EZEKIEL 28
Ezekiel
also employs the term “Eden,” which some trace etymologically to a root meaning
“pleasurable,” as its appositive or gloss, applies the phrase “the garden of
God.” Like the garden of Genesis 2, this Eden-garden is also an ideal microcosm
or paradise. In this case a tale of paradise is employed dramatically to
describe the rise and fall of the king of Tyre, Trye being one of the
Phoenician coastal city-states with whom Israel had had both cooperative and
competitive relationships, depending upon the era. In this section of Ezekiel,
the prophet condemns all of the Israelites’ economic and political rivals, paving
the way for predictions about Israel’s eventual resuscitation as a people.
Ezekiel, like the author we hypothesize for Genesis 1, works during the period
of the sixth-century B.C.E. exile, when Israel has been conquered by the
Babylonians, her ruling élite exiled, her social structure in disarray.
In Ezekiel
28 the description of Eden is set within the framework of a theme of hubris, frequently
found in ancient Near Eastern texts as a tale about rebellion of the gods. A
version of this traditional theme is employed to condemn the king of Babylon,
another of Israel’s enemies at Isa. 14:12-20. For Ezekiel this tale of Eden is
a “fall,” a term we avoided, I think correctly, in assessing the worldview and
paradise view of Genesis 2-3. The prince of Tyre was wiser than Daniel, the
archetypal ancient Near Eastern wiseman, and no secret was hidden from him. He
was greatly wealthy (28:3, 4), but because he dare to say “I am a god. In the
dwelling of gods I dwell, in the heart of the seas” (28:2), he will be thrust
down into the Pit, the underworld (28:8). Is Adam and Eve’s punishment caused by
hubris, by their pretending to be a God? By eating of the tree they acquire the
godlike capacity to discriminate, and they have breached God’s territory by
eating from the forbidden tree, as do the builders of the tower in Gen. 11:1-9,
but Eve’s intention appears more modest, to acquire wisdom, while God’s
accusation is more specific to the story: “Because you have eaten from the tree”
(Gen. 3:17). It is only after the event that God reflects on the implications
of the humans’ actions: “Humankind has become like one of us knowing good and
evil” (3:22). The humans are driven out lest they eat from e three of life and “live
forever.” The cherubim and the flaming sword are placed to guard the way to the
tree of life (3:23). In Ezekiel 28, however, there are direct accusations. The
Hebrew text is very difficult but with Greek manuscript traditions we can reconstruct
the meaning to be something like: “Your midst was full of violence and you
sinned and you became a profane thing and I banished you (lit. destroyed you;
botted you out) from the mountain of God” (28:16).
Terms for “sin”
(ḥṭ’), “violence” (ḥms), and “profane” (ḥll) are clear in both manuscript traditions, strong
language completely absent in Genesis 2-3. See also šiḥattā (you “ruined, corrupted” [28:17]), and “by the multitude of
your iniquities [‘wn] . . . you profaned” (28:18), and a third term for “wrongdoing”
(‘wl) in 28:15. The punishment is to be banished from God’s mountain
(28;16), to be cast to the ground, and to be presented before other kings
(28:17) that they might gawk. The king is to be consumed by fire and become ashes
(28:18).
In the fall
is destruction, fire, conquest, a total loss of status, a banishment from the seat
of God, his mountain throne, the prefill state is described as the king’s being
“full of wisdom and complete in beauty” (28:12):
In Eden,
the garden of God you were
Every previous gem was your covering
(28:13)
A list of
precious stones is found in verse 13, a veritable jeweler’s inventory. The king
was in the holy mountain; he walked in the midst of stones of fire—all of this
is addressed to the king in the second person: “You walked . . .” etc. (28:14).
In the garden “you were pure in your ways from the day of your creation, until
sin was found in you” (28:15). So paradise is synonymous with God’s holy
mountain. One’s state of purity allows one like an Indian ascetic essentially
to walk on hot coals. Paradise is not a lack of knowledge but possession of
wisdom and beauty. It is, moreover, not a naturalistic world, but one filled
with gems and riches, reminiscent of views of the heavenly realm found in
Exodus 24 (the sapphire richness of God’s realm) and later Rabbinic imaginings
of heaven (see also Rev. 21:18-21). Carol Newsom finds a priestly metaphor in
the gem-encrusted covering of the king, reminiscent of the priestly breastplate
of Ex. 28:17-21 (note the gems listed in Ezek. 28:13 and Ex. 28:17). Paradise
appears to be synonymous with heaven, God’s holy mountain, the top of the
world, and the king is on a virtual par with the deity as long as he does not
claim to be more than mortal. This is a very worldly vision of Eden that jars
with the description of a garden in Genesis 2. What sort of garden offers gems?
This garden is a heavenly palace—Newsom suggests a further parallel with the
Jerusalem temple—(8) its king a most wise and beautiful man able to perform
superhuman feats, surrounded by worldly riches until he dares to claim god
status himself. Then he loses his status, his wealth, his place on the mountain—all.
This is citified, hierarchically conscious, worldly, and sophisticated view of
paradise, one either beyond the ken of the writer of Genesis 2-3 or one
rejected in the search for harmony and the evenness of unworldly, innocent, and
nonhierarchical existence. (Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word:
Ancient Israelite Literature [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press,
1996], 33-35)
