Drink
blood. In normal sacrifices, the participants would not “drink
blood.” At Lev 3:17, HS states, “It shall be a perpetual statute throughout
your generations, in all your settlements: you must not eat any fat or any
blood.” The blood belongs to God and makes atonement (cf. Lev 17:11–12 HS; Ezek
44:7, 15). The “fat” of the sacrifice (see v. 19) also belongs exclusively to
God (e.g., Lev 17:6, 13–15 HS). As argued in the Comments, however, this is a
metaphorical marzēaḥ feast, an
institution known from Ugarit and elsewhere associated with wine drinking. The
Ugaritic text KTU 1.114.1 associates
the marzēaḥ with the diction of
“sacrifice.” In Ezekiel, the animals are the elite guests, and the slaughtered
troops’ blood is the wine on which they become drunk. (Stephen L. Cook, Ezekiel
38–48: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 22B, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2018], 99)
Comments
In the present literary form of Ezekiel
39, this section (vv. 17–20) offers an additional vignette or type scene that
explores the aftermath of Gog’s downfall from a new and different angle. In
doing so, the text doubles back to v. 4, returning to a point in time before
the great Israelite effort of burying Gog’s dead. As of 39:4, Gog’s troops have
fallen out in the wild, dead to a man, so that their bodies lie exposed to
every kind of predatory animal. Primordial patterns have been recapitulated, as
the mythological truth of Ps 74:12–14 is realized in real time, in end time:
“You [God] broke the heads of the dragons.… You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” Ezekiel 39:17–20 has
clear formal boundaries, being introduced by the messenger formula of v. 17 and
brought to a close with the utterance formula of v. 20.
In 39:17–20, the image of mass feasting
in 39:4 gives rise to a vision of a great sacrificial festival. God speaks of a
“sacrificial feast” three times, uses the verb “sacrifice” twice, and employs
other sacrificial terminology (see Note My
table on 39:20). Depicting judgment as God’s preparation of a grand sacred
meal, with guests invited, is not new (see Isa 34:6; Jer 46:10; Zeph 1:7). The
image of readying a banquet commended itself to Ezekiel’s Zadokite authors as
an appealing anthropomorphic depiction (the language of Ezek 20:41 is
comparable). What is more, the image drove home the utter degradation with
which Gog must meet his fate. He must supply the main course for unclean
beasts, not the festal meal of any real sacrifice of God and Israel. To be
eaten by beasts and birds is a classic ancient West Asian and Hebrew Bible
curse. Like Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kgs 22:38; 2 Kgs 9:36), Gog is literally fed to
the dogs!
Ezekiel 39 carefully avoids the thought
of God drinking blood until sated, as the birds and animals do in v. 19. Such
care is in keeping with the tradition of other biblical writers. In Deut 32:42,
what drinks its fill of blood is God’s arrows,
and in Jer 46:10 it is the Lord’s sword
that does so. Similarly, in Isa 34:5–7 it is specifically the divine sword, not
the deity, that becomes filled with blood. In Ezekiel 39, not even God’s arrows
or sword drinks the blood of Gog’s troops, only unclean beasts. Neither does
Israel join in the feast.
The Zadokites, unlike some other
biblical writers, had no problem with God consuming the normal sacrifices of
temple worship (“my food,” Ezek 44:7; see Lev 21:6, 8, 17, 21, 22; 22:25, all
HS). Ezekiel’s group, however, held that treating humans as blood sacrifices
for divine consumption (“for food,” Ezek 23:37) was an abomination (see also
16:20; 20:31; Lev 18:21; 20:2, both HS). Details in Ezekiel 39 confirm that
Gog’s sacrifice is a shocking, irregular rite (see Notes Drink blood on 39:17 and Eat
fat on 39:19).
Given a sacred feast, are readers to
imagine a victory sacrifice, with feasting in thanksgiving for Gog’s death? Or,
is this a ritual that devotes all spoils to the divine warrior, who has won
victory unaided? (On the theme of ḥērem,
see, e.g., Josh 2:10; 6:17; the Moabite Mesha stele.) These connotations are
doubtless present, but the bacchanalian features suggest that a different theme
is central here. Ezekiel’s animalized ritual feasting appears primarily to be a
mock sacred drinking banquet, a satirical marzēaḥ
(see Irwin 1995; McLaughlin 2001, 196–213; Joyce 2007a, 217).
The focus of Ezekiel 39 on wild
inebriation reflects a conventional ancient Near Eastern scene known from other
biblical texts and from Ugarit: a sacred feast termed the marzēaḥ. This institution—also mentioned or alluded to in Hos
4:16–19; Amos 4:1; 6:1, 4–7; Isa 28:7–8; and Jer 16:5–9—was an upper-class,
wine-drinking feast connected to a patron deity (on the marzēaḥ, see McLaughlin 2001; Lewis 1989, 80–94; Pope 1981,
176–79). Drunkenness was a major purpose. Scholars differ on whether to
identify the marzēaḥ specifically as
a cult of dead kin (consult Lewis 1989, 80–94), but it certainly sometimes
convened as an occasion revolving around the deceased (see Jer 16:5–9; Pope
1981). As observed above (see Note Drunk
on 39:19), Ezek 39:19 strikingly echoes the description of the god El’s
heavenly marzēaḥ in KTU 1.114.3–4. Both the Ugaritic and the
biblical texts use the same language of drinking, satiety, and drunkenness. The
Ugaritic equivalent (dbḥ) of the
Hebrew verb zābaḥ (sacrifice) also
occurs in KTU 1.114.1.
Texts such as Deut 32:42; Isa 49:26; Jdt
6:4, and Rev 17:6 (see Note Drunk on
39:19) contradict McLaughlin’s (2001, 209) bald assertion that “Ezek 39:19 is
the only place in the entire Bible where blood causes drunkenness.” Ezekiel
39:17–20 stands out, nonetheless, in jumping so directly from “blood” to
“drunkenness” and in setting the latter motif within a constellation of
typological elements associated with the marzēaḥ.
For example, the double reference to
“champions” (gibbôrîm) in 39:18, 20
is no coincidence. Ezekiel 32:27 earlier spoke of the gibbôrîm as fallen warriors in Sheol. Even now, “the terror of the
mighty men is in the land of the living” (CEB). These gibbôrîm (see also 32:21) are among the ranks of the Rephaim (see 1
Chr 20:6, 8), heroic and royal shades with whom Near Easterners communed in
cults of the dead like the marzēaḥ.
Isaiah 26:13–14 expresses trust that enemy Rephaim will not rise from Sheol.
The God of Israel has the power to prevent ancestor cults from summoning the gibbôrîm.
The root šākar (become drunk) appears specially chosen in Ezek 39:19. On the
basis of Isa 34:5, 7 and Jer 46:10, the two texts closest to our passage in
theme, we might have expected the root rāwâ
(drink one’s fill) to have been placed parallel to “be glutted.” Instead,
inebriation is highlighted. This is additional strong evidence that Ezek
39:17–20 presents a satirical image of a marzēaḥ,
where the rites could involve a great amount of sacred intoxication.
Ezekiel 39 is probably not quoting an actual Ugaritic text.
(Ugarit’s texts were now long buried.) Rather, it alludes to the language and
images of sacred banqueting with heroes’ shades that long survived Ugarit’s
fall. The Ezekiel authors take up language of banqueting with departed souls
(see Note Meshech and Tubal on 38:2)
and project it as an eschatological feast with those “passing on” to Sheol (see
Note Those passing on on 39:14). They
transform the dinner guests from deities into birds and beasts. Since Ezekiel
depicts a metaphorical marzēaḥ within
the animal kingdom, the standard topos-element of the banqueting sprawlers
being aristocrats is dropped.
Such eschatologizing of ancient rites
and mythic topoi is characteristic of the millennial imagination within
Israelite religion. The Ezekiel group was highly familiar with a great variety
of topoi and archetypes and made prominent literary and theological use of them
(e.g., Ezek 28:11–19; 31; 32:1–16, 17–32). This made the group a prime
candidate for the emergence of an early apocalyptic worldview within Israel.
Whether or not McLaughlin (2001) is
correct that the connections of the marzēaḥ
with cults of dead kin are clear only by 700 BCE in Isa 28:7–22 and, about a
century later, in Jer 16:5–9, they are certainly present in Ezekiel 39.
Ezekiel’s birds and beasts are indeed taking part in a feast for dead Gog,
drunken revelry with dead shades. The satire, of course, is that the sprawlers
are not honoring departed family members. They have come to the feast to
consume the departed souls’ corpses! Their attendance is merely for the sake of
the copious “alcohol” and abundant food. Scholars contest whether an
association of the marzēaḥ with the
cult of the dead is already present at Ugarit. In my view, it surely was. Of
all possible divine guests at the drunken banquet of the gods in KTU 1.21.II, the text speaks six times
of the chthonic shades known as the Rephaim. (Stephen L. Cook, Ezekiel
38–48: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 22B, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2018], 101-3)
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