From bound and gagged to swimming in the water of life: How God breaks and heals Ezekiel

Ways of reading the Israelite prophetic literature have often focused either on the historical process by which the scrolls developed or the final forms of the scrolls as literary compositions. Integrating these approaches offers possibilities for more synthetic ways of reading the prophetic scrolls. Two particular aspects of the book of Ezekiel promise the possibility of such integration. First, examining the prophet as a narrative character presents a portrait of Ezekiel as the victim of his own announcements of judgment. Second, placing the narrative character in the context of the trauma suffered by the Israelites in the Babylonian period demonstrates that the scroll uses Ezekiel’s own traumatic experience to renegotiate the understanding of sin, guilt, and punishment in the wake of national tragedy.