An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 160: Absolutely Nothing To Do With UFOs. (Just don’t eat the bread…) (Ezekial 1-5)

Ezekiel 1-5
Absolutely Nothing To Do With UFOs. (Just don’t eat the bread…)

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 1

 “The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.”

When I was growing up there was a programme on TV called “Project UFO”, which was a kind of proto- X Files. I think it dated back to the Sixties, probably Irwin Allen was involved somewhere, but it followed the adventures of two USAF men investigating UFOs, loosely based on Project Blue Book. Each week took a different case, sometimes based on famous sightings like the Sicorro Landing, sometimes made up, as far as I could tell. Generally they discovered that either the sighting was a hoax, or they couldn’t prove anything.

The reason I bring this up is because the title sequence referenced this chapter; the stentorious narrator states that “Ezekiel saw a wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw”, and then goes on to reference other mysterious sightings in history that could have been UFOs (well technically were UFOs in that they were unidentified and flying, but not necessarily anything to do with alien life). So evidently this chapter with its vision is popular amongst the Von Daniken types who see alien visitation in everything. I’m not saying it’s not, but I remain as sceptical of that as I do of angelic visitiations.

Whatever the cause, aliens, angels, celestial alignment and not enough food, the vision had by Ezekiel is certainly a strange one. Four winged beasts that are seemingly glued together by two of their four wings (these are similar to the vision had by, er, Isaiah? I forget), and some spinning wheels within wheels, moving about in the sky in a strange fashion. I note that the four-fold creatures have the heads of a man, eagle, ox and lion, attributes later given to the four gospel writers although not, I suspect, to be found within the bible itself. That there are four of something that must somehow represent four of something else – well, that’s pretty basic pattern-forming.

I’m not even going to attempt to unpick if there is any deeper symbolism to the vision, it just sounds very dramatic and awe-inspiring, which is possibly it’s only real purpose.

Ezekiel 2

“And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.”

What is unusual about Ezekiel’s vision is that God appears in human form, albeit in the midst of fiery clouds. In the past it’s been fiery clouds or nothing. Here God gives Ezekiel the rather thankless task of being His prophet, to spread His word amongst the “stiffhearted” Israelites even though Ezekiel will face “briers and thorns”. God gives Ezekiel a scroll, full of “lamentations, and mournings, and woe”. Oh, good, because we’ve not had nearly enough of that.

I should note, which I didn’t in the last chapter, that Ezekiel’s prophetdom, if that’s a word (Microsoft doesn’t think so), falls within the Babylonian captivity, so we’ve moved on in time from Jeremiah.

Ezekiel 3

“Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel.”

First note, which I missed off the last two chapters, is that the spirit of God refers to Ezekiel as “Son of man”, which not only do I have a faint inkling that this is used as an honorific for Jesus, but mainly it recalls to me Aslan’s use of “son of Adam” and “daughter of Eve” in the Narnia books. Which, I presume, is CS Lewis aiming for something that sounds similar to “Son of man”.

Anyway, the spirit of God gives Ezekiel a “roll” to eat, and I don’t think this is a bread roll, but a scroll, so Ezekiel is literally eating the word of God so as to be able to regurgitate it to the Israelites. God warns him that he’s have a better time trying to convince strangers who speak a different language than his own people, but to try anyway. There’s a bit of philosophical discussion about whose fault it is for people sinning – the upshot is that as long as Ezekiel has tried, it’s not his fault if people then go off and sin again.

Ezekiel is carried around by the UFO spirits, first to “Telabib” – another way of spelling Tel Aviv perhaps? And then set down by the river of Chebar, near his house.

Ezekiel 4

“Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.”

God gives Ezekiel a number of symbolic tasks to perform, and … I’m a little confused by them. Ezekiel has to make a model of Jerusalem under siege, I think. He also has to lie on his left side for 390 days, representing the 390 years of “iniquity”, and then on his right side for 40 days (the reason for this isn’t given). He’s given a list of rations that he must eat whilst he’s doing this, and to begin with this doesn’t sound too bad – twenty shekels of meat per day, water (one sixth of a hin, which sounds like a small amount) and lots of different grains. Okay, but then “And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.” That’s just wrong. Jeremiah, to his credit, does protest against this so God changes it to cow dung instead, to represent the “defiled” bread that the Israelites will find themselves eating. I suppose it’s one way of making sure that your prophet is really dedicated to you. I must admit that I first read this as the dung being baked *into* the bread, but I think it’s a reference to the fuel used to heat the ovens to bake the bread. I really hope so.

Ezekiel 5

“And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber's razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair.”

God sets Ezekiel another metaphorical task. He is to shave his head and beard, then weigh out the hair into three equal piles. One is to be burnt, one hacked with a sword and one cast into the wind, to represent the fate of the people of Jerusalem – famine, war and exile respectively. I’m a bit confused by the chronology now, as these warnings are very similar to those of Isaiah, but I was under the impression that by the time of Ezekiel the Babylonians had already been and destroyed the city. Mind you, they also seemed to leave some people behind as slave farmers, maybe there’s still a reasonable population in the city. Hopefully more will become clear as the book goes on.