An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 162: Samuel L Jackson, Smokey Robinson, and The Weird Seamstresses (Ezekiel 11-15)

Ezekiel 11-15
Samuel L Jackson, Smokey Robinson, and The Weird Seamstresses.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Ezekiel 11

“Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Your slain whom ye have laid in the midst of it, they are the flesh, and this city is the caldron: but I will bring you forth out of the midst of it.”

The spirit of God shows Ezekiel twenty five men who are chiefly responsible for Jerusalem turning into a “cauldron for flesh”, a term that could equally apply to brothels, human sacrifice or murder, possibly all three and more besides. Two of them even get name-checks - Jaazaniah the son of Azur and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah. Talk about bad PR, being denounced by God in the bible.

The spirit of God tells Ezekiel to go and prophesy against them, and Pelatiah falls down dead. Ezekiel is scared by this, thinking God means to kill everyone, but the spirit of God assures him that the remnant no longer in Israel will be bought back and will live according to proper Yahweh worship.

There’s not a lot to pass comment on in this chapter, but there is a point on the whole “wheels=UFO” notion that I came across in my researches, which is that Ezekiel would have had the vocabulary to be able to describe a silvery disc with small grey people with big eyes, should he so have wished, without resorting to bizarre imagery of four-faced winged animal-beings, which instead fit in with contemporary images of celestial beings.

Ezekiel 12

“Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for removing: and thou shalt go forth at even in their sight, as they that go forth into captivity.”

God sets Ezekiel another task as a metaphor; to gather his belongings and carry them as if escaping, to dig through the wall and to not look up. The explanation is that soon the people of the city will be carried out through the walls into exile, and then the usual bit about some being spared from the sword. The survivors will eat bread and drink water with great fear and awe at what has been done – a hint, I guess, at the effects of famine and drought where every morsel becomes precious.

Finally God doesn’t like the proverb which might be either “The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth” or the more wordy but also more clear “The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off”. In other words, prophecies take a long time to come if they ever do. God’s answer to this is make prophecies (one assumes Ezekiel’s) to not only come true, but to happen quickly.

Ezekiel 13

“Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the LORD”

God urges Ezekiel to attack the false prophets, who mainly give comforting lies about there being peace. There is a metaphor of their fake prophecies as a shoddily-built wall, which the “truth of God” will destroy like a mighty wind destroying the wall. Or at least that’s how I read it. Female prophets are also mentioned, who “sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls”. No, me neither. Some kind of protective charm, I guess. For “handfuls of barley” these magicians either kill, or allow the pillow-wearer to kill victims, and God doesn’t like somebody else choosing who lives and dies – it’s not clear if the fact that magic is involved makes it worse, but I’d suspect so given previous predilections.

Ezekiel 14

“Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be enquired of at all by them?”

Ezekiel meets the elders of Israel, and God tells him that they are doomed because of their idolatry. I can’t recall mentioning it before, but it’s been with us since the beginning – the expression “stumblingblock” is a strange one to unpick. It’s still in use today, something presenting a “stumbling block”, i.e. an obstacle to a process, but it’s weird that there is evidently a specific word for a thing that can be tripped over. I wonder what the original Hebrew is.

The rest of this chapter is more or less the usual fare – God promising destruction to most with a remnant being saved. After three large books of prophets this is beginning to wear somewhat thin. However, there are a few flourishes here that make it a bit more interesting. One is the four-fold breakdown of what the punishments will be – famine (“breaking the staff of bread”, plague, wild beasts and war (or, well, “swords”). Groupings in rhetoric is always a pleasant thing to read/hear. The other is the mention of three specific men – Noah, Daniel and Job. Even if these three were present, says God, He would only spare them, not their families. What’s interesting here is that Noah and Job we’ve met, Daniel is in the next book, assuming it’s the same Daniel. Also whilst Noah is an ancestral figure, Job is not – his story happens with no impact on the wider Israelite world. But evidently Ezekiel, and his listeners/readers, would be familiar enough with these three figures for the reference to make sense. It kind of reminds me, however, of the song “Abraham, Martin and John”, for which see Smokey Robinson for a definitive version.

Ezekiel 15

“Son of man, What is the vine tree more than any tree, or than a branch which is among the trees of the forest?”

A short chapter, in which God presents Ezekiel with another metaphor. As a vine which is burnt, so shall the Israelites be for their “trespass”. I think there’s an implication that the wood of a vine tree is useless for anything practical even before being burned – maybe some comment on the general louche-ness of the people, vine=grapes=wine=drunkenness as well, perhaps. As you know by now, overly complex metaphors make my head hurt.

The other thing is that this verse “they shall go out from one fire, and another fire shall devour them; and ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I set my face against them” reminds me that Ezekiel is the source for Jules’ (Samuel L Jackson) famous quote from Pulp Fiction. There’s a lot of “you shall know that I am the LORD” in this book.