Ezekiel 17

Nebuchadnezzar to replace Jehoiachin, the Judahite king taken captive in an earlier wave of exile of which Ezekiel had been a part. Zedekiah would be captured in the last phase of exile, the destruction of Jerusalem, in 586 B.C. Part of the riddle includes messianic language of the branch, verbiage that takes this episode’s discussion into the Bible’s adaptation of the ancient omphalos (“navel of the earth”) myth.

Introduction

Now, on the surface, this is a pretty transparent chapter if you're sort of acquainted with the tail end of Israelite history. Nebuchadnezzar comes into town and invades Jerusalem and destroys the temple. If you're familiar with that history, then this parable (and that's what Ezekiel 17 is—a parable of two eagles) will make sense in light of the way the Bible describes those events as Jerusalem falls—and really the events right before it when the puppet king of Judah

(Zedekiah) is trying to get some help from the Egyptians against

Nebuchadnezzar. If you're familiar with all that, then this is pretty straightforward, at least from our perspective. If you're the person originally hearing it (and of course, these things haven't happened yet)... If you're in exile in Babylon, you don't really know what's happening in Jerusalem, you don't have a frame of reference for it, so that's a different story. So when Ezekiel does give this parable, there's a lot of mystery to it for the people who are hearing it. But for us looking at things in hindsight, it's a lot clearer. And there are going to be parts of this chapter that actually parallel other parts of the Hebrew Bible that make the reading of this "riddle" (this parable) pretty clear. But there's something in it, again, toward the end that I want to drill down on that I think will be not quite as apparent and actually

The theme of this chapter is the treachery of Zedekiah, the puppet-king appointed by Nebuchadrezzar to replace the captive Jehoiachin. It was as a result of this treachery that Nebuchadrezzar eventually marched on Jerusalem to besiege and destroy it (587 BC), but as this is foretold by Ezekiel in verse 20 it is clear that the utterance of this parable is to be dated a year or two before then, say about 590 BC. This accords well with the position of this oracle in the book, because the last preceding date (8:1) was 592 BC and the following date (20:1) is eleven months later.

is that the ease with which this is parsed really depends on which audience we're talking about. Is it an audience after the fact, or is it the audience that was living in the immediate time period? Again, removed from the circumstances because they were in exile. Now he writes here:

…this oracle about eagles, a cedar, a vinestock, and an east wind has employed traditional ancient Near Eastern images to construct a verbal caricature of Judah’s kings. However, he has underestimated the profound ambiguity of the fable. [ again, for the original audience] The prophet’s intended meaning is not

immediately obvious to the audience/reader. On the one hand, at the individual level, the vine might have symbolized any person who is destined for a full life but who commits suicide by cutting off his or her own roots…

I'll just interject here. Block is saying, "Somebody who heard this might have thought of themselves. They might have thought of anybody when they heard the terms of this. But those of us who are looking at it in hindsight, we can pretty much tell what's going on here."

Now let's jump into chapter 17. I think you'll see again how this begins to sort of fit together. The first ten verses is the parable. I'm going to be interjecting what things mean. And then in verses 11-21, the text will actually sort of verify or validate what I've said that the elements of the parable mean. So we'll get a little bit ahead of ourselves as far as identifying things, but then verses 11-21 will show where we're getting this. So in verse 1:

Ezekiel 17:1–2 ESV

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, propound a riddle, and speak a parable to the house of Israel;

The terms there: "riddle" is hidah(the same term that you'll see like in Judges 14 with Samson's famous riddle there with the Philistine men and his would-be wife at the time). It's an enigmatic or mysterious saying. That's what a hidah was. It's also called a "parable." A parable is sort of that same kind of thing. Some scholars would call it an allegory—telling a story, the elements of which have some sort of greater conceptual meaning. It points to something more abstract. Ezekiel himself (later in Ezekiel 20:49) is going to be called a "maker of parables." Block translates it as a "spinner of riddles." What that basically means is that Ezekiel had the reputation for telling parables and riddles and this kind of stuff. It was part of his prophetic routine (if you want to call it that). He was not an entertainer (obviously, most of what he says is just horrible to the listener). But he's also sort of, in part, a theater of the bizarre—the one actor theater of the bizarre. In this chapter (he's done it a little bit previously and then he'll do it some more) people will be thinking, "Well, here we go again. He's telling us another story. What does it really mean?" This is going to be something in Ezekiel that we see more than once—more than here. He's going to get that reputation. In verse 3, God says to Ezekiel:

Ezekiel 17:3–4 ESV

say, Thus says the Lord God: A great eagle with great wings and long pinions, rich in plumage of many colors, came to Lebanon and took the top of the cedar. He broke off the topmost of its young twigs and carried it to a land of trade and set it in a city of merchants.

Again, the meaning of this, as we're going to see in a little bit (viewed against verses 11-21 and also viewed in hindsight on what actually happens to Jerusalem), this is going to be clear. But for our purposes here, the point of verse 3 and 4 is that Nebuchadnezzar is going to be the great eagle. He comes with great military power to Judah and he snatches away its rulership, its nobility, its king—the top of the cedar (verse 3)—and takes him to Babylon. So again, reading it after the fact you're going to sort of know this guy was this great eagle snatching off the top of the tree, the branch, the cedar, and taking him back... obviously that's Babylon. The pieces are going to start to fit. So here in verses 3 and 4, the parable is about Nebuchadnezzar coming and snatching away the leadership of Jerusalem and taking them back to Babylon. Verse 5, talking about the great eagle:

Ezekiel 17:5–6 ESV

Then he took of the seed of the land and planted it in fertile soil. He placed it beside abundant waters. He set it like a willow twig, and it sprouted and became a low spreading vine, and its branches turned toward him, and its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine and produced branches and put out boughs.

So the seed of the land, as we're going to find out in a moment, corresponds to a

member of the royal family—most likely Jehoiachin's uncle, Zedekiah. According to 2 Kings 24:17, Zedekiah is the one that Nebuchadnezzar installs after the second wave of the exile. Zedekiah gets installed to be the puppet ruler, and that's going to work for a while, but then Zedekiah makes very poor decisions that provoke Nebuchadnezzar to coming back and finishing the job—finishing off the city, destroying the temple, the whole bit. So Nebuchadnezzar removes the ruler (Jehoiachin)—the top of the cedar, takes him back to Babylon, and in his place he installs Zedekiah. (Remember the royal family.) So he's from the "seed of the land." He's an Israelite. He's in a position to be a governing official and know what he's doing, but Nebuchadnezzar picks one of the ruling family and says, "Okay, you're in charge now. You'd better listen to me or I'll be back." We know this story from the book of Kings, for example. (The books of Kings, specifically 2 Kings and what-not.) Again, this is going to be familiar looking back in hindsight. The whole phrase "planted like a willow twig" means that Zedekiah is installed in his native Jerusalem. It's a good position, and he gets to "play king" essentially. But he's a puppet. He's a "low-spreading vine," in the words of the parable. He doesn't spread his own influence outward. He's a vassal. He's hemmed-in. He's restricted on what he can actually do. He's ruling in a subservient position to Nebuchadnezzar. So he's not independent. And the vine's (Zedekiah's) branches turn "toward the eagle" (toward Nebuchadnezzar), which indicates that he's subservient to his Babylonian overlord. Verse 7:

Ezekiel 17:7–10 ESV

“And there was another great eagle with great wings and much plumage, and behold, this vine bent its roots toward him and shot forth its branches toward him from the bed where it was planted, that he might water it. It had been planted on good soil by abundant waters, that it might produce branches and bear fruit and become a noble vine. “Say, Thus says the Lord God: Will it thrive? Will he not pull up its roots and cut off its fruit, so that it withers, so that all its fresh sprouting leaves wither? It will not take a strong arm or many people to pull it from its roots. Behold, it is planted; will it thrive? Will it not utterly wither when the east wind strikes it—wither away on the bed where it sprouted?”

So this little section of verses 7-10 are about the second eagle and the vine. The vine is Zedekiah, the puppet-ruler. The second eagle is great, but not as impressive as the first. In other words, that's evident from what we read here because the second eagle doesn't really do anything. He's just simply there and he attracts the attention of the vine, who turns his branches toward him, hoping, "Oh, you'll give me something! Water me and it'll help me flourish..." And again, the parable is like, "Nebuchadnezzar put you here, and you would have flourished if you had just listened to him. If you would have followed orders you would have been okay, you'd be under no threat. But now that the second eagle has drawn your attention and you're looking to get something from him..."

Namely, the historical referent is getting help from Egypt against Nebuchadnezzar. "When Nebuchadnezzar (the first eagle) learns of this, you're going to get plucked up. You're going to get destroyed. This is not going to work." So most scholars think this is an allegorical description of how Zedekiah (the vine) turned toward Egypt looking for assistance against Babylon. That's what we read in the account in the books of the Kings. The second eagle is powerful, but he ain't Nebuchadnezzar. This is a failed tactic. This is something that's not going to produce any good result. Now the validation of this interpretation is really given in verses 11-18. We read through verse 10, so let's jump into verse 11:

Ezekiel 17:11–18 ESV

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “Say now to the rebellious house, Do you not know what these things mean? Tell them, behold, the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, and took her king and her princes and brought them to him to Babylon. And he took one of the royal offspring and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath (the chief men of the land he had taken away), that the kingdom might be humble and not lift itself up, and keep his covenant that it might stand. But he rebelled against him by sending his ambassadors to Egypt, that they might give him horses and a large army. Will he thrive? Can one escape who does such things? Can he break the covenant and yet escape? “As I live, declares the Lord God, surely in the place where the king dwells who made him king, whose oath he despised, and whose covenant with him he broke, in Babylon he shall die. Pharaoh with his mighty army and great company will not help him in war, when mounds are cast up and siege walls built to cut off many lives. He despised the oath in breaking the covenant, and behold, he gave his hand and did all these things; he shall not escape.

Now, the covenant here is this treaty agreement that Zedekiah had made with Babylon. This is not a reference to a biblical covenant (God's covenant or anything like that). In the context, it's an agreement that Zedekiah had made with Nebuchadnezzar, and vice versa: "I'm going to install you here. I'm taking your king. I'm taking the rest of the important people back with me to Babylon." (Of course, Ezekiel was part of the second wave of the captivity.) "I'm going to leave you here, Zedekiah, and you're going to be fine as long as you obey me." This is a vassal status, a vassal agreement. Zedekiah is not going to be independent. "If you put up with that, if you abide by our agreement, you're going to be okay. It's a good job. It's a good gig." But that isn't what Zedekiah does. Zedekiah begins to solicit Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar is going to find out about it, and that's going to be it. They're going to be history. Nebuchadnezzar is going to come back and finish the job. He's going to destroy the city and destroy the temple in the last wave of the captivity. So basically, what the parable really means to teach us is that Zedekiah is a fool. He tries to avoid what's going to happen here. It's kind of interesting if we read in verses 19-21, there's a little bit more detail here about how God looks at Zedekiah. Let's read that:

Ezekiel 17:19–21 ESV

Therefore thus says the Lord God: As I live, surely it is my oath that he despised, and my covenant that he broke. I will return it upon his head. I will spread my net over him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon and enter into judgment with him there for the treachery he has committed against me. And all the pick of his troops shall fall by the sword, and the survivors shall be scattered to every wind, and you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken.”

These three verses transition to God through Ezekiel essentially evaluating the theological implications of the riddle of the parable and Zedekiah's decisions. Now Zedekiah's behavior in these three verses is treated as a rebellion against God. You might ask why. Because the context is clear about the agreement made with Nebuchadnezzar, and it all fits the historical series of events. We can go read it in Kings, etc. Why does God look at Zedekiah's behavior here as some sort of personal offense?

What you have going on here is that as part of keeping Zedekiah under control (reaching this agreement), Nebuchadnezzar made Zedekiah swear by the name of the Lord that he would abide by and be bound by this agreement. So when Zedekiah starts soliciting Egypt to get out from under this agreement (to get rid of Babylon), God takes that as an offense because he had sworn by the Lord to do this particular thing and now he's trying to get out of it. So that would be taking the Lord's name in vain—treating God's name with contempt. And that's why God is offended here. Block writes:

As if legal authorization is required, this oath offered Yahweh the grounds for intervening against the king because of his rebellion against the Babylonians. To violate a political covenant is to challenge the divine Guarantor.

It was very common in the Ancient Near East when people entered into agreements to make their god or gods part of the agreements as witnesses. There are a number of... Psalm 89 is kind of a famous one with the Davidic Covenant, where the witness to the covenant is the "witness in the clouds." It's singular. There's a very good case that can be made that the witness in the clouds (to the Davidic Covenant—that's what Psalm 89 is about) is Yahweh himself or, again, this sort of second Yahweh figure. It could actually be the Messiah himself or God himself. Commentators disagree on that, and you could construct an argument either way. But you have this idea that God or the gods are brought into the agreement to be witnesses, and their witnessing of it... Just think of how you have witnesses when you get married. They're supposed to hold you accountable to the decision you make. You have asked them to be witnesses to your decision, and when you violate that, the witnesses are supposed to call you out. That's what God's doing here: He's calling him out. God is treating it as an offense. "Is my name so insignificant that you would use it frivolously to enter into this agreement? You're just not going to get away with that, Zedekiah. I'm going to lower the boom on you, just like Nebuchadnezzar is going to."

So [Zedekiah] again shows himself to be a fool by what he's doing here. Earlier he was a political fool. Here he's a spiritual fool. Zedekiah is just a fool in this whole chapter (Ezekiel 17).

The last few verses are the thing that I want to sort of drill down on for the rest of the episode. Again, I think you're going to find it interesting. It's probably a question that you've asked yourself at some point. But we read this. This is 22-24:

Ezekiel 17:22–24 ESV

Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.”

This isn't really about replanting the Tree of Life or something like that. It's not abstract in that direction. The mountain height of Israel... Don't think directly of the Tree of Life and of Eden. You'll see some commentators go that direction. Rather, it's describing a replanting of the Davidic line in or on Mount Zion. That little sprig (maybe the term "branch" would be more familiar to you) will grow into a great tree. And, of course, under that tree there will be all the birds of the sky, of all different sorts, will find refuge under this tree. This imagery... You can already start to get the notion here because of the other "planting" imagery used in the prophets and other books about the Messiah. And, of course, when you're talking about the Messiah and birds of all varieties taking refuge in and under this tree, it's a reference to the Messiah asserting global sovereignty. These are very familiar themes in biblical theology. (the whole reclaiming of the nations thing), this is

another angle to it and another metaphor, another set of symbols for the symbolic language of it. Block writes this:

The prophet highlights the special origin of the sprig. Not only is it the topmost crown; it is also a special shoot, a rak. [ which gets translated “tender one”] The word seems to derive from rākak, “to be tender, soft,” but Ezekiel’s usage is without parallel. Other prophets had employed a variety of horticultural expressions to designate the messianic scion who would revive the Davidic line: ḥōṭēr, “shoot,” and nēṣer, “branch,” in Isa. 11:1; ṣemaḥ, “sprout,” in Jer. 23:5; 33:15; Zech. 3:8; 6:12. In this context rak, “shoot,”[ again, this “tender shoot”] serves as a harbinger of the messianic figure who will be presented in greater detail in later salvation oracles. . . .

Ezekiel’s image of a huge tree offering nourishment and protection for all creatures represents a Hebrew version of a widespread ancient mythological motif known as “the cosmic tree.” This tree, which is not to be associated with the “tree of life” in a paradisaical garden [ I’m going to add directly as a caveat here. I think there’s more to this than what Block is saying, but he’s right—this isn’t about the Tree of Life directly, but it is going to have something to do with that.] , is typically portrayed as a huge plant with its crown reaching into the heavens and its roots going down to the subterranean streams from which it draws its nourishment. Although Ezekiel may have been introduced to the “cosmic tree” motif in Babylon, the present passage may also have been inspired by Isa. 11:1–10, which conjoins the elements of a newly sprouted messianic shoot, the mountain of Yahweh, and peaceful coexistence with wild animals. [ these are all kingdom images] Whatever its antecedents, Ezekiel’s tree bears his own stamp. This tree is planted on the high mountain of Israel, a clear allusion to Mount Zion. Although this mountain will become increasingly significant in later oracles, only here in Ezekiel are the motifs of Davidic line and Zion brought together. Both elements are truly remarkable, reminding the exiles that Yahweh had not forgotten his covenant with David (2 Sam. 7). The dynasty would survive the deportation; it would be revived within the context of its original founding, and its protective influence would be felt all around the world.

I want to do a little bit of an excursus on this "world tree" thing, but here's the larger question (this is the question you may have asked yourself): Why do we get this "branch" language (branch, shoot, root, tender one, sprig, sprout) for the Messiah in the Old Testament? You see it in a lot of places. I think there are two trajectories to this. One of them is more common in commentaries. You'll run into it more quickly in commentaries than the other one. The other one, though, I think is much more interesting and it gets us into Israelite cosmological thinking— not only that, but also into some of the motifs associated with the divine council: the divine abode, the mountains, the cosmic mountain, the cosmic garden, and all this sort of stuff. Block has alluded to it. This "cosmic tree" idea is a very Ancient Near-Eastern Semitic thing. So you have two trajectories and the cosmic tree thing is going to be the second—the one that's less commonly discussed in relation to this question.

The second trajectory is this cosmic tree thing, but scholars typically talk about it in much bigger terms. This is going to sound really strange, but the cosmic tree idea is part of what scholars refer to as the "navel of the earth" mythic thinking. This is what Block alluded to, but he doesn't connect the cosmic tree with the bigger picture. This is also referred to as the axis mundi— the world axis. Think of Israelite cosmology: you've got a round flat earth, underneath the earth you've got the waters that are under the earth, you've got the pillars and all this stuff, and above you've got the firmament (the solid dome), etc. In their thinking, there was sort of a polar access that ran up through the middle of the earth—the center of the earth. The Old Testament and other texts refer to it as the "navel of the earth." That's an important idea—this sort of perpendicular pole, this invisible pole that ran from the bottom to the top, underneath, through the earth, and up to the top of the dome. The thinking was that all of this is a metaphor for the fact that heaven and earth were connected. If we can think on these terms, we're not so much really fixated on the image, but on what the image was meant to convey. Where heaven and earth were connected was by this idea of a cosmic tree. That does take us back to Eden and the Tree of Life, because the Tree of Life is in the presence of God. God is there on earth, heaven has met earth, heaven has come to earth. This is where God lives, this is the source of life. Think about the word "navel." Apply that to childbirth and that's the point at which the child is connected to the mother—the mother gives it life and sustains it, etc. These are, again, big metaphorical ideas that are applied to just the way the world is in the context of Israelite cosmology.

So heaven and earth are connected, and the point at which they are connected (this imaginary world tree kind of thing) runs through the center of the earth, all the way up and all the way down. In Greek thinking, the term for navel is omphalos. You've probably seen that before if you're into ancient religion and ancient mythology. I'll read a little bit from an article from LBD— the Lexham Bible Dictionary that you can get for nothing (obviously, if it's free!). You can search for it on the that we created at Logos. This is a free resource, by the way, web and you can get it. But here's the entry for the Navel of the Earth. Part of it reads as follows:

The myth of the “navel of the world” was common in many ancient cultures. The myth is often known as the omphalos myth, from the Greek word for “navel” (ὀμφαλός, omphalos). The omphalos myth often held that a sacred mountain was located at the center of the earth where the national deity dwelt and could be communicated with.

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