Monumental Structures in Babylon

Other scholars have identified the influence of the Babylonian exile on the language, literary phrases, and visual imagery found in Ezekiel's prophecy.Footnote ⁶ In this essay I shall refer only to what is most pertinent to the solution offered by a vision of the restored temple—the exilic background out of which much of the prophecy emerges.

Babylon was already a very old civilization at the time of the prophet's arrival. Strangers in a strange land, the exiles would have encountered a physical setting crowded with the monumental structures of the Babylonian past. Its residents, even in 590 b.c.e., would have had access to temples considered quite ancient. According to Jean Bottéro:

Bottéro reported the counting of at least a thousand such titles.Footnote ⁸ Thus those revered buildings were a part of the urban landscape and unavoidable. As described in Gerdien Jonker's work, The Topography of Remembrance, Babylon was littered not just with sacred temples but also with buildings of all sorts in all sorts of conditions:

Already preoccupied with the fate of his temple, in response to a Babylonian landscape littered with ruins and repairs, the prophet might have found further reinforcement and perhaps even some solace in turning his thoughts and memories to his own equally revered, though ruined, structure dating to a much more recent past—his temple, his house of God.

In fact, Ezekiel's account of God's return to a restored temple does echo similar accounts, some quite ancient, in the surrounding exilic culture, a point made by Diane Sharon in her comparison of Ezekiel's temple vision to that of a Sumerian hymn commemorating the building of a temple by Gudea, king of Lagash.Footnote ¹⁰ An even more intriguing parallel to Ezekiel's tour of the restored temple can be found in the famous poem, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (“I will praise the lord of wisdom”; thought to be composed during the second half of the second millennium) which ends with its protagonist wandering “around in a pious pilgrimage of gratitude” through the many gates of Marduk's major temple in Babylon.Footnote ¹¹

Furthermore, it is conceivable that distinctions made by Babylonians between Babylon and all other territories could have weighed on the prophet and influenced his thinking, especially since he found himself in one land while longing overwhelmingly for another:

Thus would the prophet's sense of dislocation and longing for Jerusalem and its temple be heightened and reinforced. Thus would he divide the lost land into territories for each of the tribes (Ezek 47:13–23).

In sum, I would argue (necessarily in a somewhat speculative fashion) that the particular physical environment of Babylon—with its preoccupation with and valorization of monumental structures and the repair of those structures—might have exerted a powerful influence over Ezekiel and shaped the content of the prophecy's vision of a restored temple. One's god and one's land versus those of others were explicitly marked and set apart. But gods could be restored to their homeland. Such concerns might have shaped and even exacerbated Ezekiel's preoccupation in the prophecy with identifying his “own” building—the temple—in its own space—the promised land. He, too, was greatly aware of the distance “it took to travel to foreign lands” for he did so at least twice in his prophecy! Each time Ezekiel left Babylon in his visions, he reminded the reader of his dislocation in a land in which he did not belong. Those preoccupations took on a further poignancy since the priest who found himself in a foreign land simply could not relinquish the only sacred space, for which his vocation had prepared him—the temple. The resultant text promoted an experience of a tangible, material building meant to exist outside that text, a building in which the priestly class could resume its functions on behalf of God and the people Israel.

A Priestly Body in Babylon

Yet as long as he remains in Babylon, separated from his temple, Ezekiel takes on the role of prophet. He has no choice in light of the serious challenge to his priestly identity brought about by the temple's destruction. After all, he is of priestly lineage at a time when “the temple [is] destroyed, the sacrificial system brought to an end, and an entire segment of the population relocated outside the territorial jurisdiction of their God.”Footnote ¹³ Ezekiel remains concerned with witnessing God's presence and tracking God's movements now that the temple has been defiled and destroyed. But at the same time, as suggested by Margaret Odell, “Ezekiel cannot become invested in his role as a priest…. He cannot be anointed and thereby be made holy, because he is in an unclean land. Instead, Ezekiel appears to undergo a counter-initiation, a series of acts whereby he relinquishes his priestly status.”Footnote ¹⁴

As a consequence, from very early on, Ezekiel takes on a prophetic role. As a prophet he complements his moves between territories and identities by moving between different kinds of prophetic behavior and forms. These include written rebukes, prophetic oratory, and a lively description of attention-grabbing physical acts. Based upon the description of his physical acts, at least some of them suggest live performances not uncommon to the undertaking of other prophets: “prophetic sign-actions were actual, conscious events, in some cases perhaps derived from ecstatic experience, but later developed into public performances.”Footnote ¹⁵ What makes Ezekiel's case particularly interesting is the overwhelming logic of his turn to a performance that makes the body central to its expression considering the shock of observing so many bodies, including his own, settling down in the wrong place, in exile. That logic seems to be confirmed by the sheer number of times he uses the body to convey a message to his audience.Footnote ¹⁶

The prophet uses his body to express his anguish, his rage, and his hope at the turn of events throughout the prophecy. He uses his body to enact the siege and destruction of Jerusalem. He returns to Jerusalem in a vision to serve as an eyewitness to its destruction and God's departure. Further in the prophecy, the prophet conjures up skeletal forms in the famous image of bones that come to be graphically clothed with flesh and skin. In that episode the prophet heralds the return of life to the people Israel in a restored temple. Finally, at prophecy's end Ezekiel's body is summoned once again for a journey back to Jerusalem to confirm the fulfillment of that hope in a tour of the restored temple and to witness God's return to the temple.

The use of the body is particularly obvious in the early stages of the prophecy. In these early scenes, example follows example with great rapidity as Ezekiel uses almost every part of his body. In chapters 1–5 images are conjured up of the body being flung down (1:28), of the prophet being set on his feet (2:2), of his being commanded to eat of the scroll (3:2–3), of his face becoming as hard as that of the people, and of his forehead becoming brazen (3:8). He takes God's word to heart as he closely listens with his ears (3:10). His whole body is implicated when God next orders him to “shut yourself in your house” (3:24). He is then ordered to perform a series of acts. Bound with cords, he becomes mute, sets up a siege against Jerusalem, lies on his left and then on his right side, eats bread baked on cow's dung, and shaves and burns his hair. The quantity and duration of his acts draw repeated attention to the body in its displaced and uprooted state.

The trauma of exile and the events surrounding that exile are never far from his mind. Nor should the people forget what is happening “there,” that is, in Jerusalem. The best way to keep the crisis front and center is not merely to describe it but to re-enact it. Therefore, Ezekiel does not just announce the siege of Jerusalem but acts it out: “And you, o mortal, take for yourself a brick and put it before you and incise on it a city, Jerusalem. And put up a siege against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast a mound against it …” (Ezek 4:1–2). God announces that the city “shall be under siege, you shall besiege it” (Ezek 4:3b [italics added]). Ezekiel is not only to announce the desperate state of the people but also to enact it by having his food and drink rationed (4:9–11) and by baking bread on cow's dung (4:15). God makes the parallel between the rationing of Ezekiel's food and drink and that of the people in Jerusalem explicit: “I shall break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight, in anxiety, and drink water by measure, in horror.” (4:16). Ezekiel's performances are said to have lasted for many days—390 days lying on his left side and 40 days lying on his right (4:5–6).Footnote ¹⁷ Life under a siege of significant duration is thus replicated. In fact, as the suffering of Ezekiel's body gradually worsens, it bears witness to the passage of time. Finally, Ezekiel enacts the end of the siege and its results by cutting his hair and dividing it in thirds: a third to be destroyed by fire, a third by sword, and a third to be scattered to the winds (5:1–2). The concreteness and detail of these gestures is striking.

Ezekiel continues to remain preoccupied with the location of his body and that of God as his prophecy unfolds. In fact, his body is restless and on the move, reinforcing the fact that the exiles are not where they belong. For instance, after performing the siege of the city, Ezekiel is taken back to Jerusalem in his visions to be an eyewitness to the temple, its abominations, and to the punishment of its inhabitants in chapters 8–11. It is not enough that Ezekiel enact the punishment of the inhabitants. Now he must return to observe the abominations in the temple that provide the evidence for and the justification of God's departure from the building and the city. He must also testify as an eyewitness that the divine departure occurred. God orders Ezekiel to remember what he sees and to bring back both a description of the temple's desecrated status and of God's promise of a future restoration by granting the exiles a “new spirit” (11:19). Upon his return to Babylon, Ezekiel announces, “I told the exiles all the things that YHWH had shown me” (11:25). These chapters anticipate and build toward the vision at the end of the prophecy.

Thus, the prophet's use of his body falls into two categories—prophetic visions and staged performances—that come together in my reading in the prophet's tour of the restored temple at prophecy's end. The physical performances in chapters 1–5 create a sense of experiential immediacy that, in turn, inform the vision and its effects on the reader in chapters 8–11. Throughout, the prophet's body is fully engaged and is central to the meaning and message of the event. Odell highlights the performative quality of the prophet's behavior when she describes Ezekiel as living out “what is in store for his people. The man was the message; indeed the man became the event.”Footnote ¹⁸ A brief consideration of Ezekiel as a performance artist not only accounts for the strong effect of these initial episodes on those who witnessed his actions or later heard of them but also explains the vivid and engaging experience of accompanying Ezekiel as he tours the restored temple in chapters 40–48.

Late-twentieth-century performance art provides a useful context in which to consider Ezekiel's dramatic acts since the two bodies of performace share the same kind of method and effecs.Footnote ¹⁹ Physical performance bridges the distance between an artist's creation (painting/sculpture/object) and the observer, allowing the audience “unmediated access.”Footnote ²⁰ The live artist and his/her body becomes the most direct “medium of expression.”Footnote ²¹ Performance results in “breaking down categories and indicating new directions” by using “live gestures … as a weapon against the conventions of established art.”Footnote ²² Performance art shocks the audience into reassessing their own ideas.Footnote ²³

Whether or not Ezekiel's performances are witnessed live or described at a later date, they share with performance art the use of the body as the “medium of expression” and the ability to discomfort the audience. By using his body in these unconventional gestures, Ezekiel shocks the exilic community, removed from the actual events, into considering those things which they might have managed otherwise to ignore or keep at a distance—the suffering and dislocation of the siege of the Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, and, most disastrous of all, God's departure from Jerusalem. Thus, Ezekiel's performances can be understood as closing the gap between the tragedy unfolding elsewhere and the exilic community. His early performances anticipate, and perhaps even predict, the likelihood of his last visionary performance: the solution to that tragedy.

In sum, the colorful and, at times, bizarre emphasis on the body communicates Ezekiel's preoccupation with his own body and the bodies of his exilic audience. What remains at stake for our prophet, seemingly with increasing urgency, is the return of those bodies to their rightful places in the promised land at whose center is a restored temple.

The Final Performance: Touring the Temple

Having briefly highlighted the ways in which this wonderfully peculiar text was challenged and shaped by the reality of Babylonian exile, I am now in a better position to analyze Ezekiel's tour of the rebuilt temple in all its concrete physicality and graphically abundant detail. The tour is both a response to the conditions of exile and a solution to that reality.

Let me begin with a brief consideration of the status of the concluding chapters 40–48 vis-á-vis the rest of the book attributed to the prophet. A consensus exists that portions of chapters 40–48 were written and added to Ezekiel's prophecy at a later time. Nonetheless, those portions remained much in line with the preceding narrative of events and experiences. Jon Levenson described these chapters as the work of a school that “believed itself to be expounding the fulfillment of Ezekiel's promise.”Footnote ²⁴ In like manner, John Collins recently suggested that “a nucleus of it may come from the prophet himself … [but] on some matters … [it] would seem to fit better in the context of the restoration, some decades after the time of Ezekiel…. It is nonetheless very much in the tradition of Ezekiel and continuous with his interests.”Footnote ²⁵ In his commentary, Moshe Greenberg identified the final chapters with the prophet and argued that “a coherent world of vision is emerging … decisively shaped by him, if not the very words of Ezekiel himself.”Footnote ²⁶ Thus, a reasonable conclusion might suggest that the prophecy, including its ending, emerged out of the experiences, oracles, and written record of the prophet, a circle of followers/recorders of his words, and, most likely, a later editor or editors.

It is sufficient for my purposes that the anonymous author of these chapters continues to make dramatic use of Ezekiel's body and of the Babylonian setting out of which the prophecy takes shape; he does so in order to enact the final stages of the crisis and to provide a fitting ending for the entire work. The arrangements described in the prophet's vision for the temple, the priests, the ruler, and the people could have served either as a blueprint for a community still in exile but preparing for a future restoration or as a model for rebuilding a society of people who have returned to the land.

Clearly the placement of the vision at the prophecy's end is carefully woven together with key episodes from earlier chapters of Ezekiel's prophecy to create a narrative arc with a beginning, a middle, and an end. For example, in the early chapters, Ezekiel enacts the experience of siege, hunger, and dispersion as Jerusalem falls. Chapters 8–11 depict God's departure from Jerusalem. Now, in the concluding chapters of the prophecy, the body returns to a newly rebuilt temple to witness God's return to that temple. The “hand of God”—referred to in Ezekiel 1:3; 3:14, 22; 8:1; 37:1 and 40:1—weaves together these three significant moments in the prophecy.Footnote ²⁷ Ezekiel witnesses God's presence, returns to the promised land, and then returns again to Babylon and expresses what he sees to the people. Chapter 8 contains language that refers both back to chapter 1 and ahead to chapter 40. The prophet repeats his description of the figure framed in fire (1:27 and 8:2). Chapter 8 opens in a fashion almost identical to that of 40:1. Both state the year, day, and month in which the hand of God takes the prophet back to the city. In Ezekiel 8:10, the prophet is faced with the many abominations of the people in the temple, including fetishes that cover the walls of the temple. Far more acceptable drawings, this time of the cherubs, appear to the prophet in 41:18–20. There are rich and obvious linkages between chapters 1, 8–11, and 40–48.

In fact, the anonymous author quite explicitly links the different episodes of the prophecy when Ezekiel announces in 43:3: “The vision was like the vision I had seen when I came to destroy the city, the very same vision that I had seen by the Chebar Canal.” Most significantly, God's destruction of the city's inhabitants and the divine departure from the city in chapters 8–11 is resolved by God's return to the temple in chapter 43 as well as the return of the house of Israel from their dispersal in exile. The unknown author succeeds in closely drawing upon the earlier prophecy to present the temple vision as a logical and fitting solution to Ezekiel's enactment of the dislocation and trauma of the Babylonian exile.

To get us from Babylon to the restored temple the writer carefully crafts both the choice of words and the use of structure. As an example of both, consider the use of (there) just before the vision with which we are concerned. In 39:28 God announces that the people will not be left there, that is, in the nations of their dispersal. The word is then repeated in the very last line of the entire book, 48:35, when the narrator announces that the city shall be called: YHWH is there. The word play on not being left there, in exile, but rather, to have arrived there, in the city of God, reinforces the highly conscious awareness in the text of the need to exchange one place for another and provides a frame for the whole.

The vision itself begins in chapter 40 with Ezekiel's return to the land of Israel. I approach the vision by means of a close literary reading attuned to the choice of an astonishingly precise and repetitious lexicon suitable to a building (measurements, gates, and windows), the use of certain words that impress as purposeful by dint of sheer quantity, several examples of a leitwort, and the deployment of active verbs that reinforce the sense of the prophet on the move.

The first four verses notify the audience of Ezekiel's return to the land of Israel while they remain in Babylonian exile:

Note that in yet another example of the vision's interconnection with the earlier episodes, this passage insists that the prophet's entire body be engaged in the undertaking and be relied upon to record it. The instructions to Ezekiel echo those in chapters 1–5: the eyes, ears and heart must be alert. Just as in chapter 8, Ezekiel is brought back to the city in order to be an eyewitness to God's intentions and activities. The opening of Ezekiel's vision recapitulates what came before while now moving the narrative forward to its conclusion.

The first four verses of chapter 40 exemplify the extent to which the entire vision is communicated via densely packed, carefully deployed language. For instance, the writer relies on a well-known device, the leitwort, not once but twice in the first four verses. The significant roots are and . Four times we are told that the prophet is being brought back. Seven times Ezekiel is being shown something or sees—the goal of his being brought back.Footnote ²⁸

In addition, , already cited above as creating a frame for the entire vision via its use in 39:28 and 48:35, is now used to create a mini frame in the first three verses of chapter 40. In addition to drawing our attention in verse 1 to the prophet's arrival at the site that will now occupy him and the reader for the remainder of the prophecy, the use of in verse 3 creates a frame that draws our special attention to the content of verse 2. Verse 2 announces precisely where Ezekiel has been brought: the land of Israel. The use of in verse 3 also creates a juxtaposition with the word that immediately follows it— (behold)—a word that draws the prophet's attention to his guide. The two words communicate the exchange of places. No longer in exile, the prophet can now pay attention to the guide who is standing in front of him in the land of Israel.

The four verses also introduce the prophet (and the reader) to an outline of the city—a —and to the gate through which the guide will take him into the restored house of God. Together, the demarcation suggested by an outline, drawing our attention to a bounded area, as well as a gate through which one can cross, introduce the main preoccupation of the entire unit—the creation of an alternative setting and an alternative building to those surrounding the exilic community in Babylon. We are now invited to enter this building and tour it alongside the prophet.

As the vision unfolds, the writer continues to deploy his precise lexicon in rather abundant, even exaggerated form. The repeated verbs for movement provide a striking example. For instance, Ezekiel describes having been “brought” , “led out” , “led” , and “returned” in chapters 40–44. As noted above, “bringing” appears at least four times in 40:1–4 alone. Throughout these chapters, whenever the guide moves from an entrance into a chamber or exits a chamber and moves into the next, we are told explicitly that he takes Ezekiel with him. He takes Ezekiel into the outer court, leads him to the south path, to the inner court, to the east, to the north, to the great hall, etc. The striking presence of such active verbs suggests the extent to which the prophet is on the move. He must walk through the entire building in front of him rather than just listen to a description of its chambers. These chapters surely continue and amplify Ezekiel's preference for the experiential and the performative that was prominent in the work's earlier chapters, where he enacted the events of exile. He will now enact a possible restoration by means of his body.

In fact the tour takes on the quality of a pilgrimage through a sacred space as Ezekiel climbs, enters, crosses, and climbs again. What he sees and experiences, especially the physical quality of the building, is conveyed through a comprehensive attempt to describe each entryway and each passage through which the prophet and the reader must cross. The sense of the real is effectively enhanced through the device of measuring and recording numbers of cubits. Cubits are announced roughly forty times just in chapter 40 alone.

The enormous attention to the physical details and measurements of the building draws the reader's attention to the solidity of the building being described. I would suggest that the emphasis on the temple's physical details testifies to the profound influence on our writer of the Babylonian valorization of, and preoccupation with, its own buildings. The prophet is not just referring to a temple but he is focusing, almost obsessively, on each physical aspect of that temple. The gates of the building are an excellent example of the prophet's obsession. After a description of the wall, the guide and Ezekiel cross through a gate. “Gate” is mentioned at least forty times just in chapter 40, sometimes several times in the same verse, as in 40:23: “the gate leading to the inner court, opposite the gate to the north and to the east … measured from gate to gate a hundred cubits.” The gate is followed by its threshold, a recess of the gate, the inner vestibule of the gate, the vestibule itself, three recesses on either side of the gate, its opening, the distance from the front of the outer gate to the front of the inner vestibule, the steps, more thresholds and openings, windows, doors and door posts, other vestibules and chambers, exits and entrances marking off inner and outer spaces, and side chambers. I offer such excruciating detail to reproduce the effect of such graphic images on the audience and reader. The various facets of this building do nothing less than construct an alternative space to that of exile—one that Ezekiel himself has stepped into and is now moving through. As long as he continues to follow the guide around its many chambers, and as long as we follow him, all of us can inhabit a place that is not Babylon. That includes God as well. At its core, after three chapters of physical description, the meticulously measured house is now ready for the return of God's glory () as described in chapter 43.

How then is the audience and reader to respond to this written temple? The many gates, thresholds, windows, and doors signify the function of the temple as a liminal space—a space that offers a place, specifically a rebuilt temple, perhaps especially massive in its contours, since it is in direct proportion to the massive instability and uprootedness of the prophet and his audience. It is a building in which they can begin to recover from the crisis and trauma of exile. In that liminal space they can be both sustained and renewed, motivated to return as soon as possible to the land, city, and temple that were the sources of their identity and unity in the past. Indeed, by its very definition, liminality is only a temporary state—a moment in time or bounded space. It cannot be a destination. As such, a liminal space would not be sufficient to the prophet. His audience must not be satisfied in conjuring up a temple, however massive, if it remains mere description, an abstraction. Perhaps the liminal space created by the prophet can be sufficient for the time being. But in the end the house of Israel must cross through a bounded space—and text—to get to the other side. The people must someday enter an actual, restored temple.Footnote ²⁹

Thus, Ezekiel's vision becomes the very means through which an audience can galvanize itself to plan for the restoration of an actual building in a future time and place. The people of Israel can tentatively shed their exilic selves in preparation for a more permanent return to the land and city in which the temple will again take its place. The road back to the land lies through Ezekiel's blueprint, enacted by carefully and methodically walking through a rebuilt temple by means of the prophet's densely thick description. Ezekiel leads the way but the people must follow. The two fascinating verses in Ezekiel 43:10–11 to which I referred in the introduction to this essay suggest that the plan of the house is designed to transform the people, moving them first to shame and then from shame and, perhaps, despair to a renewed commitment to the temple, a return encouraged by showing them the entrances and exits through which their bodies must cross. Footnote ³⁰

It should be noted that, thanks to Ezekiel's innovations, this building does not simply recreate the destroyed temple but provides the exilic community with a new and expanded model.Footnote ³¹ The temple is not as it was. Perhaps the prophet's innovations might contribute an essential ingredient to the community's recovery from trauma.

Not only will the temple be new and improved but so too will the organization of the body politic as a restored community. The vision of the temple, written down by the prophet according to 43:11, is addressed to a body politic that includes the prince ( referred to as Nasi in what follows), the priests, and the people. The vision and the text that preserves that vision become twin gates to a rebuilt society.Footnote ³² By addressing the prince, the priests, and the people, Ezekiel aims to do nothing less than disrupt traditional social, political, and religious arrangements external to the text that were in place prior to the destruction of the first temple.

The prophet's description is no mere literary fiction but a full-fledged call to action, especially for the priests. A reorganized priestly class will take its place as the leaders of a reconstituted community. This reorganized priestly class is explicitly described in the prophecy after the theophany of chapter 43. It becomes quite detailed once God returns to the temple. At that point, priestly preoccupations take over as the writer more obviously promotes a priestly agenda meant to be re-established outside the realm of the text, on the other side of the liminal moment. The temple vision shows the way by assigning specific places within the building, the city, and in the land to the Nasi, to the people, and to the priests. It is quite striking that the concern with restoring bodies to their proper land and city is so closely connected in this passage with placing those bodies in their proper places hierarchically and physically once they do indeed return.Footnote ³³ I will now briefly address each in turn.

In Ezek 43:7 and 45:7 God insists that the human ruler must keep his house and his holdings at a greater distance than heretofore from God's house. He must be buried at a greater distance from the temple (43:9). On fixed occasions the prince can only enter and exit the house of God when the people do so (46:10). While the prince's role seems to be diminished, those of the priests are elaborated upon at great length.

When addressing priestly concerns, Ezekiel emphasizes clearly demarcated holy spaces, attention to acts of purification, measurements of the altar, and various contributions for the priests (e.g., ch. 45). In fact, the priestly vision of these chapters seems to be addressed to an inner-priestly circle since it actively promotes a new priestly hierarchy by establishing the Zadokites over the rest of the Levites.Footnote ³⁴ This is first announced in 40:45–46 and developed in 43:18–27 and in chapter 44. In chapter 48 there is a summary of the earlier arrangements. Furthermore, just as we have seen the writer use an abundance of detail to communicate a vision of the restored temple, so too does he resort to vivid detail to reinforce his program for a new society supervised by priests. We can visualize the instruments used to slaughter the burnt offerings and sacrifices, the tables on which the sacrificial flesh will be laid, the vestments worn by the priests, and the different chambers in which the singers and priests will gather. The “touch of the real” imposes itself on the reader in these images of priestly bodies properly clothed, fed, and situated.

Finally, at the end of Ezekiel's vision the house of Israel is resettled in the promised land. In chapters 47 and 48 Ezekiel refers to boundaries of the entire land and to allotments of territory within it, naming each of the tribes and placing them in a specific area. In so doing, he is substituting the physical location of the house of Israel in its present arrangements in a foreign land—Babylon—with its proper, restored location in the land of Israel. Another priestly work also concludes by replacing a foreign land with a homeland in strikingly similar fashion. The book of Numbers details the allotments of territory and tribal placements in the promised land much as that of Ezekiel. Numbers ends by replacing death in the wilderness with life in a new home in the promised land.Footnote ³⁵ Now it is up to Ezekiel to make this happen a second time by restoring the house of Israel in the promised land.

YHWH is There

As we have seen, exile presents a solution to the crisis it has created for Ezekiel. The priest/prophet who responds in his own unique way to the external reality of loss and destruction by a dramatic and memorable use of his body is the same priest/prophet who eventually invites his audience to join their bodies with his and accompany him on a tour of the newly restored temple. In other words, the body of the prophet enacts the exile. Now it will be his body that enacts the restoration in a building that is the logical and fitting solution to exile. After all, the vision of the rebuilt house of God is either conceived in or responds to the context of a Babylonian milieu in which buildings are both revered and rebuilt. Thus, the priest/prophet seeks his own building, his own temple, and offers that temple to the people as well. They are showered with graphic and vivid detail of that restored temple and asked to shed an exilic identity in preparation for a return to a life organized yet again around a temple run by a new priestly hierarchy in a building that could, perhaps, heal the trauma, dislocation, and divisions of a priest/prophet and the people he guided.

And yet the final verse of the prophecy seems to express a tentativeness about the success of the prophecy by means of one last crossing between Babylon and Jerusalem. It does so through the use of there. We have seen that the word is used just before the temple vision as a referent to exile (“I will no longer leave them there” [39:28]) and that the final verse of the prophecy also uses there, this time to describe and rename Jerusalem (“and the name of the city from that day: YHWH is there” [48:35]), thus creating a frame around the entire vision. I would now add that the city's name—YHWH is there—reinforces the continuing preoccupation of the prophet with God's whereabouts, precisely the preoccupation seemingly answered at the beginning of the prophecy when God appears in Babylon but now apparently raised again at the very end of the prophecy. But perhaps most poignantly, calling the city “YHWH is there” also suggests that the prophet seems preoccupied not only with God's location but with his own. The final use of raises the question of the prophet's location. It appears that he is still in exile—desperately wanting to leave there (Babylon) to arrive there (Jerusalem) but at the same time doubtful of the likelihood of success. “Here” is yet again deferred.Footnote ³⁶

Nonetheless, either there in exile, or there in the renamed city, the vision of a new temple, with its “touch of the real,” and its arrangements for a new life and priestly hierarchy remains ever ready to galvanize a generation to gather itself body and soul and return, renewing its days as of old.