Saturday, March 2, 2024

Archie T. Wright on Ezekiel 28:1-10

  

Ezekiel 28:1-10

 

The first clue is found in verse 2 with the Hebrew term נגיד, nagid (LXX renders the Hebrew αρχοντι, archonti, “ruler”). Nagid is used most often in the HB to identify the human political leader of a nation—for example, the king. The term is also used to refer to an official connected to the temple—possibly the reason for the “precious stones” language in verse 13. Some scholars have suggested that the nagid is the angel of the nation, appointed to watch over Tyre. However, there is no evidence that this word refers to an angel anywhere in the HB. Verse 28:2 reveals the hubris of the kin in that he declares himself a god (ותאמר אל אני, “and you said, ‘I am [a] God’”; LXX, και ειπας θεος ειμι εγω) and that he sits in the seat of the gods (probably a throne in the temple of Ba’al or Heracles); however, the author clearly identifies the nagid as a man: “Yet you are a man and not a god.” It should be noted that this individual is addressed as a melech (מלך) in verse 12, a term that the author or editor of Ezekiel only uses to refer to an earthly king and not a divine being. (See Ezek 17:12; 129:2; 27:33; 34:24; 37;25. These terms are also used together in Ps 76:13.) In verses 1-10, we have read the oracle to the nagid, which describes the sin of hubris (“an elevated heart”), and the consequences of the sin are clearly spelled out in verses 6-8, in which God declares the coming of his wrath against this leader and his nation. The king is accused of comparing his heart (possibly his mind) with the heart of a god (אלהים). Thus, he will be cast down by strangers into the Pit and meet the death of a human. From this brief discussion, it is plausible to suggest the nagid of Ezekiel 28:1-10 is a human and not divine in the mind of the author, although it is clear from 28:2 that the nagid thought he was a divine being with the use of the Hebrew אל in his self-portrait and the translators use of the Greek θεος. (Archie T. Wright, Satan and the Problem of Evil: From the Bible to the Early Church Fathers [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022], 43-44)