Spirit and Reason: The Embodied Character of Ezekiel's Symbolic Thinking

3: The Heart of the Matter

147 CHAPTER THREE The Heart of the Matter The Principle of Community The exiles appear to have been victimized by their circumstances. Their deportation to Babylonia was carried out by a Babylonian army that was too powerful for them. If they were wondering what they might have done differently to escape deportation, Ezekiel insisted that they take responsibility for their situation and recognize the potential for a new start that would come with repentance . Ezekiel tolerated no second-guessing and wondering how events might have been different apart from acknowledgment of guilt followed by repentance . Their deportation did not happen by chance. To solidify his case further that Yhwh was in charge of the course of events, Ezekiel delivered oracles against Tyre and Egypt: two imperial powers in the eastern Mediterranean that were still independent of Nebuchadrezzar’s yoke in the late 590s B.C.E. If the exiles thought that their fate would have been different if Judah only had the material wealth and power of Tyre and Egypt, Ezekiel summoned them to reexamine their thinking and recognize that the imperial powers of the world were subject to the sovereignty of Yhwh. Ezekiel devoted three chapters to Tyre (26–28) and four chapters to Egypt (29–32) to make clear to the exiles that Nebuchadrezzar, as an instrument of Yhwh, would bring these two rebellious imperial powers into subjection. Their means for resisting Yhwh’s plan would falter.1 1 Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 2: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 24; Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 32. 148 SPIrIT AND rEASON Human cleverness is an ambiguous attribute. On the one hand, it refers to inventiveness, the capacity to find solutions to problems. On the other hand, it refers to an evasion of circumstances that still remain in force. The evasion is a temporary solution that could bring more painful side-effects on the clever person or on the community of which he is a part. The patriarch Jacob in Israel (Gen 25:19–33:20), the wandering Odysseus in Homer (Od. 14.191–359), and the crafty god Enki/Ea in Mesopotamia (EE I:59–65) are three personalities in these three traditions that exemplify the trickster. Each of these characters is celebrated for his cleverness, and yet ethical questions surround some of their exploits. Would a new solution benefit only the clever person and bring greater trouble to others in the community? The removal of a constriction for one person may create greater problems for others. Each of these three traditions did not want to stifle creativity for the sake of the security of the familiar. They lifted up the trickster as someone who could be admired but not necessarily imitated. The capacity to discern whether cleverness or resignation was more appropriate required developing a larger worldview in which one could see the ramifications of one’s actions. Without such a bigger picture, the clever person was prone to self-deception.2 Ezekiel identifies Tyre’s fatal flaw as a form of self-deception (28:1-10). He describes Tyre’s downfall, not as a misfortune that has chanced upon this maritime empire, but rather as a just reward for its understanding of its place in the world. This distortion in self-understanding threads its way through all of Ezekiel’s oracles about Tyre in which Ezekiel makes clear the insidious potential of this attitude to bring great harm to others. With a focus on Ezekiel’s indictment of Tyre’s cleverness, chapter 3 examines Ezekiel’s judgment upon three aspects of Tyre’s commercial enterprises: (1) the public display of wealth, (2) the king of Tyre as a boundary keeper, and (3) the impact of wealth on self-perception. Each of these aspects will then be compared and contrasted with analogous instances from Mesopotamia (750–539) and Presocratic Greece (750–440). Next, the chapter examines Ezekiel’s account of how the hubris of the king of Tyre led to his exploitation of others in three ways: (1) his unchecked desires led to aggression, (2) his mercantile system covered over this exploitation through abstractions, and (3) symbols can be coopted into self-serving systems. Analogous instances from Mesopotamia and Presocratic Greece will then be drawn upon to illustrate the uniqueness and commonality of efforts of each culture to curb hubris and its tendency to reproduce itself in humanly constructed systems...