Inside the Chariot Ezekiel could vaguely see, seated upon what appeared to be a throne, "the likeness of a man" within a brilliance or a fiery halo; and as Ezekiel fell upon his face, he heard a voice speaking. Then he saw "a hand stretched out" toward him, and the hand held a written scroll. "And it was unrolled before me, and, behold, it was covered with writing front and back." The vision of just a hand representing the deity recalls the Writing on the Wall seen by Belshazzar; and in the Gudea inscriptions it was stated that he was told that, to signal the propitious day for the temple, a God’s hand holding a torch shall appear in the sky. In this regard an eleventh century bronze plaque in the Hildsheim (Germany) cathedral, showing Cain and Abel making their offerings to God, in which the Lord is represented only by a divine hand appearing from the clouds (Fig. 67) is truly inspired. Figure 67 The word "dream" does not appear in the book of Ezekiel even once; instead the Prophet uses the term "vision." "The heavens opened and I saw Divine Visions," Ezekiel states in the very first paragraph of his book. The term used in the Hebrew is actually "Elohim visions," visions relating to the DIN.GIR of Sumerian texts. The term retains some ambiguity as to the nature of the "vision" - the actual seeing of a scene, or an induced mental image that is created, somehow, in the mind’s eye only. What is certain is that from time to time reality intrudes into these visions - an actual voice, an actual object, a visible hand. In that, the visions of Ezekiel belong in the Twilight Zone. Among the several Divine Encounters that move Ezekiel along his prophetic path, more than one are instances where the unreal includes a reality that in turn fades into unreality. One has elements of Gudea’s initial dream-vision in which divine beings show him a plan of a temple and hold architectural tools that end up materially in the king’s possession. "It was in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day thereof," Ezekiel relates in chapter 8. "As I was sitting in my home, and the elders of Judah were sitting before me, the hand of the Lord Yahweh happened upon me," And I looked up, and beheld an apparition, the likeness of a man. From his waist down the appearance was of fire, and from the waist up the appearance was of a brightness, like the sheen of electrum. The wording here reveals the Prophet’s own uncertainty regarding the nature of the vision - a reality or a nonreality. He calls what he sees an "apparition," the being that he sees is only a likeness of a man. Is whoever had appeared clad in fire and brilliance, or is he made of fire and brilliance, a make-believe image? Whatever it was, it was able to perform physically: And he put forth the shape of a hand, and seized me by a lock on my head. And the spirit carried me between the earth and the heaven, and brought me to Jerusalem - in Elohim visions - to the door of the inner gate that faces north. The narrative then described what Ezekiel had seen in Jerusalem (including the women mourning Dumuzi). And when the prophetic instructions were completed, and the Divine Chariot "lifted off from the city and rested upon the mount that is to the east of the city," The spirit carried me and brought me to Chaldea, to the place of exile. lit was] in a Vision of the Spirit of Elohim. And then the vision that I had seen was lifted off me. The biblical text stresses more than once that the airborne journey was in a Divine Vision, a "Vision of the Spirit of Elohim.’" Yet there clearly is a description of a physical visit to Jerusalem, discussions with its residents, and even the "putting of a mark on the foreheads" of the righteous ones who were to be spared the predicted carnage and final destruction of the city. (Chapter 33 records the arrival of a refugee from Jerusalem in the twelfth year of the first exile, informing the exiles in Babylon that the prophecy regarding Jerusalem had come to pass). Fourteen years later, in the twenty-fifth year of the first exile, on New Year’s Day, "the hand of Yahweh came upon" Ezekiel once more, and the hand took him to Jerusalem. "In Elohim Visions he brought me to the Land of Israel, and placed me on a very high mountain, by which was the model of a city, to the south." And as he brought me there, behold - There was a man whose appearance was that of copper He held a cord of flax in his hand, and a measuring rod; and he stood at the gate. (A measuring cord and rod have been depicted in Sumerian times as sacred objects granted by a Divine Architect to a king chosen to build a temple - Fig. 68.)
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 04:52:43 +0000
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