Abstract
Ezekiel depicts the Glory of Yahweh in Babylonia, an unclean land outside Yahweh's territory. The Glory also appears there without any physical sanctuary to mediate it. This article postulates that Ezekiel's presentation of the Glory takes its inspiration from the Priestly account of the Exodus wanderings before the Tabernacle existed. In P, the Glory appears outside a physical sanctuary only in Exod. 16.10 and at Sinai; both of these occur before the Tabernacle becomes available. These appearances occur outside Israel, while the people are dislocated and without an extant sanctuary—circumstances homologous to Ezekiel's own. This part of Israel's national story proves fruitful as Ezekiel interprets the exiles' reality through the vehicle of the Glory, showing that Yahweh has laid the foundation for Israel's new beginning through a connection with its past.
In this article, I suggest that Ezekiel's presentation of the Glory of Yahweh (הוהי דוככ) in Babylonia, without a physical sanctuary, creates a conceptual link between the Glory's presence in exile and its presence in the Priestly tradition of the pre-Tabernacle wilderness period. This link thereby connects the exilic community (or Ezekiel's perception of it) with the Priestly presentation of the dislocated Israelite community that wandered outside the land of Canaan. Through this connection between the exiles' current reality and the pre-Tabernacle wilderness, Ezekiel conceives of Israel starting anew under Yahweh's direction. In the service of this new beginning is Ezekiel's designation of God as a ‘sanctuary in some measure’ (Ezek. 11.16) for the people sojourning in Babylonia.
1. The Conceptual Link Connecting Two Worlds
The confluence of conditions between Ezekiel's contemporary world, as he sees it, and the world reflected in the Priestly tradition of the pre-Tabernacle wilderness, is built upon several parallels. 1 As we proceed, it is useful to bear in mind that Priestly writings employ the term ‘Glory’ (דוככ) specifically to refer to the earthly presence of God, and do not seem to depict God's earthly presence without reference to the Glory. William Propp remarks of P: ‘Kabod is tantamount to ‘weight”, ‘honor”, ‘splendor”, ‘wealth”, and ‘self”. Yahweh's ‘Glory” is the portion of his essence visible on the terrestrial plane’. 2 The Priestly texts use דוככ almost exclusively to refer to the presence of God, rather than employing the word in some other sense—such as with reference to the honor, wealth or status of a human or object. There appear to be only two exceptions to this rule, and though they comprise two verses, they both refer to the same thing: the apparel of ‘splendor’ and ‘glory’ of priests' garments (Exod. 28.2, 40). 3
In Priestly tradition, the time before the Tabernacle's construction represents the only period in which the Glory ever appeared outside a physical sanctuary; in the Priestly account, such a structure would not be created until Moses received the instructions for the Tabernacle at Sinai. The Sinai theophany itself, plus one recorded event in the wilderness approaching Sinai (Exod. 16.10), are the instances in which the Glory appeared before the sanctuary was available in P. Both of these constitute discrete events that serve specific circumstances. The second event, the theophany at Sinai, speaks for itself; for P, this was primarily the event at which the Israelites received God's cultic law and the instructions to build God's earthly sanctuary. The first event, Exod. 16.10, occurs in response to the people's complaints and lack of faith:
And as Aaron spoke to all the assembly of Israelites, they faced toward the wilderness, and look! The Glory of Yahweh appeared in the cloud. 4
Once the Tabernacle had been built, the Glory never again appeared outside its sanctified precincts. 5 When the Glory appeared before construction of the sanctuary, the people were outside Israel, in a condition of impermanence and dislocation, without an extant sanctified structure among them. The conditions that Ezekiel and the exiles experience—dislocation in a foreign land and lack of an available sanctuary 6 —are homologous to these (though it need hardly be said that some of the details differ between the two periods). Moreover, the intermittent nature of the Glory's apparently rare pre-Tabernacle appearances, which center around specific circumstances, is similar to the nature of the Glory's appearances in Ezekiel—there, too, such appearances to the prophet are intermittent and tailored to specific purposes.
Before proceeding further, it is useful to summarize the Ezekielian appearances. The first occurs in Ezek. 1.4–3.13, Ezekiel's inaugural vision in which the Glory comes to him by the Chebar Canal in Babylonia. The Glory commissions Ezekiel to go at once to the exile community near the Chebar and speak Yahweh's words to them, including lamentations and woes written on a scroll that the prophet is told to ingest (3.1–3). The second appearance begins in Ezek. 3.23 and continues through 5.17; in this visitation, Ezekiel receives instructions for the series of sign-acts that he will perform to prophesy the siege and fall of Jerusalem. The third place in which the Glory appears, as part of the visions of Ezekiel 8–11, serves a different purpose; here, the Glory is still at the Temple in Jerusalem, and does not appear to interact with Ezekiel directly. One of the primary functions of Ezekiel 8–11 is to describe the Glory vacating the Temple. The final appearance of the Glory takes place in the prophet's concluding vision; the Glory enters the restored Temple from the east, fills it (43.2–5; 44.4), and tells the prophet to relay to the people the delineations and rules for the utopian Temple. 7
I have already noted that when the Glory appears in Exod. 16.10 and at Sinai prior to the Tabernacle's availability, it does so intermittently, while the people are outside Israel, and in a state of dislocation; I have noted that these criteria subsist for Ezekiel as well. Having briefly summarized the Glory's appearances in Ezekiel, I would like to add that in these instances and in those of the pre-Tabernacle wilderness, the Glory speaks only to an intermediary who is both prophet and priest (Moses/Ezekiel), who is then told to convey a divine message to the people. 8
In the case of Exod. 16.10, the people are grieved that they have no suitable food, and doubt Yahweh's control over their circumstances. When they look to the wilderness as Aaron instructs them, the Glory of Yahweh appears. Yahweh then speaks only to Moses (16.11–12), giving him a message to relay to the people: ‘Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, ‘I have heard the grumblings of the Israelites. Speak to them, saying…’” (רמאל םהילא רבד לארשי ינב חנןלח־חא יחעמש דמשל השמ־לא הוהי רבדיב). The message in this case is that the people will eat quail in the evening and manna in the morning, which will bring a resolution to their circumstances. At Sinai, we see this pattern occur again. The Glory reveals itself this time to hand down the plans for the Tabernacle, which will provide for Yahweh's ongoing presence in Israel's midst. Again the Glory speaks to Moses, giving him the instructions for the Tabernacle and telling him what he is to say to the people: ‘Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the Israelites…”’ (לארשי ינב־לא רבד רמאל השמ־לא הוהי רבדיו). This brief opening (Exod. 25.1–2) initiates the Glory's long revelation of the information Moses is to mediate to the people.
This pattern also obtains in the Glory's interactions with Ezekiel, who, as Risa Levitt Kohn has already illustrated, sees himself in many ways as a new Moses. 9 As part of the Glory's first visitation to Ezekiel, we read in 3.1: ‘He said to me, ‘Human, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go speak to the House of Israel”’ (לובא אצמח־רשא חא םדא־ןב ילא רמאיו לאחרשי חיב־לא רבד ךלו חבזה הלגמה־חא לובא). Again in v. 4: ‘He said to me, ‘Human, go to the House of Israel and speak with my words to them”’ (םהילא ירבדב חרבדו לארשי חיב־לא אב־ךל םדא־ןב ילא רמאיו). Finally, in vv. 10–11: ‘He said to me (ילא רמאיו), ‘Human, all my words that I will speak to you, take in your heart and hear in your ears. Now go to the exile community, to the children of your people, speak to them (םהילא חרבדו), and say to them (םהילא חרמאו), ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh’, whether they listen or not.”’
At the Glory's second appearance to Ezekiel, the long set of instructions on how to depict the upcoming siege of Jerusalem in sign-acts is initiated in 3.27 with the familiar pattern: ‘But when I speak to you (ךחוא ירבדבו), I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh”’ (הוהי ינדא דמא הב םהילא חרמאו). In Ezekiel's extended final vision of the Glory, 10 the prophet hears the divine voice emanating from within the Temple, where the Glory has gone before Ezekiel's eyes (43.4–6). The Glory first informs Ezekiel of the subject of this final revelation (43.7): ‘He said to me (ילא רמאיו), ‘Human, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet”’. The prophet is told to mediate the delineations and rules of this Temple to the Israelites (43.10): ‘You, human, tell the House of Israel about the House’ (חיבה־חא לארשי־חיב־א דגה םדא־ןב החא); and ‘You shall say to the rebellious, to the House of Israel (לארשי חיב־לא ירמ־לא חרמאו), ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh: ‘Enough of all your abominations, House of Israel’”' (44.6).
The several parallels between the Glory's activity in Ezekiel and its activity in the Priestly pre-Tabernacle wilderness, as I have enumerated them in this section, are: (1) the Glory appears unenclosed only when there is no available physical sanctuary; (2) the people are in a condition of dislocation and outside Israel/Judah; (3) the Glory is not a constant presence, but appears intermittently, to address specific purposes; (4) when the Glory does appear, it speaks to a priest-prophet (Moses/Ezekiel), who is then directed to deliver a message to the people; and (5) these conditions, which converge in both the pre-Tabernacle wilderness and in Ezekiel, constitute the only circumstances in which the Glory ever appears independent of a physical sanctuary in Priestly presentation.
There can be no proof that Ezekiel exhibits a literary dependence on Exodus in his portrayal of the Glory's activity, and a position on that matter is largely dependent on how one prefers to date ‘P’ (or parts of P). 11 Nonetheless, it is beyond dispute that Ezekiel's book demonstrates an extensive awareness of biblical traditions (in all likelihood, some biblical texts as well), particularly Priestly ones. 12 With this article, I do not argue for definitive literary dependence, although I consider it possible. Rather, as I will discuss further in Section 3, I propose that from the position of exile, the priest-prophet Ezekiel—demonstrably familiar with many of his people's traditions—formed an innovative conceptual link between his own setting and the Exodus wilderness as it was understood in Priestly tradition, and invoked the Glory's activity as a connection between these two different settings.
2. The טעמ שדקמ: Yahweh as a ‘Sanctuary in Some Measure’ in Babylonia
In Ezekiel, Yahweh's Glory appears to the prophet in Babylonia. Most of Ezekiel's visions of the Glory take place while the Jerusalem Temple still exists in the literary progression of the book. However, it is clearly not available to Ezekiel and the exiles. Furthermore, in the prophet's estimation, it has become defunct as a result of its extensive cultic profanation, which prompts the Glory to depart. Thus, for Ezekiel, the Temple is bereft of ritual purity and ritually clean priests, and had ceased to function or be available well before its physical destruction. Under these conditions, Ezekiel sees the Glory in a foreign land; furthermore, under these conditions we read that Yahweh has become a ‘sanctuary in some measure’ (טעמ שדקמ) among the exiles, contrary to the assumptions of those in Jerusalem.
In Ezek. 11.16, the prophet states that Yahweh has become this שדקמ מצמ, or ‘small sanctuary’, to the Judeans living in exile in Babylonia. In this way, Ezekiel indicates that even as the Jerusalem Temple still stands—and most certainly also after it has finally fallen—Yahweh's true sanctuary has moved to be with those who now sojourn outside Judah. As I will elucidate below, those sojourners in exile would normally have every reason to believe that Yahweh's sanctuary is very far from them indeed, and their claim to Yahweh equally distant. Ezekiel, however, indicates otherwise in 11.16, which reads as follows:
Therefore say, ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh: ‘Though I have sent them far away among the nations, and though I have scattered them among the lands, yet I have become for them a sanctuary in some measure in the lands into which they have come”’.
The expression טעמ שדקמ could mean ‘small sanctuary’ in terms of degree, as in ‘sanctuary in some measure’, or ‘sanctuary for a little while’. It is helpful first to view the context in which the phrase occurs and then its precise meaning. Ezekiel 8–11 constitutes an extended vision in which the prophet is transported by the spirit/wind of Yahweh to witness the iniquities taking place at the Jerusalem Temple. These iniquities culminate in Ezekiel 11 with the final departure of the Glory from the Temple, paving the way for its destruction.
Ezekiel 11.15 reports that the remaining inhabitants of Jerusalem—those who were not taken in the first exile of 597—have come to assume that their apparently safe status signifies their favor in Yahweh's eyes. Since Yahweh allowed them to remain in the land, the land must be their inheritance; Yahweh has clearly abandoned the exiles, who are now far from his presence. Hence, in 11.15 the inhabitants of Jerusalem say of the exiles, ‘Remove yourselves (וקחר) 13 from Yahweh; the land has been given to us as an inheritance (השרומל)’. Ezekiel 11.16 reports God's rebuff to the view attributed to the residents of Jerusalem. Verse 17 continues with God's promise to gather these scattered people and bring them back to the land of Israel in repatriation, completing his refutation of the assumptions espoused by those currently remaining in the land.
A look at the use of שדקמ in the Hebrew Bible
14
indicates that it denotes a sacred place or sanctuary, as well as its immediately surrounding precincts, and can also refer to the sacred objects associated with the sacred place.
15
The word טעמ has to do with smallness or fewness, but can also refer to durations of time or matters of degree. Waltke and O'Connor define its use in Ezek. 11.16 as a disjunct emphatic adverb and translate the phrase, ‘to some extent’.
16
As noted above, טעמ may also be taken in the temporal sense, ‘for a little while’,
17
although this seems less likely.
18
The
If we take the sense as one of degree, we are faced with either a ‘positive’ or a ‘negative’ interpretation. That is, one could, with Greenberg, take God's pronouncement as: ‘Though I have removed them into the midst of the nations and scattered them through the lands, and am but a small sanctuary for them in the lands into which they have come…’ 20 In this interpretation, God is ‘only’ a small sanctuary in a deprecatory sense, hardly any sanctuary at all. Zimmerli, too, offers a negative interpretation: ‘I have been a sanctuary to them (only) a little in the countries to which they have come’. 21 Zimmerli's translation is, however, based on his interpretation of the preceding יב as an emphatic ‘certainly’ rather than a concessive ‘though’.
However, the structure of the sentence as a whole indicates that the יב clause is likely concessive, which leads into a subsequent antithetical conclusion: ‘yet I have become’. 22 With the waw thus rendered contrastively, the declaration takes on a positive meaning. The word in question, יהאו, is a wayyqtl, or what Gesenius terms ‘the imperfect with waw consecutive’. 23 Paul Joüon notes that this form was employed mainly to signal succession, often for a ‘single and instantaneous action’. 24 In their presentation of the uses of wayyqtl, Waltke and O'Connor remark that ‘two situations may be logically contrasted (w has the sense ‘and yet”)’. An example is Gen. 32.31: ‘Though (יב) I have seen God face to face, yet my life is saved (אצנחו)’. 25 In that verse, the wayyqtl, אצנחו, follows a suffix form—יחיאר (‘I have seen’). In Ezek. 11.16 we have a sequence with two verbs in a suffix form, םיחקחרה and םיחוציבּה, followed by יהאו. Gesenius notes that the imperfect consecutive after a preceding perfect often creates a contrastive or even antithetical meaning. 26 It appears preferable, then, to translate ‘yet I have become’, and to render the preceding יב as a concessive ‘though’.
The promise of restoration of the exiles to Israel, which comes in v. 17, is sometimes taken as the reason to translate the ‘sanctuary’ in exile negatively, since it is indisputable that Ezekiel, as a priest, anticipates the restoration of the Temple. Yet the beginning of Ezekiel's book, in which he describes the Glory's presence in Babylonia—later confirming in Ezekiel 10 (and subsequently) that it permanently leaves the Temple—affirms that the prophet believes the Glory has moved to the midst of the exiled community. 27 In other words, God's sanctuary used to be a physical place in a certain land, but has temporarily become a form of God himself in a different land. 28
The absence of the Temple for the exiles is the reason that the metaphorical sanctuary Yahweh provides is qualified ‘in some measure’, because by nature it does not possess the cultic accoutrements that complete the worship of Yahweh, and no cultic rites minister to it. 29 It is, for this reason, short of the ideal because the ideal involves a full, functioning, ritually pure sanctuary. 30 However, Ezekiel's description of God as a sanctuary in a foreign and ritually unclean land should not be underestimated in its impact. Haran speaks of the Israelite idea of the ‘sanctity of Canaan’:
In one of P's narratives, the land east of the Jordan is described as ‘unclean’, and its inhabitants must refute the claim that they ‘have no share in the Lord’, while the land to the west of the Jordan is ‘the Lord's possession’ and the tabernacle stands there (Josh. 22:19, 25, 27). From David's claim we learn that one driven out of the land of ‘the Lord's heritage’ is as if doomed to worship other gods (1 Sam. 26:19)… The assumption that it is impossible to worship Yahweh outside his land is also expressed in Deut. 4:28; Jer. 16:13. The psalmists go even further with their claim that it is impossible to ‘sing a song of the Lord on alien soil’ (Ps. 137:4). 31
In addition to the passages Haran cites, I note 2 Kgs 24.20 and Jer. 7.15; both of these state that Yahweh casts the people away (ךקש) from his presence with the Babylonian invasion; the direct implication is that, by contrast, Yahweh's presence is not going anywhere. It remains in his chosen land, while the people have been cast out. This comports with Josh. 22.19, 25, 27; 1 Sam. 26.19; and Ps. 137.4, which all express the belief that Yahweh's functional domain has a geographical demarcation, outside of which it is next to impossible to worship him. Yet in Ezekiel's schema, while the people have indeed been cast out, God's presence in the form of his Glory goes with them. 32
As I have already noted, in Ezek. 11.15 God delivers a refutation to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who demand that the exiles remove themselves far (קחר) from Yahweh, since ostensibly they no longer have a share in the land inheritance. As stated above, Cross has illuminated the legal ramifications of the root קחר in light of other West Semitic usage as carrying the sense ‘to relinquish claims’ or ‘to forfeit rights’. 33 The rationale behind 11.15 is that removal from Yahweh's land means that the exiles must concomitantly relinquish any claim they might have had to Yahweh as their God. They were not in Yahweh's land with Yahweh's people, but the land of another god and another people.
Yet according to Ezek. 11.16, the exiles need not relinquish their claim to Yahweh as their God because they have not, in fact, incurred any real distance from him or his true ‘sanctuary’. Yahweh has left his polluted Temple to be destroyed, and appeared in a different land—making it, in effect, his own as much as Israel. 34 According to Ezekiel, the true ‘sanctuary’ is in the midst of the exilic community, despite its distance from the traditional area of Yahweh's territory. 35 The Glory's action revealed that God was present with the post-Exodus wanderers even before the Tabernacle was available, and the Glory's action also reveals that God is present with the exiles even when the Temple is no longer available. 36
3. The Larger Picture
Exodus 16.10 and the event at Mt Sinai are part of a Priestly worldview in which the Glory appears ‘out in the open’ only when there is no available physical sanctuary for its dwelling. Under these conditions, the Glory will only appear intermittently and with well-defined purpose, instructing the people through a priest-prophet. I have suggested that Ezekiel, aware of this Priestly tradition, draws upon it with his experience of the Glory's unenclosed appearances in exile and God's self-declaration as a ‘sanctuary’ among the exiles. In so doing, Ezekiel thereby forms a connection with the Priestly memory of the Glory's activity post-Exodus and pre-Tabernacle. Further, like the Israelites in that period, Ezekiel's compatriots find themselves in a foreign land and in a state of flux.
Ezekiel's perception of his current conditions is framed by the experience of exile and the accompanying need to formulate answers that can find a place within the traditions of Israel's national story. It goes without saying that parallels between Ezekiel's conditions and the pre-Tabernacle Exodus conditions are the fruits of theological construction. In a situation such as the exiles experienced, revisiting the national foundation story held potent opportunities to find answers to—and inspiration in—their current dislocation, as well as opportunities to connect their dislocating experience to something within the national story that arguably bore equal significance for them. 37
Thomas Renz states: ‘It is not so much individuals who are called to form a new (religious) community, but ‘Israel”. The whole nation is confronted with its past and with Yahweh's design for a new Israel… The new creation of Israel is not described primarily as the survival of a remnant, but as the resurrection of a people’. 38 As the exiles exist in Babylonia, to be brought back into the Promised Land as a community in the future, they parallel the Exodus experience. To notice this is not a new thing. However, the people in exile represent most vitally the Israel before the existence even of the Tabernacle, to say nothing of the Temple. Within a Priestly schema, they exist as the Israel before there was an available sanctified structure to house God's Glory.
In Ezekiel, the unenclosed presence of the Glory serves as a conceptual link recalling Israel's beginnings as a nation. Ezekiel also participates in a re-creation of Sinai, in which the prophet eventually receives a new order for a re-created community, along with instructions for a new sanctuary in the idealized land (Ezek. 43–48). In this re-creation, it is important to remember that ‘the initiative is with Yahweh. Ezekiel does not expect Israel to be able to make a new start on her own, to which Yahweh would then positively respond. Yahweh is not waiting for Israel's response, he is creating it.’ 39 For Ezekiel, all of this is Yahweh's sovereign action. The Glory participates in what is not simply a new beginning, but a ‘beginning all over again’.
It is clear that the correspondence between the Glory's activity in Ezekiel and its activity in the Priestly account of the pre-Tabernacle wilderness is not an exact one. In the wilderness, the Glory is visible to everyone; Ezekiel, however, gives an account only of his own experiences with the Glory, and does not address whether the Glory would ever appear to others. We are left wondering, just as we are left wondering in what manner the people will experience God-as-sanctuary (Ezek. 11.16). Ezekiel also does not spell out in so many words that he conceives of the Glory's presence in exile as homologous to its presence in his Priestly wilderness tradition. But it is hardly disputed that when Ezekiel appropriates prior tradition, he never simply reproduces it in identical fashion, but re-presents it in his own way, which so often arrests the reader's attention. 40 Additionally, in ch. 20 Ezekiel does make an explicit connection between his exiled generation and the Exodus generation, and he does envision God leading the exiles out of the foreign land, just as God led the Exodus generation from a foreign land into what would become Israel. Ezekiel takes tradition and adds to it, or transforms it, with his own unique contribution. In this way he is, as Kutsko notes, ‘both a receiver of traditum and a voice of traditio’. 41
While I do not claim that Ezekiel's portrayal of the Glory correlates in exact detail with the Priestly pre-Tabernacle account, it seems plausible that Ezekiel's depiction of the Glory in Babylonia recalls the period in Israel's national story that proved most fruitful for interpreting the experience of exile from the land. In the Priestly worldview, the only time the Glory appears in a way similar to how it is portrayed in Ezekiel is within the region of Sinai before an available Tabernacle. While Ezekiel expects a future with an ideal Temple, he shows that Yahweh also acts to meet the current reality; and it is one that Ezekiel says Yahweh himself has brought about. Ezekiel illustrates that Yahweh's Glory can be present anywhere, without the physical structure that served as its earthly abode—just as it was also present in the Sinai wilderness before that structure existed.
Footnotes
1.
While I am aware that the dating of the ‘Priestly source’ (P) is an unsettled matter and open to different conclusions, I argue this thesis from the premise that Ezekiel is familiar with much Priestly tradition. However, a discussion of the dating of Priestly texts exceeds the parameters of this article. In addition, while my thesis incorporates the premise that Ezekiel is familiar with Priestly tradition on the wilderness, it does not necessitate that Ezekiel had ‘final-form’ P texts at his immediate disposal. For an influential survey of Pentateuchal traditions with which Ezekiel interacts, see Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 1–24 (trans. Ronald Clements; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), pp. 46–52. See also John F. Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel (BJS, 7; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000), pp. 10–14. For an extensive look at how Ezekiel interacts with and transforms biblical traditions within his own schema, see in its entirety Ellen F. Davis, Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and the Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel's Prophecy (JSOTSup, 78; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989). For overviews of Ezekiel's affinities with Priestly writings, see Keith W. Carley, Ezekiel among the Prophets: A Study of Ezekiel's Place in Prophetic Tradition (London: SCM Press, 1975), pp. 62–65; Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 22; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), pp. 124–28; Daniel Isaac Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 1–24 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 423–24; Risa Levitt Kohn, ‘A Prophet like Moses? Rethinking Ezekiel's Relationship to the Torah’, ZAW 114 (2002), pp. 236–54, and A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile, and the Torah (JSOTSup, 358; London/New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), esp. pp. 30–85; Corinne L. Patton, ‘“I myself gave them laws that were not good”: Ezekiel 20 and the Exodus Traditions’, JSOT 69 (1996), pp. 73–90; Scott Hahn and John S. Bergsma, ‘What Laws Were Not Good? A Canonical Approach to the Theological Problem of Ezekiel 20:25–26’, JBL 123 (2004), pp. 201–18; Jacques Pons, ‘Le vocabulaire d’Éz 20: le prophète s'oppose à la vision deutéronomiste de l'histoire’, in Johan Lust (ed.), Ezekiel and his Book: Textual and Literary Criticism and their Interrelation (Leuven: Peeters, 1986), pp. 214–33. I agree with Kutsko when he observes: ‘The following is at least a starting point: (1) Ezekiel belonged to a priestly circle prior to his exile but probably also to a circle that continued within the exilic community; and (2) some of the traditions that are encountered in their final literary form in the Priestly sources of the Pentateuch were also available to Ezekiel in some form, oral or written’ (Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, pp. 13–14).
2.
William Henry Propp, Exodus 1–18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 2; New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 595. Jon D. Levenson notes: ‘In cultic contexts, the term for ‘glory” (kabod) has a technical meaning; it is the divine radiance, or refulgent nimbus, that manifests the presence of God’ (Jon D. Levenson, ‘The Temple and the World’, JR 64 [1984], pp. 275–98 [289]). See also Wilhelm Caspari, Die Bedeutungen der Wortsippe k-b-d im Hebraïschen (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1908). Most scholars do not claim that the Glory, as God's presence on Earth, thereby disallows God's simultaneous presence in the heavens or vice versa. Benjamin Sommer, against the scholarly grain, argues that Priestly (as well as Deuteronomic) theology could conceive of God's ‘body’ as either in the heavens or at a location on Earth such as the Tabernacle/Temple, but not both concurrently. Sommer concludes that Priestly theology located God's ‘body’ only in the Tabernacle/Temple, once it had been constructed. For the entirety of Sommer's thesis, see Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
3.
This leaves, by my count, thirteen instances constituting God's presence: Exod. 16.7, 10; 24.16, 17; 29.43; 40.34, 35; Lev. 9.6, 23; Num. 14.10; 16.19, 42; 20.6.
4.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this article are my own. Many scholars have viewed Exod. 16 as a combination of the P and J strands, with the groundwork of the chapter essentially P. Because of apparent redundancies and some chronological oddities in the narrative, which are surveyed in the commentaries listed in this note, the chapter is broadly acknowledged to contain some redaction. However, the Priestly provenance of Exod. 16.10 is not generally challenged. Even though 16.10 falls within a framework of complex compositional history, we have no clear reason to think that this verse is not part of traditional Priestly lore. For an outline of some scholarly delineations of J and P in Exod. 16, see, e.g., Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), pp. 129–36; Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), pp. 271–92; Propp, Exodus 1–18, pp. 588–92; Ludwig Schmidt, ‘Die Priesterschrift in Exodus 16’, ZAW 119 (2007), pp. 483–98.
5.
To this effect, Milgrom comments that ‘when he [God] transferred to the Tabernacle his earthly presence in the form of the fire (kābôd)-encased cloud, God thereby designated the Tabernacle as the site for all subsequent ‘meetings” between God and Moses…' (Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB, 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991], p. 142). Claus Westermann argued that the Glory's appearances during the wilderness wanderings always follow a pattern in P: the Israelites' grumbling, localization at the Tent of Meeting/Tabernacle, appearance of the Glory, God's answer to Moses/Aaron, and God's action. See Claus Westermann, ‘Die Herrlichkeit Gottes in der Priesterschrift’, in H.J. Stoebe, J.J. Stamm, and E. Jenni (eds.), Wort-Gebot-Glaube: Beiträge zur Theologie des Alten Testaments (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970), pp. 227–49 (240–45). According to Westermann, the Tabernacle is a constant. However, in Exod. 16.10, the Glory is clearly not localized at the Tabernacle, since it is not yet available. This discrepancy in Westermann's schema is also noted in passing in Michael Widmer, Moses, God, and the Dynamics of Intercessory Prayer (FAT, II/8; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), p. 286 n. 20.
6.
On the question of whether there were ever Yahwistic sanctuaries in Babylonia in Ezekiel's time, see the overview in B. Oded, ‘Yet I Have Been to Them טעמ שדקמל in the Countries Where They Have Gone (Ezekiel 11:16)’, in C. Cohen, A. Hurvitz and S. M. Paul (eds.), Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume—Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, Qumran, and Post-Biblical Judaism (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), pp. 103–14. Oded concludes that there were none.
7.
For detailed treatments of the rhetoric and ideologies at work in Ezek. 40–48, see Kalinda Rose Stevenson, The Vision of Transformation: The Territorial Rhetoric of Ezekiel 40–48 (SBLDS, 154; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996); Steven Shawn Tuell, The Law of the Temple in Ezekiel 40–48 (HSM, 49; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992).
8.
Westermann, of course, noted the pattern of the Glory's appearance followed by an address to Moses or Aaron as intermediary, but did so in the context of the Glory's activity at the Tabernacle (see n. 5).
9.
For this, see Kohn, ‘A Prophet like Moses?’
10.
In this summary, I omit the Glory's activity in Ezek. 8–11 because, as I have already stated, the Glory is located within the Jerusalem Temple precincts and does not interact with Ezekiel, who simply watches its dramatic exit. I will discuss the Glory's abandonment of the Temple in the next section of this article.
11.
Much European scholarship, in particular, has argued for an exilic or even postexilic dating for P. See, e.g., Rudolf Smend, Die Entstehung des Alten Testaments (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2nd edn, 1981); Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theologies (ConBib, 18; Uppsala: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1982); Erhard Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (BZAW, 189; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1990); Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E (Studies in Biblical Literature, 3; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003). There is also, of course, much scholarship that argues for a monarchic-era date for much of P. See, e.g., Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, from its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1992); Richard Elliott Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative: The Formation of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly Works (HSM, 22; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981); Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1985); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000). For a recent article bolstering the possibilities of a monarchic-era date for significant parts of P, see David Vanderhooft, ‘The Israelite mišpāhâ, the Priestly Writings, and Changing Valences in Israel's Kinship Terminology’, in David Schloen (ed.), Exploring the Longue Dureé: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 485–96.
12.
See n. 1.
13.
Here the inhabitants of the land are emphasizing their own ‘legal’ claim to Yahweh, in contrast to the exiles. This legal claim is inextricably linked to the spatial claim that the exiles are ‘far removed’ (קחר) from Yahweh as a result of their deportation; in this way, the text appears to engage in a double entendre. Because the exiles are outside Yahweh's elected territory, they are both physically far from him and bereft of claim to him. For more on this, see below. For analysis of קחר in the legal sense, as ‘relinquishing claim to’, see Frank M. Cross, ‘A Papyrus Recording a Divine Legal Decision and the Root rhq in Biblical and Near Eastern Legal Usage’, in Michael V. Fox et al. (eds.), Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1996), pp. 311–20.
14.
This word occurs 73 times. See Abraham Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Bible (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1996), pp. 703–704.
15.
Haran elaborates on the capability of שדקמ to indicate objects possessing sanctity as well as the entire sanctuary compound itself. See Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel, p. 15.
16.
Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 663.
17.
See, e.g., William H. Brownlee, Ezekiel 1–19 (WBC, 28; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1986), pp. 155, 164; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), pp. 63–64. Since Ezekiel does not indicate how long the Exile will be, Paul Joyce suggests that the grounds for taking a temporal translation might be less steady than those for degree. Paul Joyce, ‘Dislocation and Adaptation in the Exilic Age and After’, in J. Barton and D.J. Reimer (eds.), After the Exile: Essays in Honor of Rex Mason, (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), pp. 45–58 (55).
18.
The distribution of טעמ in the Hebrew Bible reveals a preponderance of instances indicating a fewness of quantity or a reduced degree. Instances indicating ‘a little while’ occur far less. See Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Bible, p. 647.
19.
For this, and for a range of examples of its usage, see Frederick William Danker (ed.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3rd edn, 2000), p. 651.
20.
Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, pp. 185–86.
21.
Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1–24, p. 230.
22.
For the concessive sense in general and this concessive clause in particular, see Paul Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (trans. T. Muraoka; SB, 14/1–2; Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1991), pp. 640–41. Joyce, who similarly translates the waw as ‘yet’ and understands the meaning as ‘sanctuary (albeit in small measure)’, observes: ‘We have then a positive, if qualified, statement of divine blessing in exile, and not merely an essentially negative preamble to the promise of physical restoration from exile’ (‘Dislocation and Adaptation’, p. 56).
23.
Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 327.
24.
Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, p. 390. For the entire treatment of the wayyqtl, see pp. 389–95.
25.
Waltke and O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, p. 550.
26.
He cites Gen. 32.31; 2 Sam. 3.8; and Job 10.8 and 32.3. Gesenius, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, p. 327.
27.
Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, p. 152. On this point, Block points out that the ambiguity of how the exiles will experience this sanctuary of divine presence exists in tandem with the unambiguous assertion of that presence: ‘Ezekiel offers no clues how the exiles might have experienced Yahweh's presence among them, but his own encounters, beginning with his inaugural vision, offered concrete proof of the truthfulness of Yahweh's declaration’. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 1–24, p. 350. Kutsko offers the insightful thesis that Ezekiel disputes Yahweh's ostensible absence from the exiles while the Babylonians' gods are visibly present through their statues. By refusing ever to refer to these statues as ‘gods’ (םיהלא), but only as ‘dung heaps’ (םילולג), Ezekiel asserts that these statues do not symbolize the presence of their corresponding gods, but the absence. By contrast, Yahweh might be ‘invisible’ to the exiles, but this invisibility signals his true presence. He is present with them through his Glory and his becoming a ‘sanctuary’. This is a primary thesis in Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth.
28.
John Strong has argued that Yahweh's earthly presence through the Glory functions as an integral part of Zion theology. Strong proposes that Zion theology employed the appellation ‘Yahweh Sabaoth’ to refer to the fullness of the heavenly God in his universal kingship, represented by his throne on which he sat in the Jerusalem Temple. Alongside this, Strong postulates that Zion theology considered God's ‘Glory’ as the manifestation of God that appeared on the unclean Earth specifically to fight the forces of chaos. In John Strong's words: ‘It is my contention that the kābôd was understood by Ezekiel to be the hypostasis of the enthroned divine king, Yahweh. The domain of Yahweh's hypostasis was the unclean regions of the earth… The duty of this hypostasis was to fight the enthroned king's battles against Chaos’ (John Strong, ‘God's kābôd: The Presence of Yahweh in the Book of Ezekiel’, in Margaret Odell and John Strong [eds.], The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000], pp. 69–95 [73]). Strong states that Ezekiel therefore saw the Glory in Babylonia ‘as it was always manifested outside the temple mount, especially in the unclean regions outside of the land of Israel’ (p. 82). However, Ezekiel envisions the Glory as having been present in the Temple before removing itself (Ezek. 8–11), and as the entity that will return to the future idyllic Temple to resume its place inside (Ezek. 43–48). This major aspect of Ezekiel's theology remains unexplained by Strong's theory, which puts Yahweh Sabaoth in the Temple and the Glory outside the Temple. Even if one were to say that the Glory (rather than Yahweh Sabaoth) was present at the first Temple because it had already been ceded to Chaos, one cannot claim this for the future restored Temple of Ezekiel's vision. I do agree with Strong, however, that Ezekiel does not intend the Glory to represent a ‘dethroning’ of Yahweh Sabaoth, in a kind of concession to the Temple's downfall, or in any other way—against Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth. For further argument that Ezekiel does not intend a ‘dethroning’ of Yahweh, see Dale Launderville, ‘Ezekiel's Throne-Chariot Vision: Spiritualizing the Model of Divine Royal Rule’, CBQ 66 (2004), pp. 361–77, and Spirit and Reason: The Embodied Character of Ezekiel's Symbolic Thinking (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007); see also my ‘The Glory of Yahweh, Name Theology, and Ezekiel's Understanding of Divine Presence’ (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 2011), pp. 120–33.
29.
Frank Cross (‘A Papyrus Recording a Divine Legal Decision’, p. 320 n. 38) even suggests that the presence of טעמ to qualify ‘sanctuary’ in 11.16 could actually be a gloss, added ‘in the interest of the primacy of the Jerusalem temple’.
30.
Similarly, Block (Ezekiel 1–24, p. 350) remarks, ‘Perhaps it was this [priestly] attachment to the tradition that led Yahweh to qualify the promise: in small measure’.
31.
Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel, pp. 39, 41.
32.
For an illuminating treatment of the tension between ‘locative’ and ‘locomotive’ understandings of the divine presence within the Tabernacle in P, see Benjamin Sommer, ‘Conflicting Constructions of Divine Presence in the Priestly Tabernacle’, BibInt 9 (2001), pp. 41–63. Sommer concludes that P conceives of the divine presence in the Tabernacle as both locative and locomotive. It is locative because P firmly confines the Glory to the Tabernacle after its construction; it is also locomotive because the Tabernacle is capable of movement. For an extended look at the related concept of ‘God's body’ in the Hebrew Bible and the attendant question of ‘where’ God is understood to be in different schools of biblical thought, see again Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel. For the divine sanctuary as the culmination of Creation and the meeting place between Heaven and Earth, see Moshe Weinfeld, ‘Sabbath, Temple, and the Enthronement of the Lord: The Problem of the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:1–2:3’, in Mélanges Bibliques et Orientaux en l'Honneur de M. Henri Cazelles (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1981), pp. 501–12; Levenson, ‘The Temple and the World’. In a related vein, for arguments that Deuteronomistic thought—against traditional interpretations of ‘Name theology’—did not distance Yahweh from his Temple in favor of a more ‘abstract’ theology, but located his presence there in a way similar to other biblical understandings, see Roland de Vaux, ‘Le lieu que Yahvé a choisi pour y établir son nom’, in Fritz Maass (ed.), Das Ferne und Nahe Wort (BZAW, 105; Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1967), pp. 219–28; Ian Wilson, Out of the Midst of the Fire: Divine Presence in Deuteronomy (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), and ‘Merely a Container? The Ark in Deuteronomy’, in John Day (ed.), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (LHBOTS, 422; New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), pp. 212–49; Sandra L. Richter, The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology: lěšakkēn šěmô šām in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (BZAW, 318; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2002); and Keck, ‘The Glory of Yahweh’, especially Chapter 2.
33.
Cross, ‘A Papyrus Recording a Divine Legal Decision’, pp. 311–20.
34.
By portraying Yahweh's presence in a foreign land without even a modicum of lip service to its deities, Ezekiel leaves no doubt that Yahweh lays claim to that foreign land unmolested by any other gods, just as he is sovereign over the land of Israel. For a sustained thesis that Ezekiel is the first unambiguously monotheistic voice in the Bible, see Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth.
35.
Kutsko sees this divine ‘sanctuary’ as a parallel to the mobile Tabernacle from the wilderness wanderings (Between Heaven and Earth, p. 152), whereas I see it as part of Ezekiel's connection to the period before the Tabernacle.
36.
Here I note that Ezekiel's vision of chs. 40–48, which imagines the strictly demarcated sacred space of the restored Temple, does not concomitantly vitiate the idea of God-as-sanctuary through the Glory's presence outside sacred space. As I have stated, the Glory's appearance to Ezekiel outside Israel, and outside sanctified space, recalls its initial appearance in the Sinai before the Tabernacle was available. In Ezekiel's utopian vision, the sacred precincts of the Temple have been restored and the people have returned to the ideal land; thus, the need and the conditions for God to operate outside sacred precincts have ceased to exist.
37.
Ezekiel, of course, was not the only one to do so. As is well known, Second Isaiah also makes heavy use of the Exodus story in his articulation of the people's exilic experience and their ultimate deliverance from exile. Certainly Ezekiel's use of the story also has a negative side, which finds expression in Ezek. 20 with the prophet's belief that the Israelites' iniquity was unparalleled even during the infancy of their nationhood. Yet for Ezekiel, the exiles had no better record than the Israelites during the Exodus did, as far as iniquity was concerned; he does not allow that the exiles somehow constitute a righteous population. For Ezekiel, the Glory can still be active for the exilic community, just as, for the larger Priestly tradition, it was active for the Exodus community.
38.
Thomas Renz, The Rhetorical Function of the Book of Ezekiel (VTSup, 76; Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 219, 221.
39.
Renz, The Rhetorical Function of the Book of Ezekiel, p. 113.
40.
See, e.g., Ezekiel's presentations of Israelite history in chs. 16 and 20, as well as his vision of the utopian Temple and cultic structure. In each case, he draws upon preexisting tradition(s), but never exactly reproduces it. His presentations are always creatively construed. Even his description of the Glory—while it owes much to Priestly tradition—carries unique characteristics, such as the resemblance to a man and the detailing of individual parts (see Ezek. 1–2). For further exploration of this Ezekielian tendency toward innovative appropriation, see, e.g., Kohn, ‘A Prophet Like Moses?’, and Pons, ‘Le vocabulaire d’Éz 20’. For an extensive treatment, see Davis, Swallowing the Scroll. As Davis observes: ‘[M]uch of the power of biblical imagery, and especially Ezekiel's, derives from its relation to earlier language. Ezekiel is not content to overthrow the familiar, as any clever parvenu could do. More often, his strategy is to work with patterns already established in texts or in popular usage… He shows his genius and his mastery of the tradition by appropriating its symbols, then complicating and deepening them' (pp. 93–94).
41.
Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, p. 14.