Now, here’s my problem with this week’s Haftorah. It’s Ezekiel 37:15-28, which, as you can imagine, is just after Ezekiel 37:1-15. And Ezekiel 37:1-15 is the bit where Ezekiel is set down in the midst of a valley of bones, and he speaks to the dry bones, and says “Now hear the word of the Lord”, and those bones, those bones, those dry bones, those bones, those bones gonna walk around, those bones, those bones, those dry bones, now, hear the word of the Lord. And there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the toe bone connected to the foot bone, and the foot bone connected to the ankle bone, and the ankle bone connected to the leg bone, now hear the word of the Lord!
And at that point, I’m dancing, and I’m singing, and capering and gibbering and making jazz hands and it’s pretty much all over for Torah study for a while. Seriously, I know that some Gentle Readers are partial to the wheel within a wheel a-turnin’, way in the middle of the air, but my own opinion is that the dry bones is the best song about Ezekiel’s prophecies there is and will ever be. So there. And no, Shadrach is not about Ezekiel. And it would still lose to the Dry Bones.
Anway, that’s not today’s reading. This is today’s reading:
The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and [for] all the house of Israel his companions: And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand. And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou [meanest] by these? Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which [is] in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, [even] with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand. And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all: Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. And David my servant [shall be] king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, [even] they, and their children, and their children's children for ever: and my servant David [shall be] their prince for ever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.
I find this a troubling prophecy, and a troubling message. For one thing, I am not particularly keen on the coming of a Messiah, particularly if it means living in Israel, under a king, and observing all the statutes. I mean. On the other hand, a covenant of peace everlasting would be nice. I will add that to the extent that Judaism is Messianic, this is the sort of thing we are talking about, which is why it seems clear to us that Jesus was not the Messiah, any more than Bar Kochba was. I don’t mean to knock Christianity here—the Christian understanding of Messiah-ness is something altogether different, and they are able to make sense of Ezekiel and other prophecies as applying to Jesus within that context. But it doesn’t seem to me that Ezekiel was expecting a Messiah who will die for the sins of the people, washing away their sins in his own blood, and who will come again at the end of time. But I’m getting distracted again, and if I’m going to be distracted, I’d rather be singing and dancing.
What else to say. I know, let’s hit the concordance. Ezekiel is very concerned with wrongdoing, and very specific in his language concerning them. In the Scripture, there are different terms, and it’s hard to figure out what the connotations should be. There’s the verb sinning, chatah, with 238 occurrences in the Tanakh. The noun sin, chatta’ah, 296 occurrences. Another form of the noun, sin, chayt, 33 occurrences. All of these are derived from the verb that more or less means to miss, as with archery. Then there’s transgression, pe’sha, 93 occurrences. Transgressing, pay’sha, 41 occurrences. I’m using the most common KJV English translation here, but each Hebrew word is translated different ways in different passages. There’s iniquity, avon, with 230 occurrences, and Ezekiel uses it a lot. Also asham, trespass, which is generally used to refer to a particular kind of Temple offering, although Ezra uses it in the general sense of sin. There’s also abomination, various forms of shikuts, with 46 occurances and abomination, abomination, pigul, with 4, and abominate, ta’ab, with 22. And other word of profanation, pollution and defilement.
There are 39 occurrences (if I’ve got them all) of both sin and transgress in a single verse, of which Ezekiel claims 4. Ezekiel also six times uses sin and trespass together, four times uses sin and iniquity together, twice uses iniquity and transgression together, and twice uses iniquity and trespass together. He doesn’t use transgress and trespass together (only Hosea and Ezra do that). The point here is that when, above, Ezekiel says that the united Israel will not defile themselves or transgress, but will come out of the places where they have sinned, he’s using the language specifically and for a purpose, although it’s a bit hard to figure out what that purpose is.
I don’t think it’s sloppiness, and I don’t think it’s just repetition for effect, a kind of synonymia. I think—I think—that one of the things he’s getting at is that the places where people sin (chayt) affect judgment and falling short of one’s goals, where the objects that people value affect the more active sins (pay’sha). But I’m not sure.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I hate to sound ignorant but why sticks? Why is Ezekiel writing on sticks? Is this an echo of Moses and his staff that becomes a serpent? A reference to miracle workers who used magic wands (as pictured in the catacombs)? Or is it meant just metaphorically in the “Tree of Jesse” sort of way–lineage being a tree?
Sometimes a stick’s just a stick, you know?
Not here, though, I’m willing to buy into that. I’m guessing it’s a lineage thing, but V, with his superior knowledge of Hebrew (any knowledge being superior to my total ignorance) may be able (and perhaps willing?) to weigh in on the actual word used in the original context, that we might consider ourselves to be having a conversation.
What do you think?
peace
Matt
I was going to say that Matt’s Hebrew could be as good as mine if he does what I do: cheat and use the concordance. But it turns out that the word there is one I know: aytz. Of the 328 times it’s used, it’s translated as tree 162 times, and I know it as tree, so fran scores! Mostly I know it from two common uses, only one of which is relevant here. The irrelevant one is that the blessing when one eats a piece of fruit is …t boray p’ri ha-aytz, for the fruit of the tree (as distinguished from the fruit of the vine (wine, usually), or the fruit of the earth (grains)). The relevant one is that the Torah is often referred to as aytz chaim, a tree of life. The Torah service includes a setting of Proverbs 3:17-18: It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it; its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.
The staff of Moses, however, was a mateh, a rod. So we’re talking here about grafting imagery (the two trees made one tree) and lineage rather than magic wand stuff, I think. But also, there’s the rest of tree imagery, tree-as-Torah, tree-as-giver-of-life, and of course the tree of knowledge of this and that.
Thanks,
-V.
Out of curiosity, and since I can barely even pronounce the word concordance, let alone be bothered to look it up, and anyway, conversation is more interesting to me than research, is the Tree of Life from Genesis (which I seem to recall there was one, but maybe I’m wrong about two trees and there was only the Tree of Knowledge of Private Parts) aytz chaim, or is it Aytz Chaim, or is it something else?
Also the Tree With the Longer Name and More Difficult Theological Concept: is it aytz something, or something else.
Also, another friend with some passing familiarity with Hebrew once told me that the word used in the original text, often translated as carpenter, and which is attributed to Joseph, Cuckold of God, as his profession, can be translated also as magician, with an emphasis on stage illusion, which would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?
If one even accepted Jesus as a historical entity, which I’m not sure I do, in the first place, but forgive me my uncomfortable relationship with the religion of my fathers, for it is silly.
The relationship, I mean.
peace
Matt
Gen 2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In Hebrew aytz ha-chaim, tree of the life, more or less, and aitz ha-da’at tov u’rah, tree of the knowledge [of] good and evil. Although “good and evil” is (I’m told) an idiom like “beginning and end” or “coming and going” or “egg to apple”, meaning not just the two things mentioned, but everything along the spectrum between them.
Now, if we’re talking about Joseph the carpenter, then that’s all Greek to me. tekton, carpenter, describes Joseph in Mark and Matthew; Strong’s indicates that the word can be used to mean author as well as carpenter, but not (so far as I can easily tell) magician. There is a classicist who has been known to read this blog; shall we wait for her?
Thanks,
-V.
Right, well I’ve poked around online, and read a fair amount of blather by folks who think they know something about the subject, and there’s a lot of nonsense about the word tekton, which gets translated as carpenter and day laborer, but didn’t seem actually to have meant either of those things, as the word also includes shades of meaning involving masonry. Also, the root of the word is the same as the root of our word, technology, which seems to imply that Joseph was a “technologist.”
There’s also some blather about the Aramaic word naggar, which apparently is associated with Joseph in “the Aramaic sources.”
(Are there really Aramaic sources? My understanding was that documentation of the life of the fellow we are pleased to call Jesus is that it started with the Gospels, a fair period of time after he allegedly lived… The references to Aramaic sources I found on the web seem to be faintly wishful and defensive, like it would be to refer to Holy Blood, Holy Grail as a defense of the notion that Jesus and Mary started the Merovingian dynasties. A notion which I quite like, mind you, but I believe it in the spirit of the Discordian doctrine that all things are true, not in the scientific doctrine that truth needs to be rooted in, say, facts and evidence.)
Anyway, whether it was Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, it’s a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, we are talking about a guy who walked on water, turned water to wine, and who appears in your belly if you eat some bread and drink some grape juice, so hey!
Stretch away, says I! Stretch for the moon!
peace
Matt
Did someone call for a classicist?
If I were being literal, I might translate tekton as “builder,” but in fact most of the references in the LSJ are to workers in wood; “carpenter” is a perfectly appropriate translation of Joseph’s profession. I don’t know why anyone would bother to discredit Jesus by imputing magic to Joseph, when it’s so much easier to call Jesus a magician (Gk. magos or goês) — as many ancient anti-Christians did.
Because I can’t stop myself: Matt’s on-line sources seem to be fusing tekton with words built on the teich- stem (which does have to do with masonry, e.g. teichos, “wall”) and technos (“art, craft,” whence “technology”). All three descend ultimately from the same I-E root (*tek-, having to do with fabrication, esp. weaving), but the LSJ is not forthcoming with etymological information, so I can’t say how close the relationship is.
I can’t think off-hand of any Christian Aramaic sources as such, but there are early Christian texts written or surviving in Syriac, an eastern Aramaic dialect, including the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Protevangelium of James, which focus on the birth and childhood of Jesus.