Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Walther Zimmerli on Ezekiel 44:2

  

44:2 The man explains to the prophet that the gate has been closed because of this divine entry. Yahweh is described here for the first and only time in the book of Ezekiel with the full title, “Yahweh, the God of Israel,” which (according to Steuernagel) had its original home in the sanctuary of Shechem.

 

With regard to men a clear ruling has been given: No human foot shall in the future cross the threshold over which Yahweh passed to his sanctuary. The closed gate proclaims the majesty of the one who came. One may ask, over and above however, whether it does not testify to a second aspect, namely the finality of Yahweh’s entry into his sanctuary, an entry which has been referred to in 43:7, 9 as לעולם (“for all time”). Yahweh closes behind him the doors which he no longer intends to open for a new departure of the nature of that in 11:23. Thus, in addition, the closed gate could proclaim also Yahweh’s fidelity.

 

Here, one cannot suppress the question as to whether the phenomenon of the closed sanctuary gate emerges here for the very first time in the framework of the vision on the part of this prophet of the exile which has just been sketched (or on the part of the school of his disciples who continue to reflect on this vision).

 

Now Unger has pointed out a related phenomenon in the city of Babylon. Pohl has followed him in the assumption that the “Sacred (lit. ‘pure’) Gate” bābu ellu, through which Marduk’s procession from Esagila passed and returned again and which was possibly also the entrance gate of the god Nabū in the “procession route of the deities Nabū and Nanā,” was a closed gate which was opened only for the gods to pass through. In line 440 of the New Year Festival ritual Unger finds the mention of a “feast of the opening of the gate” which would thus determine the date of the procession. Now, in connection with this interpretation of “gate opening” (pit bābi) we should note the observation of B. Landsberger: “‘Opening of the gate’ is certainly to be understood in cultic terms (of the temple gate), but in general the term denotes access of the people to the temple on the occasion of a festival, but not a specific or generally wide-spread festival” (see also 4. 112). Also the specific expression “closed gate,” which Unger believes he has found, cannot, on closer examination of his reading, be maintained. The fact, however, that there were periods when gates were closed is assured by the opposite expression pit bābi which expresses the end of the period of closure. One may perhaps in this context recall the end of Psalm 24 with its summons to the gates to open themselves for the מלך הכבוד (“King of glory”). Furthermore, the assumption of a reservation of the “Sacred Gate” for the passing of the deity is extremely probable.

 

With reference to the Russian late Byzantine “Sacred Gate,” which was built in 1176 A.D. in Susdal east of Moscow, Unger poses the question whether the Sacred Gate in Babylon is not to be conceived analogously to that as an entrance point to the temple which consisted of two gates side by side, one of which stood open for normal traffic while the other was usually walled up and was opened only for specific occasions. In another way one can think of the porta sancta which opened only once in twenty-five years in the year of the Jubilee for a whole year. And as more distant analogies there can be mentioned also the “golden gates” through which, in Vladimir, Kiev, Constantinople, for example, rulers passed in triumph.

 

If what Ezek 44:1–2 recounts is compared with all these different varieties of the closed gate, what strikes one is the complete uniqueness of the justification given here for the closing of the east gate. There is no trace here any longer of the periodic opening of the gate and the sacred procession of the festive crowd or even of a victorious ruler. With complete uniqueness here the gate is to be closed “once for all” because Yahweh has “once for all” taken possession of his sanctuary, and no procession, however sacred, may repeat this event regularly after him. In harsh offensiveness there is to be proclaimed through the medium of this closed gate the divine action which remains strictly over against man and which he is not to penetrate, not even in pious cultic imitation. (Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 2 vols. [trans. James D. Martin; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983], 2:440–441)