Canter Bridge

It might almost seem that the first chapter of Ezekiel answers to the pained cry of the last chapter of Lamentations. That poem, which in our modern bound Bibles immediately precedes the work that bears the prophet Ezekiel’s name, ends with a picture of a royal deity whose apparent disinterest in his people exceeds all appropriate bounds:

But you, O LORD, reign forever;
your throne endures to all generations.
Why have you forgotten us completely?
Why have you forsaken us these many days?
Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored;
renew our days as of old—
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and are angry with us beyond measure.

It is not too much to say that the exilic prophets, Ezekiel among them, saved the life of the Jewish people. At a time when all historical currents and the circumstances of exile that pressed down upon them should have obliterated this tiny nation and erased the memory of it, the prophets pleaded that YHWH had not yet finished with his people. Lamentations leaves an awful possibility hanging in the air: unless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure.

The poet is not engaging in hypothetical abstractions. Events in the wake of Jerusalem’s ruin seem to turn his caveat into probability. It would seem that rejection is final and that the Judahite deportees who now languish in Babylon will never again see Zion’s fallen gates and, perhaps, never again know YHWH’s presence and care. His very name, evoking their god’s powerful presence, seems a mockery now that they and he stand at opposite extremes of the Fertile Crescent.

Enter Ezekiel with his bizarre description of YHWH’s throne and its surreal bearers. Much ink has been spilt to draw out the almost psychedelic (‘wheels within wheels …’) appearance of these beings, given to the task of moving YHWH’s throne in whatever direction they or he should wish. Most of it, alas, is wasted.

What is in view here is the sheer agile mobility of a God who still sits upon his throne, still reigns, and is not—here’s the main thing—anchored to Jerusalem and thus distant from the exiles. One ought to read Ezekiel’s first chapter as a bona fide effort to describe a throne of which motion is in any way restrained by physical realities, a description carefully spun before ball bearings and their associated technologies would have made such a blueprint more familiar to modern readers.

The bizarre qualities of the description turn out not to be that. They are merely unfamiliar to readers accustomed to describing the potential for movement in any direction by other means.

YHWH, Ezekiel’s opening statement would tell us, does not lie remote from his captive people. He can be and is indeed present wherever he wishes, just as his name suggests.

The worst fears of Lamentations‘ poet remain just that, and no more. Time will tell.