Odell, Margaret S. and John T. Strong, eds. The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives. SBL Symposium Series 9. Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2000. Xiii + 270 pages. $39.95. ISBN: 0-88414-024-5.

Most of the essays in this volume were presented at the Theological Perspectives on the Book of Ezekiel Seminar during the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1997 and 1998.

Daniel I. Block interprets Ezekiel’s portrayal of the absence of Yahweh in the light of the antecedent Israelite understanding of divine abandonment and the Ancient Near Eastern environment from which the prophet’s writings emerge. Block investigates a dozen Near Eastern literary accounts of divine abandonment and compares them with Ezekiel’s portrayal of Yahweh’s abandonment of the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel exploited these similarities polemically in order to expose the bankruptcy of Babylonian religious notions. Once Yahweh had left the temple, neither gods nor humans could prevent the mighty Babylonian conqueror from storming in.

Baruch J. Schwartz takes a dim view of Israel’s restoration in Ezekiel—and of the God portrayed in Ezekiel. YHWH’s spiteful decision to take action to maintain his covenant is aimed at causing Israel to feel the remorse that the exile failed to bring about. YHWH will resurrect his people for his own egocentric reasons and in the course of doing so will show them that they are wrong and he is right. This essay may strike readers as one-sided or as taking Ezekiel’s admittedly tough-minded promises in the worst possible sense. But his essay is an example of Block’s observation that the disposition of the reader plays a vital role in the establishment of the significance of a passage.

John T. Strong argues that Ezekiel sought to maintain Zion theology through the use of tenets surrounding Yahweh’s kābōd. He proposes that kābōd was a hypostasis of God and that Yahweh, contra Mettinger, was never dethroned. Strong concludes that chaps. 8-11 depict the kābōd marching out to battle while chaps. 40-43 report his victorious return. It seems doubtful that divine warrior imagery is as prominent in these chapters as Strong thinks.

Steven S. Tuell distinguishes between earlier and later editions of the book of Ezekiel, with a clear preference for the earlier form. Ezekiel offered a rethinking of the divine presence in which text had replaced temple as the locus of divine presence. The temple Ezekiel describes in chaps. 40-42 is the archetypal dwelling of God, that Ezekiel saw in a heavenly ascent. Ezekiel’s final vision did not originally deal with temple rebuilding, but with the assurance that the true home of Yhwh in heaven remained intact.

John F. Kutsko argues that Ezekiel applies the concept of human likeness in God’s image negatively to denounce foreign gods and positively to describe the divine-human relationship. While Ezekiel does not use the technical term "image of God" for humans, it is implied through his anthropomorphic descriptions of God in chaps 1 and 8. Ezekiel’s monotheism and his use of the image of God contribute to a moral appeal against violence.

Dexter E. Callender gives his attention to Ezek 28:11-19. The bulk of his discussion is given over to the interpretation of two words usually translated "signet of perfection." Callender proposes a slight consonantal emendation, from tknyt to tbnyt, and the resultant translation: "You [the king of Tyre] were a seal, a likeness." The picture is that of an authoritative, royal representative of Yahweh. The king of Tyre and all other foreign kings were considered executors of Yahweh's.

Jacqueline E. Lapsley describes the role of shame in Ezekiel’s vision of the moral life. The shame experienced before an act is called discretion-shame; the shame after an act is called disgrace-shame. Yahweh’s deliverance of the people in chap. 16 opens the possibility of a new moral identity based on an appropriate sense of shame leading to self-knowledge. The women and the whole people in chap. 23 feel disgrace-shame over their political alliances and religious practices, and then move forward to possessing a sense of discretion-shame. Ezekiel largely abandons the traditional view of moral selfhood he had inherited.

Margaret Odell uses form criticism in her discussion of Ezekiel’s anthropology. Previous interpretatins of Ezekiel’s being forbidden to mourn for his wife (Ezek 24:15-24) have ignored the use of this motif elsewhere. Putting on a turban or sandals is not the reversal of mourning, but such acts are designed to show the acquisition of a new status. The symbolic action associated with the death of Ezekiel’s wife, therefore, implies that God has chosen the exilic community over Jerusalem. Odell believes Ezekiel has made a studied appropriation of the Mesopotamian building inscription genre. Ezekiel has modified the genre by writing his work on a scroll instead of engraving it on a monument, and the central figure of his composition is Yahweh, not the human king or even Ezekiel himself.

Corrine Patton proposes that the setting of Ezekiel 23 is more central to its meaning than previous gender analyses have allowed. The men in the audience are addressed as a whore, and it is suggested that they should be treated as one. Ezekiel experienced the reality of sexual and physical atrocities in war as intrinsically revelatory of the transcendence of God. The theological aim of the passage is to save Yahweh from the scandal of being a cuckolded husband.

The renewed excitement about Ezekiel in these essays and the new angles of investigation promise a prominent role for scholarship on Ezekiel in the twenty-first century.

Ralph W. Klein

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago