Acknowledging that the text is much more "profoundly ambiguous" than many interpreters allow, Ellen F. Davis, in her study of the book of Ezekiel, offered the following interpretation of Ezek 17:
the
vine is in the prophetic literature and in the psalms a familiar figure for
Israel. On the other hand, the figure of the eagle characterizes Yhwh as Israel’s rescuer and protector
(Exod. 19:4; Deut. 32:11). Lang is correct that the latter image is used
repeatedly in connection with Israel’s enemies, but the contexts of its
appearance resist any ready characterization of the eagle as a political or
military symbol. Although there are instances in which foreign armies are
specifically compared with the eagle on the point of swiftness (Hab. 1:8; Lam.
4:19), it is striking how frequently there is ambiguity in the interpretation
of the figure. In Jer. 48:40 and 49:22, the eagle is compared with an
unidentified masculine subject, which may be reasonably inferred to be the
Babylonian army. Yet the indefiniteness does not exclude the possibility that
the divine oracle speaks here—at least in a secondary sense—of God’s own
vengeance against Moab and Edom. Even in Deut. 28:49, where the reference is
clearly to a foreign army, the emphasis of the passage lies on Yhwh’s summoning a force to effect the
divine curses (28:15) through military activity. With respect to the present
passage, the very problematic use of the eagle figure in Hos. 8:1 is especially
interesting. It is far from clear, despite Lang, that this ‘eagle over the
house of Yhwh’ is a reference to
the Assyrians or to any human enemy. If the mt
preserves an original reading, then the eagle is already here, as in Ezekiel,
conjoined with the notion of transgression of God’s covenant, although the
connection between the two remains unclear.
Moreover, within Ezekiel’s fable there is also
cause for ambivalent identification of the eagle. One cannot help but hear in
the eagle’s transport of the sprig to ארץ כנען (17:4) at least a faint echo of the Exodus journey (cf. Exod.
19:4; Deut. 32:11). It is doubtful also whether the extravagant descriptions of
the eagle’s soliticitude for the vine are really meant to characterize
Nebuchadnezzar’s attitude toward vassal Israel. Even if one grants that the
prophet idealizes the intentions of the Babylonians in order to stress the enormous
folly of Zedekiah’s defection, it is still tempting, if not unavoidable, to see
behind the benevolent eagle Yhwh’s
continuing care for Israel.
A similar effect is created by Ezekiel’s
introduction of the East Wind. This, too, is associated within the Exodus
tradition with God’s activity on Israel’s behalf (Exod. 10:13; 14:21). In the
prophetic literature, the East Wind appears as a figure of destruction aimed at
Israel, but again it is unsatisfactory to call it, with Lang, simply an image
for the attack of a superior army. In all the instances which Lang himself
cites (Hos. 13:15; Isa. 27:8; Jer. 18:17), the real source of terror is the
storm force of Yhwh, and only in a
derivative sense the Assyrians or neo-Babylonians, through whom it is currently
manifest.
The ambiguity which Ezekiel cultivates in the fable
is reinforced rather than resolved by the interpretative section which follows.
This is accomplished chiefly by the way in which the prophet manipulates the
language of covenant, moving from what appear to be purely political
considerations of a vassal pledge and its violation to God’s charge that
Zedekiah broke ‘my covenant’—and it
is that act of contempt which shall finally be requited on his head. Zimmerli
finds no difficulty in reading both references at a single level: ‘Behind this
there stands a form of covenant according to which the partner taken into
covenant by a superior affirmed his loyalty by appealing to his own gods.’ This
is apparently how the Chronicler read the text (2 Chron. 36:13), but Greenberg
challenges the historical basis for this solution: ‘Now, that Nebuchadnezzar
(or any neo-Babylonian king) imposed on his vassals an oath of allegiance by
their own gods is otherwise unknown’.
Whether or not there was a single oath which might
be called both Nebuchadnezzar’s and Yhwh’s,
the language of this passage causes us to view Zedekiah’s acts of violation
from a shifting perspective. The kaleidoscope turns as Ezekiel works changes on
the recurrent phrase, בזה
אלה … הפר ברית (‘despise oath … break covenant’). In the first of its three
appearances (17:16), the nouns are qualified—‘his oath … his
covenant’—so as to refer clearly to Nebuchadnezzar. No pronominal suffixes
appear in the second instance of the phrase (v. 18). Although the context
favors the assumption that the referent is still the Babylonian king, it is
noteworthy that precisely this unqualified form of the phrase is used in 16:59,
where it serves as a summary description of Israel’s apostasy. The muting of
the political reference in 17:18 and the echo with the distinctly theological
sense of the earlier passage makes the transition less abrupt when, in the
third occurrence of the phrase (v. 19), the outrage is seen to have been
perpetrated against Yhwh.
It is a mistake to separate political from
theological elements, human from divine planes in any absolute way. The text
should not be read as a strict allegory, in which each element has a single
correct interpretation. The historical richness of the images resists such reductionism,
as does Ezekiel’s pleonastic style. Moreover, in view of the theme of God’s
honor which is the hallmark, even the obsession of this prophet, it seems
perverse to subordinate the genuinely theological concern to the political one.
Ezekiel creates a literary structure which leads to a much more complex
perception of the interaction between the two spheres of activity and meaning.
As has been seen, the images of the fable belong at least as much to theology
as to politics, and if the interpretation seems at first to direct us to the
latter, we are not long allowed to retain that single focus. The decoding of
the figure in terms of the vassal relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and
Zedekiah itself becomes a kind of figure illustrating the relationship between
Israel and Yhwh. Seen through
Ezekiel’s eyes, the world is inescapably theocentric; articulated through
divine speech, the interpretation of experience must finally be rendered in
theological terms. (Ellen F. Davis, Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality
and the Dynamics in Ezekiel's Prophecy [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1989], 97-99)
