Sacred Space #5

Here is the fifth in the series on Sacred Space, #6 coming shortly...
-Linda

Sacred Space #5 11/5/10

Ezekiel’s temple of doom and the temple of his dreams.

Ezekiel is one of the four major prophets (the others are Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel). All of these prophets pivot around the crucial event of the Babylonian invasion, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the exile. Daniel, unlike the others, was not written at that time. It was written 400 years later, but gives its 2nd century prophecy added weight by placing it in the 6th century BCE. These prophets were a big deal. They preserved the faith of the people when they had lost their leadership, land and temple. In the process of preserving the faith in the midst of unthinkable loss, they actually created something new.

Ezekiel has been called a catatonic schizophrenic! His visions have an almost psychotic feel. Why then is he considered a major prophet? He stands out. His psychic state is a matter of public record and the psychosis he is dealing with is a national historical event. Jeremiah has a relentless message of judgment; Isaiah has words of consolation and a new vision of Zion. What Ezekiel has is an intense sense of violence. There is something about his understanding of the violence of the moment, and of Israel’s role in it. Ezekiel has a priestly, ferocious image of God – a God of wrath. Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion states that the Old Testament God is arguably the most unpleasant figure in literature. His description of a violent, autocratic and patriarchal deity is not far from Ezekiel’s vision of God. Ezekiel was a temple priest and his mind is formed by the temple. Unlike Jeremiah who had little time for the temple, Ezekiel cares deeply about it.

Ezekiel 1:1-28 gives a description of the divine chariot – the merkabah. The chariot was the fighting machine of the day (like a modern tank). God is kick-ass in an armored vehicle. It is a chariot of supernatural qualities – full of fire, wings and eyes. Filled with life and spirit, it can move in any direction and immediately, without turning. Angel imagery, picked up from the Babylonians, is incorporated into the description. Sitting on the top of the chariot is the glory of God. At this point Ezekiel’s language begins to break down. In v. 26 he starts using the phrase “something like” because he can no longer fully express God’s glory.

He has this vision in Babylon five years after the first exile occurred when Jehoichin (the 18 year old king) surrendered the city. Ezekiel was one of the 10,000 members of the court, the army, craftspeople and temple who were exiled with the young leader. The city is still intact at this point – it will be another five years before Jerusalem’s destruction. Ezekiel is writing in the midst of a secular, non-Jewish alien environment. He mentally compensates for the absence of the land, temple and culture. He has lost his holy place. It is in that gap that he sees this vision – a vision of the glory of God inhabiting the temple. Ezekiel is dealing with violence done to the most precious thing to him – the temple.

Ezekiel 22: 1-16 Ezekiel describes a city of idolatry and violence. A place where strangers suffer extortion, slander leads to bloodshed and people give false witness in court, women are violated while menstruating, and where “the princes …have been bent on shedding blood.” The spilling of blood is mentioned a lot. It is an account of a bloody city. Ezekiel has an aversion to blood spilled in the wrong place (v.26). It becomes a violation of the holiness which happens when blood is poured in the right place – in the temple. Sacrifice is the only acceptable form of bloodshed. Everything else renders things impure. The city is unclean and impure. Because of this, Ezekiel says, the Lord will make you even more impure. Ezekiel makes the mechanism of vengeance clear, violation of the holy brings violation of the people. He wants to blame the invasion on the sins of the people. They have created the sacrificial crisis. The people will thus be made the sacrifice. Here he prophesies the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

Chapter 9:1-10 is one of the most intolerable chapters in the Bible. Here God orders the slaying of the people. He pours out his wrath on Jerusalem, defiling his own temple with the dead bodies. The people have defiled him so he will defile them in turn to show his holiness. Only those who “sigh and groan over all the abominations” will be spared – having been marked on their foreheads by an emissary of the Lord. No mercy will be given to the elderly, women or children. No sanctuary found in the temple. Scholars think that this chapter, with its instructions to the executioner, is probably an account of what actually happened. In times of invasion people often gather at the temple as a last sanctuary. That is also the place where a conquering army would target. Their goal would be to profane that place, cutting the people down without mercy. What is at stake is the transcendence of the other, which you must destroy. The Romans did the same thing. Ezekiel describes the event then gives it a theological spin. Saying that it is all part of God’s nature and his plan.

In Ez 10:1-17 the chariot described in chapter one is here in the middle of the temple. The fire from the wheels is used to burn the city and the temple. In vv 18-22, after the slaughter, the chariot carrying the glory of God leaves Jerusalem. This chariot carrying the glory of the Lord lifts from the temple and parks itself on top of a mountain halfway between Jerusalem and Babylon. Only when the people are again dedicated to holiness and purity will God’s glory be restored to the temple.

Ezekiel is sometimes called the Father of Judaism. After the return from exile, his prophesy of the rebuilding of the ideal temple (found in Chapter 40) becomes a key text. Today it is important for Dispensationalist and fundamentalist Christians. Ezra and Nehemiah look to the Ezekiel tradition for their sense of national purity. The Pharisees at the time of Jesus have dedicated themselves to holiness laws and rituals in an attempt to keep God’s favor and to forestall further disaster. They are seeking not to repeat the mistakes of the past. For Ezekiel, the sacrificial system with its focus on sin, holiness and purity keeps things controlled and is the source of the people’s security. For Ezekiel the holy is everything. At the same time he has a sense of a genuine interior transformation (“a new heart and a new spirit I will give you”, 36:26). It is for this that the prophecy is remembered more than his concern of the temple. All the same Jesus stands very much in contrast to his temple ideology. He deliberately hangs out with the impure and heals on the Sabbath. He transforms the water jars, set aside for purification, into wine. He breaks the holy open by shutting the temple down.