Interpretation of the book of the prophet Ezekiel

Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 About the book of the prophet Ezekiel Contents, division and origin of the book. The Prophet Ezekiel can be called a divinely inspired interpreter of the Babylonian captivity, its meaning and significance in the system of God's providence for Israel. Originally a priest taken into captivity with Jehoiachin, the prophet Ezekiel acted among the rural colonists of Jewish captives, leaving Babylon for his great co-worker, the court prophet Daniel. The result of over twenty years of activity of the prophet (Ezek.40.1 and Ezek.29.17 cf. 12) was his great book. But unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, a captive, removed from his compatriots scattered throughout Chaldea, probably simply wrote (and did not pronounce) his prophecies for dissemination among the people (Eze. 2.9): we see him only sometimes speaking directly to the people (Eze. 24.18) or to the elders (and even then to those who came to him) (Eze. 8: 1, 14: 1 ); in addition, he performed symbolic actions in front of the people, in general, “his tongue was tied to the larynx and he was dumb” (Ezek.3.26), opening his lips only in exceptional cases (Ezek.24.27) 1. Therefore, in the book he often cites passages from previous writers - a technique more likely to be a writer's than an orator's 2. But in view of this, one cannot agree with the rationalist interpreters of Ezekiel that he is a writer rather than a prophet: one can prophesy in writing; and thanks to the nature of the prophetic gift, which can be called literary, the book of Ezekiel compares favorably with other prophetic books by its strict unity of content, consistency and systematicity. Through a series of prophetic speeches, visions and symbolic actions, Ezekiel first, denouncing the wickedness of Judah, predicts the fall of Jerusalem and the final captivity of the people, and after the destruction of the kingdom, he predicts the destruction of the direct and indirect culprits of this destruction, the old and modern enemies of Israel (the surrounding pagan peoples), and he consoles Israel with bright pictures of a great future, i.e. the book naturally splits into two completely equal in volume, 24 each. chapters, parts: accusatory and consoling, of which the second is almost equally divided into speeches against pagan peoples (chap. XXV-XXXII), indirectly comforting for Israel, and predictions, directly comforting for it (chap. XXXIII-XLVIII). As for the particular division of the book, it is given by the prophet himself in the form of dates for his speeches. He dates his speeches by the years of Jeconiah’s captivity, which was also his captivity, and he named the following years: 5th (Ezek.1.2), 6th (Ezek.8.1), 7th (Ezek.20.1), 9th (Ezek.24.1), 10th (Ezek.29.1), 11th (Ezek.26.1; Ezek.30.20 ; Ezek.31.1), 12th (Ezek.32.1, 17; Ezek.33.21), 25th (Ezek.40.1), 27th (Ezek.29.17). Next, the individual prophecies are arranged in chronological order in the book, with the exception of Ezek. 29.17–21, which is obviously inserted into the finished book. In view of this, it is closest to assume that the book arose gradually from individual passages written in the indicated years. Features of the book of the prophet Ezekiel are a) mystery and abundance of visions. The Prophet Ezekiel is rightly considered the founder of Jewish apocalypticism, the emergence of which was facilitated by the then bleak situation of Israel, which involuntarily directed all aspirations to the distant future, to the end of times (eschatology chapters XXXVII-XLVIII). Hence, the book of the prophet Ezekiel is filled with visions, one more majestic than the other, which impart to it an extraordinary sublimity of content (Divine revelation resorts to visions when the secret communicated to man does not fit into words and concepts). Blazh. Jerome calls the book of the prophet Ezekiel an ocean and a labyrinth of the mysteries of God (on Ezekiel XLVII). The Jews forbade those under thirty years of age from reading the first and last chapters of this book (Mishna, Schabb. I, 13b.). But with such a lofty content of the book, the Christology of the prophet Ezekiel is not rich and is significantly inferior to Isaina. This is because Ezekiel, in his prophetic contemplations, deals with only two so separated in time, but obviously close in essence, moments in the history of Israel: the era of the Babylonian captivity and the era of the final restoration of Israel at the end of time; the long intermediate period, when Israel lost the glory of God (Shekinah), which dwelt in the church on the cherubim, and thanks to this was relegated to the level of an ordinary people, as if it did not exist for the eyes of this great Jew, although during this period such an important event for all mankind took place, as the appearance of the Messiah. Therefore, the prophet Ezekiel could not speak much about the time of the first coming of the Messiah, Who became the joy of the tongues rather than of Israel, which rejected Him; his thought was more directed to the time close to the second coming, when all Israel would be saved. A characteristic feature of the book of Ezekiel is further b) its priestly flavor. The author's touching love for the church, its worship and ritual (see special chapters VIII and XL-XLIV), zeal for the law and ritual purity (Ezek. 4:14, 18:6, 43:8, 44:7) is visible everywhere. c) Seal of Babylonian origin. Cherubim ch. I in many ways reminiscent of Assyro-Babylonian winged oxen and lions. XL et c. The chapters, with their artistic architectural details, take us vividly into the environment of Nebuchadnezzar’s enormous buildings. Depending on life in Babylon, which was then the center of world trade, where upper and lower Asia, Persia and India met, there is also what no prophet describes like Ezekiel, peoples and countries (Schroeder, Lange Bibelwerk, Der Propheth Jeesekiel 1873, § 7). Syllable of the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel often amazes the reader with brilliant and lively images, having no equal in this regard. It is difficult to imagine anything more stunning than his vision of a field filled with “dry green” bones, anything more majestic than the description of the glory of God in Chapter I. anything more vivid than his picture of the port of Tire (XXVII ch.). The attack of Gog (XXIII-XXIX ch.), the blasphemous service of idols in the church and God’s wrathful vengeance for him (VIII-XI ch.) are pictures that are not erased from memory (Trochon, La Sainte Bible, Les prophetes - Ezechiel 1684, 9). Gregory the Theologian called Ezekiel the most amazing and sublime of the prophets. Schiller (according to Richter) read Ezekiel with great pleasure and wanted to study Hebrew in order to read it in the original. Grotius compared him to Homer, and Herder called him the Jewish Shakespeare. Nevertheless, in places the language of the prophet Ezekiel is “dark, rough, drawn out; expressions turn out to be insufficient for his rapid thoughts” (Trochon, ib). Already blessed. Jerome finds in the style of the prophet Ezekiel very little grace, but without vulgarity (letter to Paul). Smend, Bertholet (Das Buch Jesekiel 1897) and others point out the following shortcomings of Ezekiel's style. This is a writer who loves to spread, and these spreads sometimes get in the way of plasticity and force. Many stereotypical phrases (such as, for example, “I, the Lord, have said,” “you will know that I am the Lord”), which should sound especially solemn, tire the reader. The songs and allegories in which Isaiah was such a master are somewhat artificial in Ezekiel (chap. VII, XXI, XIX); Of the songs, he is quite successful only in lamentable ones; in allegories, the subject and the image are gradually mixed up, it is not carried out to the end; the images turn to different sides (Ezek.11:3, 7; Ezek.20; Ezek.15); often he turns to the same images (cf. chapters XVII, XIX and XXXI; XVI and XXIII). Reflection in Ezekiel prevails over intuition; he is too rational and balanced to be a poet; Moreover, his adherence to established, objective values ​​of the cult is little reconciled with poetry. – Since divine inspiration does not change a person’s natural talents, but only directs them to serve revelation, then admitting Ezekiel to the full extent of such shortcomings of style would not harm faith in his divine inspiration. But it seems that the prophet’s newest critics are making demands on him that were completely unattainable for his era. Moreover, as Bertholet says, in modern times they are realizing more and more that Ezekiel was unfairly reproached with many things that should be attributed to damage to the text. The language of the prophet Ezekiel presents many phenomena that clearly belong to a later time. Smenda takes up 2 pages with a list of Ezekiel's phrases that bear the stamp of later times. In particular, his language turns out to be heavily imbued with Aramaisms (Selle, De aramaismis libri Ez. 1890). The language of the prophet does not resist the invasion of the degenerate popular dialect. Numerous anomalies and grammatical deviations reveal the decline and near death of the Hebrew language and remind us that the prophet lived in a foreign country (Trochon 10). At the same time, the language of the prophet testifies to the great originality of his mind with a large number of words and expressions not found anywhere else (΄ απαξ λεγομενα). The authenticity of the book of the prophet Ezekiel is not disputed even by those rationalists whose critical knife did not leave a living place in the Bible. Ewald says: “The slightest glance at the book of Ezekiel is enough to convince us that everything in it comes from the hand of Ezekiel.” DeWette agrees with him: “that Ezekiel, who usually speaks of himself in the first person, wrote everything himself, this is beyond doubt” (Trochon 7). However, isolated objections to the authenticity of the book have been made for a long time. This is, for example, what was said in 1799 by an English anonymous author of the Revue biblique against chapters XXV-XXXII, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX. Of the newest objections to the authenticity of the book (eg Geiger, Wetzstein, Vemes), the most significant are Zunz (Gottedienstliche Vortrage der luden 1892, 165–170), who dates the book of Ezekiel to the Persian era between 440 and 400, and Zeinecke (Geschichte des Volkes Israel II 1884,1–20), relating it to the Syrian era - 164. Both assumptions caused serious refutation in rationalistic science itself (Kuenen, Hist. - crit. Einl. II, § 64). It is curious that in St. canon, the book of Ezekiel was accepted by the Jewish synagogue not without hesitation, the reason for which was mainly disagreement with the Pentateuch of the rites of the future ideal temple, chapters XL-XLVIII: “if not for Hananiah ben Hezekiah (a rabbi contemporary to Gamaliel, the teacher of Apostle Paul), then the book of Ezekiel would have been considered apocryphal; what did he do? They brought him 300 measures of oil and he sat down and explained it” (that is, he sat over the explanation for so many days that 300 measures of oil burned out, Chagiga 13a; cp. Menahot 45a. Schab. 13b.). But according to Baba Batra (14b) “the men of the great synagogue (Ezra and others) wrote the book of Ezekiel, along with the 12 prophets, Daniel and Esther” (i.e., of course, they included it in the canon). – The testimony of Josephus (Jude 10:5, 1) that Ezekiel wrote two books presents many difficulties for biblical criticism. Perhaps Joseph considers the two parts of the book to be independent: the book about the destruction of Jerusalem and the book about its restoration. It is less likely that Josephus is explained in such a way that chapters XXV-XXXII or XL-XLVIII were a separate book. The text of the book of the prophet Ezekiel is ranked, together with the text of 1 and 2 Kings, as the most damaged in the Old Testament. Although discrepancies between the Hebrew-Masoretic text and the LXX translation in the book of Ezekiel are not as frequent as in the Psalter, where they exist, they are very significant; often in both texts a completely different idea is given (see Eze. 1:7, 13; Eze. 10:14; Eze. 21.3-4 and esp. Ezek. 40 - Ezek. 44), so that the interpreter has to choose between two readings. Since the time of Gitzig (Der Plophet. Ezechiel erkiart. 1847), Western biblical scholars of all directions have considered the text LXX in the book of Ezekiel, or rather the Masoretic. Cornille says that while he was reading the book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew text, this prophet made a heavy impression on him and he could not deal with him; when he began to read it in the Greek text, “the fog that shrouded the meaning of the book began to clear and a text of unique rare beauty and majesty with a powerfully fascinating originality appeared to the amazed gaze” (Das Buch. d. Pr. Ez. 1886, 3). Providing a smoother text in comparison with the Hebrew, the LXX translation in the book of Ezekiel is distinguished by its extraordinary accuracy, much greater than in other books, thanks to which it can be a reliable corrective to the Masoretic text. About the private life of the prophet, we learn from his book only that he had a wife, who was a great consolation for him, but whom he lost 4 years after the call to prophecy (Ezek. 24.16, 18. Wed 1). The traditions recorded by St. Epiphania Cyprus, Dorothea Tire, Isidora and others, therefore, report details about the life of the prophet: his homeland was Sarira (a place not mentioned in the Bible); in his youth he was a servant of Jeremiah (Grig. Theologian Words. 47), and in Chaldea he was the teacher of Pythagoras (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata I, 304, which refutes the opinion expressed in his time that the Assyrian Nazarates, the teacher of Pythagoras, was also the teacher of Ezekiel); was killed by the prince (΄ ηγουμενος) of his people for denouncing this prince of devotion to idolatry and was buried in the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad on the banks of the Euphrates near Baghdad. The prophet Ezekiel is especially dependent on Jeremiah (Smenda, in his commentary Der proph. Ezechiel; 1880), took up an entire page with a bare numerical list of places revealing this dependence; others are ready to recognize Ezekiel as the same disciple of Jeremiah as Baruch was, Ezekiel is also dependent on Hosea (for example, Ezekiel 14.23 and Hosea 6.9), Isaiah (Ezek.31.6 and Is. 22.24), Amos (Ezek.6.6; Ezek.30.18), partly Gen. 49 (Ezek.19:2, 10-14; Ezek.21.32). But Ezekiel has especially many points of contact with Lev. 17 – Lev. 26 and esp. Lion. 25, for which reason the rationalists (Graf, Kaiser, etc.) consider the author of this section of the Pentateuch (the so-called “priestly code”) Ezekiel, or if not him, then a person from his circle (Stade, Geschichte Isr. II, 67). You might be interested in: