Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Now there is a difficulty in this chapter that we need to address.

I'm betting it's one that no one in the audience has ever heard before, but this is the kind of thing you'll run into in Israelite Religion in graduate school or in Daniel class or something like that.

And that is, the reference to Daniel in this section of Ezekiel 14 is actually a difficulty.

Think about it.

This is Ezekiel living during the sixth century B.C. He's taken in the second wave of captivity.

Daniel was taken in the first wave.

So Ezekiel and Daniel are contemporaries.

When this is happening in real time (when Ezekiel is preaching) he's preaching to a limited audience— people who are within earshot.

So how would those people know that Daniel (the biblical Daniel) is this great example of faith?

The book of Daniel, as far as we know, doesn't exist.

It was written at the same time, or we guess that because they're living at the same time.

And Daniel, of course, is in Nebuchadnezzar's court.

He's not out there by the River Chebar wandering around with the exiles and doing servile work.

How do they even know about him?

The fact that the books aren't written yet... How can Daniel be a reference point here?

And you could ask the same question of Noah.

If Genesis 1 through 11 hadn't been written yet—if that's going to be during the exile or a little bit after—do you have the same difficulty there?

Job?

A lot of evangelicals assume that Job is the earliest book of the Bible.

I don't believe that, and most Old Testament scholars don't believe it, either.

None of the arguments for Job's earliness is really a good argument.

You can turn them around and argue for lateness, as well, or an exilic situation.

For instance, "Oh, there's no reference to the Law of Moses, so the Law didn't exist yet, so Job was written before the Torah."

Well, maybe the Law isn't written yet because Job isn't an Israelite.

Did you realize that?

Job isn't an Israelite.

And maybe it's because the people for whom the story was intended don't have the Torah, they don't have the tabernacle, they don't have the temple, they don't have the priesthood because Job isn't an Israelite.

I don't want to lapse off into the dating of Job here.

A lot of the Hebrew of Job is actually late in terms of the grammar.

For the sake of our discussion here, that might present a problem, too.

It just depends on when the book was written.

So we've got a difficulty here.

You could argue that Noah and Job were likely known to the exiles through tradition.

You have the Flood tradition.

That's going to be something that was widespread in the Ancient Near East from great antiquity.

You could have the Israelite take on this be part of oral tradition.

The character Noah would be part of oral tradition before it gets written down.

That's certainly workable, certainly possible.

You could argue the same for Job because the theme of the righteous sufferer was well-known in the Ancient Near East.

Egypt has this material.

Mesopotamia has this kind of material—the person who's blameless before the gods and then the gods or the council says, "They're only this way because of this, that, and the other thing."

And the whole question of why the righteous suffer, which is a big theme in Job.

You have this familiar material so it's very possible that the Israelites could have had this story circulating in their consciousness through oral tradition before Job gets written.

Or Job could have been written.

We just don't know.

Daniel is the Issue

So Noah and Job aren't really at the heart of the difficulty here.

The real heart of the difficulty is Daniel.

If this is Ezekiel's contemporary (and by biblical chronology, we know he is), how would the exiles know him as this exemplary figure when the events of his life were still playing out?

That's the issue.

Now there are a couple of proposals here.

One is, people could say that this part of Ezekiel was written after the exile (post-exilic), and that would have given the book of Daniel time to have been written, and whoever is putting this together could have included these names in chapter 14 under inspiration, and there you go.

Problem solved.

People are going to know who Daniel is because by this time, the book would have existed.

You don't have to be living where the king lives to know who this guy is, and so on and so forth, and that's the way that it would make sense.

Okay, that's one possibility

Post-Exilic Editing

The second is we have a postexilic editing of this portion to include Daniel.

So one is a composition argument and the other is an editing argument.

Kind of six of one and half dozen of another.

Both of those work the same way.

Dan’ell

The third proposal (and this is the one you'll get if you're in graduate school sitting in an Israelite Religion class or a Daniel class, or even an Ezekiel class, for that matter) is that this Daniel is not the biblical Daniel.

Rather, this is Dan’ell, who was a well-known (at least to the people of Canaan) literary figure from Ugaritic material.

Now, just a little statement by Block here:

The tale of Aqhat tells the story of a legendary King Dan’el (dnil), characterized as “upright, sitting before the gate, beneath a mighty tree on the threshing floor, judging the cause of the widow, adjudicating the case of the fatherless.”

In other words, this is a good guy.

He's an upright person.

And this was a wellknown figure because of the Ugaritic material.

You say, "What's the evidence for that?"

Here's the evidence.

I'll give you three lines of evidence for it and then we'll talk about whether this makes sense or not.

The big one, the one that draws attention a lot is the spelling (believe it or not) of the name Daniel.

Hopefully even if you don't know Hebrew you'll be able to follow this.

“Daniel” in Ezekiel in this chapter is spelled "dnal" (daleth, nun, aleph, lamedh).

Four consonants.

Literally, if you took the vowels out, it would be dan'el, just like the Ugaritic guy.

In the book of Daniel (believe it or not), the name "Daniel" is not spelled that way.

It's spelled with FIVE consonants instead of four: daleth, nun, yodh, aleph, lamedh—daniyel.

For those who know Hebrew, the "dah-nee-el," you have the hireq yodh in there—the long "i" with the yodh.

So "Daniel" in Ezekiel is not spelled the way "Daniel" in the book of Daniel is.

They are different spellings.

And since the one in Ezekiel corresponds to four consonants ("Dan'el"), scholars have noticed this.

You would think, if the guy in the book of Daniel is the reference point here, that Ezekiel would spell it the same way.

But he doesn't.

The scribes—or whoever put the book of Ezekiel together—they do not spell it the way it's spelled in the book of Daniel.

So when scholars notice this and then they think about the chronology here, it's like, "Boy, that's interesting.

We wouldn't expect that!"

Here's the second line of argumentation.

Ezekiel apparently does know of the Ugaritic Dan'el.

That's a good assumption to make because Ezekiel mentions Dan'el and he uses a lot of Ugaritic material in Ezekiel 28.

Ezekiel 28 is a diatribe against the king of Tyre.

Remember the king of Tyre is going to be the one who exalts himself above the highest of the gods and says "I sit in the seat of the gods" and refers to himself with the Semitic El word and all this stuff.

If you've read Unseen Realm you're going to be basically familiar with the use of the Ugaritic material and "the divine rebel" in Ezekiel 28.

Well, in that chapter we read this in verse 3:

So scholars will say, "Look, the same four-consonant Dan'el spelling there is in Ezekiel 28, and Ezekiel 28 is full of Ugaritic stuff.

So it's probably a good assumption that Ezekiel—the writer, the person, the prophet, or one of his followers who may have helped put the book together after Ezekiel was gone— that they knew this material and this is the guy they're referring to: Dan'el, not the biblical Daniel

Or…not Israelites

according to the biblical record.