Ezekiel 17: A Holistic InterpretationAuthor(s): Moshe GreenbergSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 103, No. 1, Studies in Literature fromthe Ancient Near East, by Members of the American Oriental Society, Dedicated to SamuelNoah Kramer (Jan. - Mar., 1983), pp. 149-154Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601868 .

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EZEKIEL 17: A HOLISTIC INTERPRETATION

MOSHE GREENBERG

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

TO HAVE BEEN A STUDENT OF SAMUEL NOAH KRAMER is to have acquired for life a model of independence -based on firsthand control of data painstakingly col- lected and analyzed, and of scholarly reserve- manifested as a preference for acknowledging igno- rance over filling in blanks speculatively. Biblical studies might benefit from both these attributes. The great pioneers joined careful analysis to venturesome speculation which, though they marked it as such, was subsequently dogmatized by their followers as the "assured results of scholarship." The modern critical study of the book of Ezekiel is a sequence of fashions, starting from the nineteenth century view of the book as an integral whole and developing into the disin- tegrating analyses that are still with us. True, since the Second World War a conservative trend is evident in commentaries, but just what this means may be seen in a table prepared by B. Lang by way of summarizing his review of opinion concerning the authenticity of the material in the book. Out of a total of 1273 verses, the most conservative commentators assign the follow- ing numbers, respectively, to the sixth century B.C.E. prophet: 886 (Fohrer, 1955), 808 (Eichrodt, 1970), and 764 (Zimmerli, 1969) that is, at most only two-thirds of the material presently found in the book of Ezekiel are deemed authentic by "conservatives." To what extreme "radicals" can go is illustrated in the work of J. Garscha, who ascribed to the prophet 21 verses (Garscha, 1974; all the data cited are from Lang, 1981: 18). The assumptions of a critical method that leads to such fluctuations in results call for a funda- mental scrutiny. I have argued that the text-critical component of this method is flawed (Greenberg, 1978), and that the analytical-resolving faculty of its practi- tioners has been developed often to the detriment of the ability to perceive integrating devices and patterns and designs of structure (Greenberg, 1980). Since the latest study of Ezek 17 that has come to my attention (Hossfeld, 1977; see ahead) continues the "radical" trend, I have chosen to present a holistic interpretation of the oracle to the judgment of colleagues, hoping to contribute thereby to redressing the balance between exemplars of the former-so many and of the latter -so few.

Reserving a detailed analysis of the oracle for later, we must now review its gross features for the sake of discussion. The oracle has two main parts: a poetic allegory (vss. 1-10) and a prosaic interpretation (vss. 11-21) both threatening doom; these are fol- lowed by a brief poetic "coda" describing restoration (vss. 22-4). The allegory is about two eagles and two plants: the first eagle lops off the top of a cedar and transplants it; he then plants a vine that turns to the second eagle; for that, the vine will be uprooted by the eagle and withered by the east wind. The prose first gives a political interpretation: Nebuchadnezzar exiled one king of Jerusalem (Jehoiachin) and appointed another as his sworn vassal (Zedekiah); but, flouting the oath, the Jerusalemite sent to Egypt for help in rebelling against the Babylonian; this will result in his destruction (vss. 16-8) indeed God swears to destroy the oath-breaking king and his army (vss. 19-2 1). The short poetic coda relates God's promise to replant the top of the cedar in the land of Israel and make it glorious.

Our representative survey of modern critical treat- ment of this oracle begins with G. Hdlscher's influ- ential Hesekiel: Der Dichter und das Buch (1924), whose governing assumption (itself not argued) was that Ezekiel was a poet, and that all the prose in the book is inauthentic (Holscher credited the prophet with 147 verses). Accordingly, the original oracle ends at vs.9 with a warning (as Hdlscher understands it) that the second eagle (=Egypt) will despoil Judah; the rest of the oracle-the prose interpretation depicting Babylon as the destroyer is a later distortion of the prophet's original message, made in the light of the actual events. L. P. Smith and W. A. Irwin represent the aversion to repetition that characterizes so many modern critics. Smith does away with one of the two eagles (Smith, 1939); Irwin concurs, and eliminates the vine as well (it entered the text through "an error of text or exegesis" (Irwin, 1943: 110-8). Recent com- mentators are less drastic, on the whole, but several still take offense at the "redundancy" of vss 16-18 alongside vss 19-21 (two oaths by God concerning the destruction of the king; see Fohrer, 1955; Eichrodt, 1970; Wevers, 1969), and it is generally held that the

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150 Journal of the American Oriental Society 103.1 (1983)

east wind's withering of the vine is an inconsequent, unoriginal addition to the eagle's uprooting it in vs. 9. The coda, full of hope, is regarded by most critics as a discordant later addition to an oracle dealing exclu- sively with doom. Exemplary analytical subtlety is exhibited by F. Hossfeld (1977), who discerns six strata in our oracle, laid down in this sequence: onto vss. 1-10 the Ezekelian core the prophet's disciples added 11-15; 19-21; 16-17; 18; and finally 22-24. Hossfeld discerns these strata throughout the book; all belong to the sixth century yet none are to be ascribed to the prophet. Stylistic criteria of incredible refinement are invoked; thus, vss. 16-18 "are strikingly distinguished by their clumsy construction from the style of the preceding context."

The arbitrariness of this critical procedure has re- sulted in as many Ezekiels as modern scholars study- ing him. Is there no other way of exercising judgment on the text than to approach it with ready-made notions of what a prophet could say and how he could say it? The following analysis of the structure and content of the oracle offers a glimpse of an alternative; it is based on the endeavor to immerse oneself wholly in the text, activating all possible sen- sors in order to obtain clues to its means of expression. It is taken from a commentary in progress on the entire book (hence the occasional allusion to matters discussed elsewhere), but I have omitted the detailed textual and philological comments that precede and underpin it in the larger work. Nothing essential to the argument of this analysis depends on them, and it is as an example of a method of critical text analysis that I wish the following pages to be judged. I have elsewhere called this method holistic (Greenberg, 1980), and do here invite judgment of its validity and comparison of it with alternative procedures according to the basic criterion: how successfully does it give an account of the various phenomena present in the text?

* * * * *

The two revelation formulas of this prophecy one at its start, before the fable (vs. 1) and one in its middle, before the interpretation (vs. 11) underline the symmetry of fable and interpretation (Rivlin, 1973: 344; somewhat comparable are 12:8; 21:6). The two concluding formulas (vss. 21, 24) round off the main body a doom prophecy, and the coda a consola- tion. Divisions of the oracle are further articulated by the messenger-formula (vss. 1, 19, 22) and oaths (vss. 16, 19) as will emerge in the sequel.

Duality pervades the prophecy: fable and interpre- tation, two eagles, two plants, two modes of punish- ment, two planes of agency (earthly and divine), doom and consolation. With this duality agrees the double command with which the oracle opens: "Pose a riddle and tell a fable" an indication that more is here than meets the eye. As a whole, the bipartition of the oracle

in this case, poetic fable and prose interpretation with an added coda evoking its beginning (poetic and in terms of the fable) is a familiar pattern (e.g., chs. 13, 16).

The detail of the structure is as follows: A. THE FABLE/RIDDLE (VSS. 1-10). The revelation

formula is followed by a command to tell a fable, introduced by the messenger formula (vss. 1-3a).

A. I The offense. What follows is marked as poetry by its measures (changeable though they are), its parallelisms and repetitions, and its devices (chi- asm, assonance; for a suggestive treatment see Rivlin, 1973). A great eagle arrives at a mountain (vs. 3a- 3ba, two lines, whose stress-count is a staccato 2:2:2, 2:2:2; gadol-gedol; wings//pinions//feathers; first line has chiastic vowel pattern; each phrase has article). He crops a cedar-top and removes it to a merchant- city (vss. 3b-4b, two lines, 3:3, 3:3, parallelism, chiasm). He then plants a native seed in optimum conditions (vs. 5, two lines, 3:3, 3:2; zera'-zara'), intending it to be a subservient but thriving vine; and it thrives (vs. 6, three lines, 6 [1+5], 3:3, 2:2:2 variations of diminishing length on 6 stresses, ending of episode staccato as beginning, parallelism). An- other, less imposing eagle appears, to which the vine, surprisingly, appeals (vs. 7, three lines, 3:3, 3:3, 3:4, but the second and third lines are not segmented; parallelism between them; variation on terms of first eagle's tale rab/male; pana/kapan), though it lacked nothing in order to prosper (vs. 8, two lines, 2:2:2, 2:2:3, staccato, climactic repetition of vss. 5, 6c with heightened variants tob, setula, peri, 'adderet [con- trast sorahat of vs. 6a]). We note that the first eagle alone is active, and in his tale the plants are passive or supine; the second eagle is merely there, while in his tale, it is the vine that is active the eagle serving as a temptation the vine cannot resist.

A.2 The punishment (vss. 9-10). After an in- troduction resembling vs. 3aa, a series of rhetorical questions (halo amounts to an asseveration) urges the hearers to realize the consequences of the offense. a. The first eagle will uproot the vine so that it withers, and he will need no great force to do so (vs. 9a contains the introductory formula and the

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GREENBERG: Ezekiel 17: A Holistic Interpretation 151

rhetorical "Will it prosper?", outside the lines of poetry; the rest of vs. 9 has two lines, 3:3:3 [each segment ending with a verb], 3:3-?orageha frames this section). b. The east wind's touch will wither it (vs. 10, three lines, 3, 2:2:2, 3; repetition of "Will it prosper," lbh [cf. vs. 9b]). The poetic measure of the latter part of vss. 9-10 is hard to determine, and it is mainly through the repeated forms of Yb? that the segments are identified.

B. THE INTERPRETATION (VSS. 11-21). In a new revela- tion, the prophet is instructed first to ask his audience to consider the meaning of the fable (vss. 11-12a), then to tell it. It unfolds on two planes.

B.1 On the earthly plane (vss. 12b-18), the de- cipherment of the fable (vss. 12-15) shows its corre- spondence to the relations of the kings of Judah to the kings of Babylon and Egypt; the offense of the Judahite is exposed (vss. 12b-15a = A.1), and the question put rhetorically, "Will he prosper/escape"? (vs. 15b = 9a). Thus far the plot involves human actors only (as A. 1 involved only eagles and plants).

The punishment that the Babylonian king will inflict on the Judahite for his treachery is then described (vss. 16-18); it goes beyond the uprooting (exile) fore- shadowed in the fable, to Zedekiah's death in captiv- ity. This is in line with the practice noted in chs. 5, 12 and 15, where the interpretation of a figure advanced beyond the scope of the figure; this need not imply accretion. Although the actors in the punishment passage are still human (Nebuchadnezzar, Zedekiah, and [later] Pharaoh), the whole is framed as an oath of God, ("By my life, declares Lord YHWH") who is therefore involved as guaranteeing the execution of punishment. The passage ends with an affirmation that the violator of the covenant shall not escape (vs. 18), answering the rhetorical questions of vs. 15b (relation to the question is indicated by the inversion of its parts).

B.2 The interpretation then rises to the divine plane: God will vindicate his curse-oath and covenant (vss. 19-21). Just when the meaning of the fable seems to have been exhausted, Taken (vs. 19) advises us that only now have we arrived at the consequential part of the oracle. A messenger formula announces the new message, which begins with a second oath by God, that he shall requite Zedekiah for violation of his (God's) curse-oath and covenant. Capture, exile and judgment in Babylonia (and here the dispersal of the Judahite army is added as well) are attributed to God. This passage appears to depict the celestial plane of the earthly events predicted in B. 1. As the mere agent

of God, the Babylonian king has disappeared; God alone is the author of punishment, and when it occurs it will be recognized as his decree (vs. 21b). The two planes of punishment in the interpretation recall the double agency of punishment in the fable: eagle and wind (A. la.b.).

C. THE CODA: a prophecy of restoration (vss. 22- 24). To the prediction of God's punishment is attached a forecast of his renovation of the kingdom of Judah, without a new revelation formula and hence as a continuation, yet with a messenger formula and hence as a discrete message. This passage is again poetic, with all the abovementioned features of poetry; characteristic of the first two verses (22-23) are tri- stichs whose last stich is resumptive-climactic and one stress longer than the preceding symbolic of increase. Line structure and imagery draw on the fable for precedent. The coda falls into two parts: C. 1 God's new planting of a cedar-shoot (vss. 22a-23aa, 2:3 [omitting wenataai]:4, 2:3:4, each augmenting tristich framed by wqtltY 'n-l 'qt/ emphasizing the activity of God the speaker, parallelism), and its thriving (vs. 23aP-b, 2:2:3, 2:2:3 tristichs of a different aug- menting pattern; note the frame wsknvt-tisknh). C.2 Universal recognition of God as the reverser of national fortunes (vs. 24, an expanded recognition formula is broken up to frame two sets of antitheses [lower-heighten, wither-bloom], each 3:3). Drawing its imagery from the fable and its theocentrism from the upper plane of the interpretation, the coda serves to bind together all the chief elements of the oracle.

The structure of this prophecy may be diagrammed as a spiraling progress of characters and planes (see fig. 1; movement clockwise, starting from the fable):

Medieval and modern exegetes regard the lesson of this oracle (minus the coda) as unitary: the fatal culpability of Zedekiah in breaking his vassal oath to Nebuchadnezzar. Assessment of the art of the fable is generally confined to the observation that it is overly tailored (not, however, because human actions and motives are ascribed to non-humans; that is the way of fabulists): e.g., eagles are not stationary so that vines can grow under, or twine about, them. This appreciation of the oracle depends on the reflection of vs. 19 in II Chron 36:13: among Zedekiah's offenses the Chronicler counts his rebellion against Nebuchad- nezzar, "who made him swear an oath by God." It is likely that the source of that allegation was this oracle since no other allusion to such an oath exists; but the Chronicler's interpretation trivializes the leap from plane to plane in vs. 19 that the unprejudiced reader

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152 Journal of the American Oriental Society 103.1 (1983)

CHARACTERS (other than God)

human non-human

2nd interpre- Cocla

divine tation (vss. 19-2 1) (vss. 22-24)

PLANE OF

ACTORS Ist interpre- Fable

earthly pretation (vss. I 1-18) (vss. 1-10)

Fig. 1

senses as momentous. Worse, it impedes appre- ciation of the ambiguity present in the fable, which is exploited in the planar leap.

How would the first hearer of the fable, who did not know its interpretation, decode it on the basis of familiar biblical imagery? He might, of course, antici- pate the correct decoding; on the other hand he might light upon alternatives which would almost yield a coherent solution. The grand eagle might be YHWH- as in the figures of Exod 19:4; Deut 32:11; the cedar- Israel (Num 24:6); Canaan the real land so named; the planting and care of the vine God's installation of Israel in its land (Ps 80:9-12); the lesser eagle that does not act but only tempts to infidelity a foreign deity; the vine's appeal to it for sustenance-apostasy; the first eagle's (and the east wind's) destruction of the vine-God's punishment (Isa 5:5f; Ps 80:13f; Hosea 13:15). Such a partial decoding Lebanon and the double planting of the first eagle remain unaccounted for would indeed be the one most ready to hand, considering Ezekiel's regular themes. The ambiguity of most of the terms in the fable allows such a miscon- struing and justifies its being entitled a riddle as well as a fable; the prophet's challenging "Surely you know

what these things mean!" points to the possibility of misunderstanding.

To one who had worked out an interpretation along these lines the true decoding (B. 1) would appear as an illumination and a surprise the former, for it would take account of all the terms of the fable, the latter because for once the prophet had got off his theocentric hobbyhorse and had dealt with human events! The effect would be to drive home a dreadful premonition: Zedekiah's defection from his Babylo- nian overlord must earn a terrible revenge; Nebuchad- nezzar could not possibly allow such a breach of a sworn vassal-treaty to escape unpunished.

And now, just when the hearer was satisfied that he had got the point, laken puts him on notice that the chief consequence of the oracle is still to come. Ac- cording to the accepted view (based on II Chron 36), the climax of the oracle consists of God's identifying the Babylonian king's treaty enforced by oath as his own. M. Tsevat has argued that Nebuchadnezzar made Zedekiah swear allegiance to him by YHWH when he appointed him king; that, furthermore, Eze- kiel uniquely among the prophets regarded that extorted oath as binding. Tsevat ascribes to Ezekiel the singular doctrine that even such an oath is pro- tected by the absolute injunction to honor one's word found in Lev 5:4 with respect to individuals. "The law ... has its place in the life of the individual; ... Ezekiel . . . applies it ... in the relation between the imperialist state and its captive vassals . .. No longer do two standards prevail" (Tsevat, 1959: 204). Now, that Nebuchadnezzar (or any neo-Babylonian king) imposed on his vassals an oath of allegiance by their own gods is otherwise unknown. The neo-Assyrian evidence cited by Tsevat (supplemented by Frankena, 1965: 131; Cogan, 1974: 47f.) is mostly supplied by conjectural fillings-in of lacunae. There is one clear case of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon including Phoeni- cian gods in the curses sanctioning his treaty with Baal of Tyre (A NET, p. 534); but that appears as a special concession (see Cogan). The only evidence for neo-Babylonian practice is II Chron 36-probably based on the Chronicler's understanding of our Ezekiel passage and therefore no independent witness (Men- denhall, cited by Zimmerli, bases himself on nothing else).

But even granting the possibility that Nebuchad- nezzar did adjure Zedekiah by YHWH, is the natural sense of vs. 19 that YHWH solemnly makes that oath his own? We understand that the Chronicler, intent on gathering all possible support for his theodicy, should have read this meaning into our verse; we

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GREENBERG: Ezekiel 17: A Holistic Interpretation 153

recall how in II Chron 35:22 he explained Josiah's untimely death by the invention of "an oracle of God," defended by Necho, which the Judahite king spurned. But what other compelling reason is there for turning Ezekiel into a zealous partisan of Nebu- chadnezzar's interested doctrine of the validity of an extorted oath by YHWH? The natural-indeed the obvious construction of vs. 19 is to make "my curse- oath ... and my covenant" in YHWH's speech refer to his covenant with Israel (as in 16:59), which the king was held responsible to maintain.

Indeed, the historian of the book of Kings holds it as established doctrine that the kings are responsible for covenant violations of their kingdoms (I Kings 12:28f; 14:15f); violations of the Torah of Moses are laid at the door of Manasseh (11 Kings 21:8-11). Ezekiel so far shares this view as to blame the religious "straying" of Israel on the dereliction of its kings (34:6). As for Zedekiah, II Kings 24:18 judges him "evil in the sight of YHWH," and in Ezekiel 21:30 the prophet brands him a "desecrated, wicked man."

There is, then, warrant for taking vs. 19 according to its natural sense, and seeing in all of B.2 a shift from earthly to divine matters. Both fable and its earthly interpretation are suddenly transposed into an allegory of the relation between God and (the king of) Judah. The earthly suzerain Nebuchadnezzar will not let rebellious Zedekiah get away with his treachery; how much less will the divine sovereign countenance the Judahite's breach of faith with him.

By this understanding of the course of the oracle, two turnabouts are assumed in the audience's percep- tion of it. What may vaguely have been thought to be an allegory of apostasy is interpreted as wholly politi- cal; but then the political transaction is used as a model from which a theological analogy is drawn. Justice is thus done (1) to the ambiguities of the fable

whose glimmerings of a divine reference are thus affirmed, and whose riddle quality is now realized; (2) to the structure of the oracle, whose consequential taken passage now receives its full weight; and (3) to the thought of Ezekiel, which is now freed of the idiosyncratic burden of questionable validity imposed on it by the Chronicler-Tsevat interpretation.

All parts of the prophecy are now mutually illu- minated: the fable is truly a riddle (hila)-solved by identifying its human referents, all on an earthly plane. Then an allegorical cast is thrown on both by the rise to the divine plane of interpretation; that is, all the preceding political transactions are but a "liken- ing" (masal) to the relations between God and the Judahite king. (Note the correspondence between the

sequence of hida and manal in vs 2 and their literary realization [suggested by Lou Levine of Toronto].)

Finer points emerge: the dual agents of punishment in the fable (eagle and wind) presage the earthly and divine planes of the real punishment of Zedekiah. Moreover, the divine oath introducing the earthly inter- pretation of the fable, and expressing God's guarantee that the human suzerain will vindicate his violated compact, is given a new dimension by the parallel oath introducing the divine plane of events. Events on the two planes are indeed parallel and simultaneous: for his own reasons Nebuchadnezzar will punish the Judahite rebel, but in so doing he will (all unknown to him) be executing the design of the divine architect of history upon the king responsible for violation of his covenant with Judah. This brings us to the coda.

The coda is not only the planar correspondent of the fable (poetic, and with non-human characters), it is the diametric divine counterpart of the earthly ar- rangements made by the king of Babylon (see figure). Without the coda, God appears only in the character of destroyer, the divine correspondent to the Babylo- nian king in the role of outraged overlord. To the constructive arrangements of the human no analogue on the higher plane appears. The coda supplies that lack; not only is it a planar analogue of the fable, but it portrays God as undoing and superseding the earthly order, reversing its every effect. The revolutionary character of God's deeds is highlighted by the em- phatic pronouns "I will take," "I will plant," and the antitheses of vs. 24.

This prophecy has thematic and verbal links with the preceding one. The theme of faithlessness to the covenant dominates both; indeed, the proximity of the expression "violate covenant and flout curse-oath" in 16:59 to our oracle provides a clue for our under- standing of that expression in vs. 99. Only in these two oracles does this terminology appear. Incidental contacts, common to these two oracles alone (and suggesting they were composed at about the same time), are the terms riqma "embroidery" and "Canaan" for Chaldea.

If our surmise is correct concerning the secondary character of "Pharaoh" in vs. 17 and the occasion of its entrance into the text (Greenberg, 1957: 308f.), the body of this oracle will have predated the siege of Jerusalem. The embassy to Egypt (vs. 15) belongs to the very beginning of the rebellion, during the last days of Psammetichus 11. The prediction of the rout of Zedekiah's forces, his capture, captivity and death in Babylon echo 12:13-14 and do not necessitate a post-fall date. That the particular horrors of

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154 Journal of the American Oriental Society 103.1 (1983)

Zedekiah's fate the slaughter of his children and his blinding are not mentioned points to a date of com- position before the fall of the city.

Critics are almost unanimous in regarding the coda as a post-fall consolation, of a piece with the visions of chs. 34-48. As in the case of the coda of ch. 16, they question the suitability of a restoration oracle in a doom context. There are two issues: did Ezekiel prophesy consolations before the fall? Is this consola- tion pre-fall? Lang, 1978: 84ff has pointed to the incidental restoration prophecies in 11:1 7f; 13:9 as evidence that Ezekiel (like Jeremiah, ch. 24) antici- pated a restoration well before the fall. We have argued that the restoration coda of ch. 16 is integrally related to the dooms preceding it. Here it is less obvious that the coda is necessary to the message of the body of the oracle, unless it is maintained that the rise to the divine plane of events entailed the assertion of YHWH's superiority over all earthly kings in the constructive as well as the destructive dealing with kingdoms. But before deciding that the coda is late, we must give due consideration to the fact that in post-fall restoration prophecies, anxiety over the damaged reputation of YHWH appears as a motive of God's healing acts (36:20ff; 39:25ff); that theme is hardly present here. In language and conception the coda suits the body of the oracle, and completes it; there is no ground for doubting its Ezekielian pro- venience. But whether it was from the first the denouement of the doom oracle, cannot be answered decisively, though its literary fit is perfect.

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