According to the
Masoretic Text of Ezekiel, the first human was a superhuman being: a cherub
(Ezek 28:14). At this reading, modern interpreters and translators have balked.
Since the birth of text criticism, the attempt to arrive at the “original” text
of Ezekiel has produced mixed texts that often borrow readings from the
Septuagint wherever the Hebrew proves difficult or uncertain. Such is the case
here, where the prophet addresses the primal human figure: “you were a cherub”
(̓att e kerûb).
We must take this
reading seriously, and not try to replace it with what is in effect a different
version of the text. The Septuagint says that the primal human was “with the
cherub.” Yet nowhere else in biblical tradition are cherubs viewed as
companions of the first human. The Septuagintal reading already attempts to
conform Ezekiel’s primal human myth to the better known Adam myth in Genesis 3
(where well- known cherubim are separate from, though hostile to Adam). It is
already an attempt, in other words, to make (what became) scripture agree with
scripture.
Other texts,
however, show that the first human could possess a divine and angelic nature.
The primal Adam in Job 15:8 has access to the divine council (sôd ʼeloah).
In 2 Enoch, Adam was created as a “second angel, honored and great and
glorious.” In the Apocalypse of Adam (second– third century ce), Adam and Eve are “like the great
eternal angels” and explicitly said to be loftier than the god who made the
world. In the second century ce,
Rabbi Pappias interpreted Gen 3:22 (“Behold, the human has become like one of
us”) to mean that he was “like one of the ministering angels.” In the Life
of Adam and Eve, the angels are commanded to worship Adam, whose status, it
would appear, is supra-angelic. In the Armenian Life of Adam and Eve,
Yahweh even commands the angels: “Come, bow down to god whom I made.” (M. David
Litwa, Desiring Divinity: Self-deification in Early Jewish and Christian
Mythmaking [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016], 19)
Fall
This divine status
of the primal human is combined with his fall. In Genesis 2– 3, Adam’s sin is
made to look like an act of disobedience. Yahweh gives the command: “Do not eat
from the tree” (Gen 2:17). The clever serpent then convinces Eve to eat from
the tree partially based on the promise: “You [plural] shall be as gods!” Eve
consents, and hands the fruit to Adam, who is represented as “with” her
(apparently standing alongside her) (3:5– 6).
In Ezekiel’s
telling, however, the primal human does not need a serpent to convince him that
he will be divine. Based on his own beauty and wisdom, he proclaims (or is made
to proclaim) his own present divinity: “I am god. I sit in the seat of the
gods” (Ezek 28:2).
His claim: “I am
god (̓ēl)” is striking. The mighty El (ʼIlu) ruled the pantheon
in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit, and was the common Phoenician high God.
For Israel, Yahweh absorbed the symbolic value of El, and assumed his name. The
formulation “I am ēl” is perhaps deliberately echoed by the jealous god
Yahweh: “I am ̓ ēl, and there is no other!” (Isa 46:9).
There is some
confusion as to whether, according to the oracle, it is Tyre’s ruler who claims
divinity, or the primal human in the myth, or both. It is possible that Ezekiel
conformed the ancient myth to Tyrian royal ideology. There is some evidence for
the deification of Tyrian kings. Nonetheless, the fact that Adam and Eve desire
divinity in Genesis supports the notion that the first human’s association with
divinity was a tradition Ezekiel inherited rather than inserted.
The punishments of
the figures in Genesis and Ezekiel are both similar and different. Yahweh
thrusts or shoves (šālak) the primal human to the earth (̓ereṣ).
Similarly, in Genesis 3:23, Yahweh God sends (šālaḥ) Adam to work the
soil (̓ădāmāh). If ereṣ in Ezekiel 28:17 is indicative of the
underworld, the fate of the first human is similar to that of Lucifer in Isaiah
14:15 (who is tossed into the depths of a netherworldly “pit”). This
interpretation is supported by the fact that the primal human finds himself in
a pit in Ezekiel 28:8.
In Genesis, Yahweh
sends the first human into exile, while in Ezekiel he sends him to death. The
discrepancy was too much for the Septuagintal translator, who again adapted
Ezekiel’s myth using the variant in Genesis 3:24 (LXX): “[Yahweh] appointed the
cherubim and the flaming, revolving sword to guard the path to the tree of
life.” In the Septuagint of Ezekiel, Yahweh does not destroy the cherub; a
cherub is said to drive the primal human from paradise (28:16b). The fact that
fire comes from within the primal human in Ezekiel is perhaps reminiscent of
the angel’s flaming sword in Genesis. Yet the cherub- human of Ezekiel was
already, in all likelihood, a fiery being.
Both first human
figures in Ezekiel and Genesis are turned into ash (̓ēper) or dust (‘āpār).
The dust in Genesis 3:19 corresponds to the “dust from the ground” in Genesis
2:7. Likewise, the ash in Ezekiel 28:18 is qualified as “ash upon the earth.”
Both figures, in other words, are broken down into the meanest elements of
earth. For Adam in Genesis, becoming earth is a return to his origins. Yet it
is a tragic fate for Ezekiel’s cherub, who formerly dwelt in heaven (the “holy
mountain”).
Finally, the
phrase “you will die the death of the uncircumcised” in Ezekiel 28:10 is
reminiscent of Yahweh’s gravely worded threat, “you will die the death” in
Genesis 2:17. Strangely, the Adam of Genesis 3 only experiences exile, and not
immediate death (as Yahweh had warned). By contrast, Ezekiel adds a line that
leads one to suspect the ultimate annihilation of the primal human: “You were a
fatality; you are nothing forevermore (‘ad ‘ôlām)!” (28:19). “Fatality”
is a rendering of balāhôt— a plural of intensity in Hebrew representing
the lethal calamity fated to overtake the first human (cf. Ezek 26:21; 27:36).
Ezekiel’s phrase “you were a fatality!” is a deliberate, strongly polemical
contrast to his previous declaration, “you were a god!” (Ezek 28:14, 19).
Whatever “you are
nothing” actually means, it strongly suggests the total annihilation of the
first human— as if he came from nothing. Ezekiel’s fallen human is not allowed
to live for 930 years tilling the soil. His end is complete, and evidently
sudden. In Genesis 3, Adam falls, or rather falls under a Deuteronomistic
curse. In Ezekiel’s myth, however, the first ancestor experiences a literal
fall from deity to death. He is a god who dies, like the gods of the divine
council in Psalm 82:6– 7: “I said, ‘You are gods’ … but you will die like a
human being (or: Adam, ̓ādām).” (M. David Litwa, Desiring Divinity:
Self-deification in Early Jewish and Christian Mythmaking [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016], 21-22)
