Babel (12, 1-16), just as he will later describe the advance of Nebuchadnezzar and the attack against Jerusalem (chap. 21). To the false prophets and the pseudo-prophets, who venally second the illusions of the exiles, he announces death, exclusion from the new theocracy (chap. 13). Nor can the merits of the righteous be invoked; it would be convenient to use them as a lightning rod in order to persevere tranquilly in impiety. There is indeed solidarity in reward, but the same principle holds also for punishment. Now iniquity in Jerusalem is at its height; Yahweh, by his justice, can no longer defer the punishment. His very holiness is at stake in the eyes of the nations. The righteous, this time, will be able to save only themselves (chap. 14).

A dominant concept in E. is the crisis of the covenant of Sinai (chaps. 15, 16, 20, 22, 23). The Mosaic alliance was a free choice on God's part of the people of Israel as his peculiar portion, on the basis of divine mercy on the one hand, and of the observance of the moral precepts on the other. Consequently, Yahweh defends Israel, lavishes every good upon it, provided that Israel be faithful to him, flee idolatry and practice justice. Since instead Israel has always acted against the covenant, God, for his dignity as an offended and betrayed spouse, for his very holiness, must punish it. Since Israel is more guilty than Samaria and Sodom, Yahweh must punish it at least as he punished those two cities (chap. 23). Israel was chosen to keep alive the idea of the true God among the nations; failing in its mission, it no longer has any reason to exist (chap. 15). The rupture, at least external, of the covenant, will however be only temporary. God punishes Israel so that it may repent (16, 35-63; 20, 1-38). E. thus illustrates better than any other prophet the central idea of the economy of the Old Testament: collective solidarity. The house of David too is punished; it will be eclipsed (chaps. 17, 19). Mindful however of his promises, Yahweh will raise up from it the Messiah. Nor let it be said (chap. 18) that, since collective punishment is ineluctable, conversion is useless. What is the use - the exiles asked themselves - of doing penance, when one must remain in exile all the same, and watch helplessly the definitive triumph of the aborted Chaldeans? Having already expiated, with the deportation, those approximately 6 years of exile, it is clear that God is making us pay, in addition, for the sins of the fathers. And they cry out at the injustice. It is not the principle of solidarity that they combat, but this partial application of it. E.'s answer condemns such blasphemy against the justice of God. The collective penalty does not concern them; therefore, whether they are converted or not, it will take place all the same. But not for this reason can they continue with impunity in impiety and sin. Besides collective justice, with reward and punishment for the entire nation, there is an individual one, which it suits them to forget. There is strictly personal responsibility that places them face to face with God, who strikes each impious person with an equally terrible penalty: death, temporal and perpetual; just as he rewards each righteous person. Nothing escapes the Lord who has absolute dominion over every mortal. Wrongly therefore the exiles bring into play the principle of solidarity, while passing over instead the state of their consciences. E. calls them back, against their will, to the right moral path; they must settle their accounts directly with God, each separately and personally. And it is these accounts that do not add up: they are wicked, as the opposition to his voice also demonstrates. Yahweh already shows so much mercy in waiting for them to be converted. They believe they have expiated enough, while they still persist in rebellion and in vices; but whoever does not convert will be struck by divine justice and annihilated. Conversion is the only means offered them to escape death and to participate in the future restoration.

E. will continue to speak of the principle of collective solidarity, as in ch. 16 and in chs. 20, 22, 23, 36, 37. On the very day on which Nebuchadnezzar begins the siege of Jerusalem (588), E. gives the announcement of it to the exiles; then he falls silent: events will speak for him (ch. 24). Here the first part of his mission ends. In it he combats the errors and illusions of his fellow exiles. He goes against the current; he meets with contempt and hostility. His preaching is often limited to those who come to see him at his house (3:24 ff.; 8:1; 14:1); yet it reaches and spreads among all the others. For it is necessary that all, whether wavering or openly hostile, hear the words of Yahweh, so that when they come to pass they may come to their senses and at last recognize that they were true, and therefore do penance and begin a new life (2:5; 12:2); cf. the formula often used: "Then they will know that I am the Lord" (6:7, 13; etc.). The miracle of prophecy must awaken these hardened men. Only one who forgets this purpose of E.'s prophecies will be surprised that until 587 he speaks so much of the Jews remaining in their homeland, of their sins, of the destruction of Jerusalem (Tondelli), or worse will dream of a Palestinian ministry of our prophet (Bertholet). Five months after the destruction of Jerusalem, one who has escaped brings the news of it to E. (33:21), who begins the second part of his mission. From then on he preaches openly (33:21 ff.), he consoles, preventing the discouragement of souls, he works in depth for their conversion. The dispositions of souls, in general, have changed. The prophecies, fulfilled down to the details, make the exiles recognize their illusions and their wrongs. E. now appears to them as a true prophet. The particulars of E.'s long activity (587-571) are unknown, because the book offers only a selection of the most significant oracles of this second period. Having reaffirmed the necessity of conversion (ch. 33), E. announces the new theocracy, which will later continue absorbed into the Kingdom of the Messiah (ch. 34). The restoration is certain because Yahweh will accomplish it for his glory, to demonstrate his power to the nations; he will sanctify the exiles, to demonstrate his holiness to the world (36:16-38). The symbolic vision of the bones that, at God's command, are clothed with flesh and return to being men (ch. 37), vividly confirms this certainty. The theocracy is now foretold as living in peace on the hills of Palestine: powerful enemies will arise, who in a supreme effort will seek to destroy it, but Yahweh will annihilate them (chs. 38-39). The organization of the reconstituted Israel is described, in an ideal and symbolic manner, in chs. 40-48. In them emphasis is placed on the spirit that will animate the new theocracy: full and filial observance of the essence of the covenant of Sinai; veneration of the one God, which must permeate worship and all manifestations of social and individual life. Those who have wished to find in these chapters no longer the prophet, but the architect and the legislator, have run into insurmountable difficulties.

Perhaps in Baruch (1-3:8) the fruits of E.'s prophetic work can already be seen.

Characteristics of E., as regards form, are the visions described down to the smallest details, and the frequent symbolic actions, sometimes complicated and strange. The visions are presented as real, objective, and there is no reason to understand them differently; they correspond to the data of the Babylonian environment, while repeating and developing the traditional elements of the sacred books; they occur in the inner senses of the prophet and are joined to intellectual revelations. The symbolic actions were actually performed, as is generally admitted today. Jeremiah is close to E. in visions (1:11 ff.; 13-16; etc.) and symbolic actions (13:1-11; 18:1-12; etc.). Some symbolic actions: the voluntary confinement (3:25), the muteness (3:26 ff.), the immobility (4:4-8) and certain expressions ("I fell face down on the ground": 1:28; etc.) have served Klostermann to launch the thesis of E.'s epilepsy, embraced by several critics (Kraetschmar, Bertholet, etc.). The inconsistency of the arguments adduced dispenses with any refutation.

III. THE BOOK

There is agreement in recognizing in it a perfect systematic order. Two parts are clearly distinguished: in the first (chaps. 1-24) the exiles are prepared for the shock of 587, with the announcement of the disaster and its justification against the false arguments of the exiles. In the second (chaps. 33-48) the reconstruction is foretold, the new Israel rising from the ruins, and souls are prepared to enter into it. Between the one and the other, at the center of the book, are gathered the oracles against the nations (chaps. 25-32): the idea presiding over them is the universal dominion of Yahweh, who regulates all human events: he uses the pagans to punish his people, but then punishes them too, for their pride, their cruelty, especially for the baneful influence they exercised on the chosen people. And while the chastisement for Israel is only temporary and medicinal, for these it is definitive.

The book, almost always, unlike that of Jeremiah, follows the unfolding of E.'s activity and is entirely his work. The only exception to the chronological order are the oracles against the nations. To this unity of outline and composition must be added that of style: the same stereotyped phrases and expressions recur throughout the book. Nevertheless it would be exaggerated to hold with Cornill and Lajčiak that everything is in order, in the whole as in the details, "from the first to the last syllables."

The book of E., though so homogeneous, reveals here and there some correction and addition, extending only to particulars or brief pericopes (Rothstein, Heinisch, Herrmann and Cooke). So the thesis of Hölscher may be disregarded, based on subjective aesthetic criteria, which assigns to E. only the passages of high poetry (in all about 170 verses), as Duhm does for Jeremiah; and that of Torrey (1936), who attributes everything to an unknown writer of 230 B.C., on the strength of the Talmud's testimony "the men of the Great Synagogue wrote the book of E." (Bābha' Bāthra'). But such an assertion, which lumps together E. and all the minor prophets, must be either rejected or corrected, understanding it as referring to simple transcription. More followed was the hypothesis of two recensions, launched by Kraetschmar and given particular prominence by Bertholet (1936), based on the so-called doublets: often in E. similar thoughts are repeated in slightly different forms, and it was deduced that these were parallel texts coming from different forms and put together by a third party. But the deduction is arbitrary: the repetitions, recognized by all critics, from Cornill to Cooke, are to be attributed to the prophet's characteristic style, or sometimes to a corrupt text. E. dwells at length on expounding an idea and returns to it, illustrating it under its various aspects; not letting any particular escape him, he states an idea in general terms, then analyzes its aspects one by one, defining it ever better, and finally synthesizes what he has analyzed: this manner of his of composing appears evident where no one has dared to have recourse to a variety of recensions (cf. 1, 4-2, 1; 4-5; etc.). The repetitions were therefore inevitable, especially since there is lacking in our book the work of polishing, whence St. Jerome well remarked: "Sermo libri Ezechiele nec satis disertus, nec admodum rusticus est, sed ex utroque modo temperatus." But given the progression of the ideas, they cannot even be called repetitions. It is enough, moreover, to admit that E. himself definitively edited his book, toward the end of his life (about 570), making use of his own earlier writings or collections reflecting the activity of so many years, to explain exhaustively these frequent returns of ideas.

The book of E., written almost exclusively in prose, has a predominantly didactic character: it seeks to convince. The insistence with which it returns to the same subject produces a certain monotony. Yet pages of sublime poetry are not lacking, with splendid images (chaps. 15, 17, 19, 21, 26-28): the allegory of the ship (chap. 27) can be compared to the best pages of Isaiah. Unfortunately it is difficult to fix its rhythm, because of the corruption and uncertainty of the text.

The language strongly feels the Aramaic influence; for the lexicon the Akkadian influence is also notable. The Masoretic Hebrew text is particularly corrupt, and for its critical reconstruction one has recourse to the Septuagint. But from Cornill onward the Masoretic text was too much devalued, preferring to it the Greek version, as Rothstein does in R. Kittel's Biblia Hebraica (2nd ed.). Beuer was the first to oppose this devaluation; and in the same Biblia Hebraica (3rd ed.) he restores to the Masoretic text the place that is its due. The Septuagint version indeed appears mediocre, omitting the passages it does not understand, when it does not paraphrase them in a manner dissonant from the context. The papyri of the Steheide collection, published by Johnson, have confirmed this position of more recent criticism; from them there also results the uniqueness of the Greek translator.

Francesco Spadafora

IV. ARCHAEOLOGY

The figure of the prophet E. appears few times in paleochristian art and exclusively in the scene representing his famous vision of the field covered with bones that is repopulated with living beings. This vision, so often recalled by the ancient Christians, so much so that St. Jerome (in Ezech., 37) could write Famosa est visio et omnium Ecclesiarum lectione celebrata, was already recognized by Tertullian (De resurrectione carnis, 29) as a symbol of the resurrection of bodies: nostrum futurum verticinium clore demonstrat. The scene has never been reproduced in cemetery painting nor even in basilical mosaics. In the 4th century it is encountered only on a very limited number of sarcophagi and on a gilded glass. On the sarcophagi the artists have represented the moment in which the prophet with the thaumaturgic rod calls the dead back to life: next to a body lying on the ground one generally sees another already standing, while a third, thanks to the life-giving spirit, is about to rise; of other corpses only the head is visible, which seems to emerge from the earth. Such a scene is seen, e.g., in a sarcophagus of the cathedral of Gerona and on four now preserved in the Lateran Museum. More realistic is the scene depicted, together with many others drawn from the Old and New Testaments, on a gilded glass found in 1866 at Cologne: E. is near a tree with the rod directed toward a place where two hands, two legs, two feet and a head are scattered: the arid bones that are about to be reanimated.

A miniature of the Greek manuscript no. 210 of the National Library of Paris from the end of the 9th century is likewise informed by a realistic spirit. There one sees the prophet who, led by the angel Gabriel into a field covered with bones, speaks with God depicted on high by means of a luminous hand scattering from the clouds beneath which are written the words εἴπε εἰ ψάσσεται τὰ δέντα.

Von Dobschütz has recognized the representation of the vision of E. also in a Byzantine ivory tablet of the 9th century, now preserved in the British Museum.

Giuseppe Bovini

V. ICONOGRAPHY

Although the earliest depictions of E. known today go back to Early Christian art (4th century), his individual typology nevertheless established itself slowly and with little precision. Yet he almost always appears as an old man of dignified appearance and bearded. Such too in the 13th century, when sculptors in particular, in order to identify him, placed in his hands a scroll bearing his name or a passage from his prophecies, as can still be seen in his most famous depiction, painted by Michelangelo on the vault of the Sistine Chapel (1368 and 1512). The iconographic depictions of E.'s visions appear in the Middle Ages in the miniatures of very diverse Bibles, without the prophet being portrayed in them. A rich development of such representations appears in several Spanish illuminated manuscripts. Even in the small panel with the vision of E. preserved in the Pitti Gallery in Florence and painted by Raphael (ca. 1518), in which the Eternal Father is seen carried through the heavens by the four symbols of the Evangelists and by little angels, the image of the prophet does not appear.

Witold Wehr

VI. APOCRYPHA of E

A Jewish apocryphon composed between 50 B.C. and 50 A.D.

The stichometric list of Nicephorus recalls an apocryphon of E., of which ancient Christian literature has preserved several fragments. St. Epiphanius (Haer, 64, 70 [ed. Holl, 64, 71]; PG 41, 1196 ff.) gives the longest one, on the particular judgment. It is the apologue of the blind man who places the paralytic on his shoulders to ruin the king's garden, and for this reason they are punished together; thus the soul will be judged together with the body; whence the necessity of the resurrection. Clement of Alexandria (Quis dives salvatur, 40, 2; PG 9, 645) cites another passage from it: "I will judge you according to the state in which I find you." Another quotation in Clement of Rome (Ad Corinth, 8, 3); Tertullian, De carne Christi, 23; (PL 2, 700) attributes to it the phrase: "The cow that bore and did not bear," understood of the Virgin Mother of Jesus, which other Fathers refer to different sources. - See plate LXIII.

Francesco Spadafora