While I do not believe that Ezek 37 is a direct prophecy of the Book of Mormon (unlike many Latter-day Saints), I do believe that the common claim that the Hebrew term translated as “stick” (עֵץ) cannot refer to something a text/record can be written on. On this, see, for e.g.:
Ezekiel
37 and the Book of Mormon and
The
use of לוּחַ in the text of Ezekiel 37:16 of Targum Jonathan
Protestant
Old Testament scholar, Daniel I. Block, offered the following critique of translating
עֵץ as “Ruler's scepter(s)”:
Although this is probably the majority view, the strength of its
support is illusory. First, LXX ραβδος an extremely
general term, varying in significance from "stick, twig," through
"club, rod," and "shepherd's staff" to "royal
scepter." This is admittedly the only place where it translates ʿēṣ,
but
this alone does not rule out the simple meaning "stick, piece of
wood."
Second, that Yahweh interrupts his instructions for Ezekiel in v.
18 with an advance warning that his observers will ask for clarification of his
actions suggests a strange or incomprehensible action. The meaning of joining
two royal scepters would have been obvious. Third, if the two pieces of wood represented
two royal houses, their unification flies in the face of the consistent witness
not only of Ezekiel but of all the prophets that, while historically Israel was
divided into two kingdoms, there was only one legitimate dynasty, the house of
David. Nowhere is the union of the northern dynasty with the. Davidic house
contemplated; on the contrary, the northern kingdom was considered an
aberration from the beginning and all its kings illegitimate. Furthermore, the
identification of the kingdom of Israel with any dynasty is studiously avoided.
Ezekiel does not envision the unification of northern and southern dynasties,
but the reunion of the kingdoms themselves. Here he takes 'extra pains to link
these wooden objects with their respective nations rather than their kings, and
in the interpretation to follow he will highlight Yahweh's activity of bringing
the "descendants of Israel" to their own land and making them one
nation. Furthermore, as already noted, it is difficult to imagine why Ezekiel
would have used a term as general as ʿēṣ when
specific expressions like šebat and maṭṭeh were readily
available. (Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 25-48 [New
International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1998], 398-99)
Block favors the translation of a “writing
tablet.” In support for such, he writes
Special pieces of wood. writing tablets. REB's
rendering, "wooden tablet," reflects an ancient if uncommon
interpretation of Ezekiel's ʿēṣîm. Targ.
translates ʿēṣ as lwk, "tablet,"
the same word that is used of gillāyôn in Isa. 8:1. lwḥ (Heb. lûaḥ is
cognate to Akk. lêu, a generic designation for "(wax-covered)
writing board," or sets of writing boards consisting of two or more
"leaves. " These boards were made of flat pieces of wood, and occasionally
ivory or metal, covered on the writing surface with a compound of beeswax and
25 percent orpiment, into which a message would be etched. But some have argued
that such writing boards were too luxurious for Ezekiel, a deported Hebrew
living away from the urban center of Nippur. Papyrus, potsherds, and perhaps
clay tablets would have been available to him, but not expensive writing
boards, let alone the required beeswax compound. One may answer this challenge
with two kinds of evidence.
First, extrabiblical sources point to a remarkable antiquity and
breadth of distribution of writing boards. To the east, their use in
Mesopotamia is attested as early as the Sumerian and Old Babylonian periods. In
the west, they are mentioned by the 5th-century-B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, who recounts
an occasion on which Greeks passed along secret messages inscribed on a pair of
folding tablets (δελιτιον διπτχον) covered with wax. Ugaritic and Hittite
sources hint at the use of writing tablets in these cultures, and an 8th-century-B.C.
north Syrian relief depicts such an object in the hand of a scribe. Until
recently the oldest known exemplars were several writing boards found in Sargon's palace at Nimrud. However, the discovery of a diptych (two-leaved board) in
the cargo of a 14th-century-B.C. Canaanite ship that sank at Ulu Butun off the
coast of southwestern Turkey has pushed the evidence for such boards back six
hundred years.
Second, several OT texts suggest familiarity with writing tablets.
In Isa. 30:8 Yahweh instructs the prophet,
Go, write (kātab) it down on a tablet (lûaḥ);
Inscribe (ḥāqaq) it on a writing object (sēper),
That it may be with them in the future,
As an eternal witness.
This text compares with Hab.2:2:
Record (kātab) the vision;
Transcribe it clearly (bē’ērr) on the tablets (hallûḥôt),
So a herald may run with it.
While these passages do not identify the materials on which the
prophets were to transcribe their texts, wooden tablets are plausible. Writing
boards were more expensive than other materials, but given the antiquity and
widespread distribution of the evidence, Ezekiel must have been familiar with
them, and may even have possessed some of his own leaves. The present royal
message presents a worthy subject to be recorded on these special objects. (Ibid.,
399-401)
This is another nail in the coffin of the thesis that עֵץ in Ezek 37 does not refer to an object one uses to record a text.
Further Reading:
