Ezekiel 13-24: Allegory of Prophecy

Last week we explored the prophet Ezekiel's mystical encounter with God. As I noted, description of mystical encounters are not to be taken as piece-for-piece parables or allegories. Rather, we may interpret certain images within them to arrive at a sense of what the encounter signifies.

Today we encounter a different form of revelatory experience: allegories or parables given directly from God to the prophet. These have a few different functions, such as the revelation of history through a riddle to trick the reader into accepting the Lord's propositions. Others indict directly. No matter how these stories are used, however, the symbolism is understandable and direct, corresponding to true historical events. Below are five examples of this sort of meaning making.

God's Faithless Bride
One of the most compelling accounts of Israel's shameful history comes in Ezekiel 16, titled in the New Revised Standard Version, "God's Faithless Bride." Here "the Lord God of Jerusalem" recounts the history in a highly stylized, metaphorical style.

Jerusalem was born "in the land of the Canaanites," (Ezekiel 16.3) phrasing that precludes ownership. Israel is a stranger here, the child of an Amorite father and Hittite mother. These, of course, were the people that preceded the Israelites in Canaan, the promised land.

Jerusalem is born an abandoned in an open field, receiving no birth rituals; her umbilical cord even remains uncut. No one pities the bloody flailing child but God, who happens upon her and commands her to, "Live! and grow up like a plant of the field." (Ezekiel 16.6-7) Jerusalem sprouts into full womanhood, though is still naked and bloody when God encounters her a second time:

I passed by you again and looked on you; you were at the age for love. I spread the edge of my cloak over you, and covered your nakedness: I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine.
(Ezekiel 16.8)

God washes the blood from Jerusalem's body and clothes her. He adorns her in fine clothing and jewelry, and gives her the finest food. Jerusalem becomes renowned for her beauty among the nations. Rising up from an ignoble beginning, Jerusalem is at its best.

Then things go awry. Jerusalem begins to whore herself to other me - that is, she turns to other gods. (This imagery is very common in biblical literature, and Ezekiel uses the unfaithful wife motif extensively.) Jerusalem even sacrifices her children - the most tangible sign of the covenant with her husband God - to the false gods.

In succession, Jerusalem is rebuked for whoring herself to the Egyptians, the Philistines, Assyria, and Chaldea (Babylon). The list parallels the troubled history of God's people: slavery in Egypt, conflict with Philistia, and a tumultuous relationship with Assyria and Babylon that alternated between submission and trade and armed conflict.

God notes that Israel's "whoring" is unique for its subversion of the sex-marriage economy. Generally prostitutes receive payment for their services. Jerusalem, however, renders services and makes payments to her clients. We can easily see why God would be angry with her behavior. Not only is his wife unfaithful, but she is giving to her lovers the very gifts that he gave to her.

For this God promises wrath. She will be delivered into the hands of her enemies - those who were once her lovers:

Because you have not remember the days of you youth, but have enraged me with all these things; therefore, I have returned your deeds upon your head, says the Lord God.
(Ezekiel 16.43)

While it might be easy to understand the need for retribution, the line that precedes this verse seems to speak with the voice of an abusive husband when read in a modern light:

So I will satisfy my fury on you, and my jealousy shall turn away from you; I will be calm, and will be angry no longer.
(Ezekiel 16.42)

God must expend all his anger before he will again accept his bride. This is not the portrait of domestic abuse popularized by Eminem - though one can see the parallels in a broken contract and a propensity to do harm.

This is on a completely different level, the breaking of a contract between God and an entire people. God offers the easy yoke to those that are faithful, but too many are reluctant to take that bear their faith entirely in God.

God returns in his excoriation to the image of family: Jerusalem as daughter of a Hittite and Amorite. The idea is expanded into a complete family of sinners. Samaria, the northern kingdom of Israel, is Jerusalem's elder sister, while the notoriously sinful city of Sodom is Jerusalem's younger sibling. Not even these cities are as sinful as Jerusalem, claims the Lord, though Sodom was destroyed long ago and Samaria has already been conquered. Indeed, the sisters will be restored even as Jerusalem languishes. Thus the city will feel shame for its sins.

In classical prophetic style, however, Jerusalem is promised salvation:

Yes, thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath, breaking the covenant; yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant.
(Ezekiel 16.59-60)

Though it has been noted by others that negative prophecies are most frequently correct, this one does come true in part with the ascension of King Cyrus.

The Useless Vine
Ezekiel 15 offers a sophisticated riddle that is meant to reveal the truth about Jerusalem through a clever reveal. The riddle works by introducing a situation and convincing the reader of a truth about it, before revealing that actually the situation is representative of something that directly affects the reader. In this way, riddle solvers indict themselves. This particular riddle goes as follows:

O mortal, how does the wood of the vine surpass all other wood -
the vine branch that is among the trees of the forest?
Is wood taken from it to make anything?
Does one take a peg from it on which to hang any object?
(Ezekiel 15.2-3)

Well, no, the reader replies. People do not use vine wood for pegs. Vines do not surpass any wood at all - all they are good for is burning.

The vine, of course, is Jerusalem. Indeed, says the Lord, this useless city will be burned. It will be consumed and made desolate because it has not positive use for God. It does not give back to the Lord in any way, so why should he not destroy it to create the more useful fire?

The Two Eagles and the Vine
The next reference to the vine of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 17) is highly allegorical, a riddle whose question is phrased in poetry and answer revealed in  prose.

A great eagle, representing the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, removes the top of a Lebanon cedar, representing King Jehoiachin, and takes it away to a "city of merchants," representing exile. The eagle then takes a seed - the offspring of Jehoiachin, Zedekiah - who is initially loyal to the eagle and therefore prospers.

Soon another eagle appears, representing the pharaoh Psammetichus. The vine is drawn to its brilliant plumage and great wings, and its allegiance transfers. This is a fatal move, as Egypt is not able to protect Jerusalem against the angry Babylonian monarchy. There will be great struggle and destruction.

But eventually God will intervene, taking "a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar." (Ezekiel 17.22) It will be planted on the mountain height of Israel to proper. In fact, the sprig will grow to become the greatest of the nations: "Under it every kind of bird [certainly even great eagles!] will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind." (Ezekiel 17.23)

Not only will Israel be recognized, but God as well. All nations will finally bow before him:

All the trees of the field shall know
that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree,
I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken;
I will accomplish it.
(Ezekiel 17.24)

Judah the Lion
[Fun fact: Ariel means "Lion of God" in Hebrew]

Judah is frequently identified with a lion for Jacob's blessing of the tribal patriarch in Genesis:
Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion, like a lioness—who dares rouse him up?
(Genesis 49.9)
Ezekiel picks up on this theme in chapter 19, a lamentation for fallen Judah, who was the great lioness. Here cubs were reared to be great lions, to catch prey and devour humans, but nations raise the alarm and capture them, afraid of the power that they wield. Here the lioness is the nation of Judah and the cubs it kings. Jehoahaz is deported to Egypt and both Jehoiachin and Zedekiah are exiled to Babylon. Though the lioness mother Judah attempts to raise strong offspring, here enemies are stronger than they.

The Vine Again
The lament abruptly transitions to an image of mother Judah as a vine of great mass and height in a vineyard. The vine is destroyed by various means: plucked up and cast down (armed conflict), dried by an eastern wind (siege warfare and famine), stripped of fruit (death, attrition), consumed by fire (conquered), and transplanted (exiled).

And the fire has gone out from its stem,
has consumed its branches and fruit,
so that there remains in it no strong stem,
no scepter for ruling.
(Ezekiel 19.14)

These verses have a remarkable resonance with Jacob's blessing of Judah in Genesis (mentioned above):

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and the obedience of the peoples is his. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes; his eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.
(Genesis 49.10-12)

Oholah and Oholibah
Finally we come to Ezekiel 23, another parable of Judah's sin and God's retribution. "Born" in Egypt, the sisters Oholah (Samaria) and Oholibah (Judah) both become brides of the Lord and bear children. For the time being, at least, God overlooks the fact that they are "damaged goods" - that in Egypt they have already been dealt with sexually.

Oholah soon whores herself to the Assyrians, and is killed - not by God - but clearly in retribution for her unfaithfulness. Oholibah also lusts after the Assyrians, but soon turns to the Babylonians, then Egypt. The last of these is portrayed as a return to an old lover:

Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your bosom and caressed your breasts.
(Ezekiel 23.21)

Jerusalem, which has not yet suffered exile (the "death" of Oholah) is therefore warned of impending fury that God will unleash, dealt through the armies of the vary nations Oholibah once loved. She will suffer the same fate as her sister. Says the Lord:

For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands; with their idols the have committed adultery; and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me.
(Ezekiel 23.37)

Judah will indeed be punished. But the beauty of God's relationship with his people is that there is always room for reconciliation.

The Boiling Pot
One final allegory comes in Ezekiel 24, a boiling pot to cook an animal. The imagery is complex, but it seems that the pot is rusted on the inside, making worthless the food cooked within. Furthermore, the blood that Jerusalem has shed is symbolically inside the pot, an image that God uses to incriminate the city. The Lord will also take a rusted pot, symbolic of Jerusalem, and heat it, so that the filth and rust within it is consumed. In this way, the pot will be cleansed. But the cleansing of Jerusalem clearly will have dire consequences for its people.

Thus concludes today's post.

As for me, this reading really brought out the feminist in me. The language of the bible is remarkable here in its portrayal of women and violence. Could it have been put another way and understood as poignantly? What do you think? Let me know in the comments!