Ezekiel 21-37: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary

370 Pages·1997·24.818 MB·English

by  Moshe Greenberg

THE ANCHOR BIBLE
EZEKIEL
21-37
•
A New Translation
with Introduction and Commentary
MOSHE GREENBERG
THE ANCHOR BIBLE
Doubleday
New York Londun Turonto Sydney Auckland
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bible. O. T. Ezekiel XXI-XXXVII. English. Greenberg. 1997.
Ezekiel 21-37 : a new translation with introduction and commen
tary I Moshe Greenberg.
p. em. - (The Anchor Bible; 22A}
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Bible. O. T. Ezekiel XXI-XXXVII-Commentaries.
I. Greenberg, Moshe. II. Title. III. Series: Bible. English.
Anchor Bible.
1964; v. 22A.
BSI92.2.AI 1964.G3 Vol. 22a
[BSI543]
224'.4077-dc21 97-24287
CIP
ISBN 0-385-18200-7
Copyright © 1997 by Doubleday, a division of Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
September 1997
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
First Edition
CONTENTS
•
Preface 395
Abbreviations 399
Bibliography 401
Traditional Hebrew Commentators Cited 411
Translation, Comment, Structure and Themes 413
XX. God's Sword (21:1-37) 415
XXI. Jerusalem All Defiled and Corrupt (22:1-31) 450
XXII. The Wanton Sisters (23:1-49) 471
XXIII. The Filthy Pot (24:1-14) 495
XXIV. Disaster That Constrains and Releases (24: 15-27) 507
xxv. Against Four Bad Neighbors (25: 1-17) 517
XXVI. Tyre Wiped Out (26:1-21) 528
XXVII. The Shipwreck of Tyre (27:1-36) 545
XXVIII. The Fall ofTyre's Hubristic Leader (28:1-lO) 572
XXIX. The Fall of Tyre's King: A Mythical Version (28:11-19) 579
XXX. Sidon's Doom; God's Vindication (28:20-26) 594
XXXI. Egypt's Fall and Restoration (29:1-16) 600
XXXII. An Amendment to the Tyre Oracles (29: 17-21) 614
XXXIII. Egypt's Doomsday (30:1-19) 619
XXXIV. Egypt Disarmed, Babylon Armed (30:20-26) 631
xxxv. Assyria a Lesson to Egypt (31:1-18) 635
XXXVI. A Dirge Over Pharaoh (32:1-16) 649
XXXVII. Pharaoh in the Netherworld (32:17-32) 659
XXXVIII. Doom Prophecy Is a Call to Repent (33:1-20) 671
XXXIX. Release from Dumbness (33:21-22) 681
XL. Unregenerate Communities (33:23-33) 683
XLI. Shepherds Bad and Good (34:1-31) 693
394 CONTENTS
XLII. Reclaiming and Renewing the Land (35:1-36:15) 710
XLIII. Restoration for the Sake of God (36:16-38) 726
XLN. The Resurrectional Metaphor of National Restoration (37: 1-14) 741
XLV. Reuniting the Two Kingdoms ofIsrael and Judah (37:15-28) 752
PREFACE
•
Here by the grace of God is the second installment of my commentary to the
Book of Ezekiel. That it has been so long in the making is largely owing to the
extraordinary difficulties standing in the way of one who would understand
the Book.
One set of difficulties sterns from the encyclopedic range of Ezekiel's refer
ences. Since he was a priest, and therefore trained in the traditions and literature
of his people, we may suppose that in principle everything contained under the
rubrics "literature" and "traditions" in the sixth century B.C.E. kingdom of Judah
was accessible to him. And in fact he does allude to almost every genre ofIsraelite
literature known from the Bible:
(a) narrative (e.g., creation stories, the Flood, the promises to the Patriarchs,
the Egyptian sojourn and the Exodus, the lawgiving and the rebellions in
the wilderness, the illicit worship in the land, the political and military
events of the kingdoms)
(b) poetry (e.g., echoes of Moses' Song [Deut 32])
(c) law - especially the substance and style of the priestly laws of the Penta
teuch
(d) covenant blessings and curses
(e) prophecy (influence of, e.g., Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, but especially of Jeremi
ah's restoration prophecies)
While these allusions are illuminated by their antecedents and parallels else
where in the Bible, there are always divergences between the two, challenging
the interpreter to ascertain whether Ezekiel reflects a different version or is re
shaping (or distorting) for his purpose the version known to us from elsewhere.
Beside the literary allusions, the prophet's familiarity with a wide range of re
alia (not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible) appears repeatedly: e.g., the events
attending childbirth, smelting processes, brothel argot, the construction and crew
of a Tyrian ship, Tyre's trade, the ethnic components of Egypt's army, and Egypt's
main cities.
Especially difficult to assess is the extent of the prophet's use of non-Israelite
culturc material. Was he familiar, e.g., with Mesopotamian iconography (in con
m'dioll with the chariot vision); with Assyrian royal illscriptions (in connection
396 PREFACE
with depictions of battlefield corpses); with native mythical representation of
Egypt's king?
Ideally, one who aspires to be an interpreter to another age of such a polymath
in his historical setting should possess a correspondingly wide range of antiquar
ian knowledge. In the real world one must settle for something less. The gain in
ripeness from the delay in the completion of this commentary has, I hope, nar
rowed the gap between the ideal and the reality.
To these intrinsic difficulties must be added the ever-increasing body of con
jecture challenging the integrity, authorship, and authenticity of the Book. It is
doubtful that there can be found five consecutive verses on which all critics agree
that they stem from the sixth-century exilic prophet. I have stated my position on
the method of such criticism as an answer to the question "What are Valid Crite
ria for Determining Inauthentic Matter in Ezekiel?" (in J. Lust, ed., Ezekiel and
His Book, pp. 123-35; see bibliography). Clearly MT contains a good deal of
variant readings (conflated passages) and explanatory increments not present in
the Hebrew Vorlage of the Greek translators. The provenience of such additional
matter is unknown. E. Tov, in his study "Recensional Differences between the
MT and LXX of Ezekiel" (see bibliography), regards them as an added layer in
the literary history of the Book; this leaves open the question of origin of this
matter (could not the prophet have been his own [first?) editor?).
The common assumption of an "Ezekiel school" that went on for generations
updating the original oracles fails to appreciate the essentially static (merelyex
planatory or synonymous or stereotypical-formulaic) character of the so-called
updating. There are, to be sure, a few manifest instances of updating, the most
important of which is the amendment to the Tyre prophecy in 29: 17-21; but it
is expressly attributed to the prophet, and its chronological-historical frame is
demonstrably limited to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II or the presumed life
time of the prophet.
I have not found the hypothesis of an Ezekiel school necessary to account for
the present text; on the contrary, the attribution of extensive parts of the text to
the "school" impoverishes, when it does not actually deform, the text (as it does,
e.g., by denying the originality of 36:23b~-38). The art and design of the present
text yield its secrets to the critic who works with the ("holistic") hypothesis of its
integrity as far as it will go (its limits are discussed in my "Valid Criteria" and in
"Reflections on Interpretation," in M. Greenberg, Studies in the Bible and Jewish
Thought [see bibliography)). Nevertheless, the fragmentation of the text pro
duced by advocates of the "school" hypothesis can serve the holistic critic valu
ably as a heuristic foil.
Since the art and design of the oracles in the Book of Ezekiel show a character
istic configuration of features (e.g., the "halving" pattern and other hallmarks
described in Ezekiel 1-20, pp. 25ff., which continuc to appear in the present
portion of the Book), it docs not seem naive or implausihle to suggest that an
individual authorialllliml and hand arc responsihlc for thclll.
Ezekiel 21-17 alTlIlIInlalcs lIlorc cviclclICl' ill slIpport of Ihis illtcrprclatiol1al
stam·l'.
PREFACE 397
I gladly acknowledge the help I have received in preparing this volume. During
my sabbatical stay at Yale in 1987 Brevard Childs generously gave me the free
dom of his library, thus enabling me to stock my study with all essential books.
During the late eighties my then research assistant, Ilana Goldberg, critically
annotated portions of my draft; her name appears repeatedly in the earlier chap
ters of this volume. The unhampered stretch of time that made it possible to
finish and revise the draft was given to me in 1994-95 through a fellowship in the
Center for Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania, under the benevolent
directorship of David Ruderman. The entire manuscript underwent the careful
scrutiny of the general editor of this series, David Noel Freedman, whose contri
bution to the substance of the book and to the morale of its author is incalcula
ble. My wife, Evelyn, was always ready to respond to my drafts as a representative
"intelligent reader" and to help in such tasks as only such a reader can.
ABBREVIATIONS
SUPPLEMENT TO LIST IN EZEKIEL 1-20
•
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary
AHw W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handworterbuch, 3 vols. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1965-81
AV The Authorized (King Tames) Version, 1611
BHSyn B. K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical
Hebrew Syntax, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
DJDI Qumran Cave I, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert-I, ed. D.
Barthelemy et aI., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955
DNF David Noel Freedman (editorial comment)
EI Eretz-Israel
The Lucianic revision of the Greek text (fourth century C.E.), as
presented in G (Ziegler's edition of the Septuagint)
Ezekiel 1-20, Anchor Bible (followed by page number)
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
MenbSh Mena~em bar Shim 'on (see bibliography in Ezekiel 1-20)
NRSV The New Revised Standard Version, 1989
OTS Oudtestamentische Studien
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
REB Revised English Bible, 1989
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
·pl 'lhrgum Onkclos, according to A. Sperber, ed., The Bible in
Aramaic, I. J.cidclI: It:. J. Brill, ]l)C;l)