Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

Ezekiel 17 presents a riddle or parable of two eagles about the treachery of Zedekiah, the puppet governor appointed by

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.