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Divinity School

COPYRIGHT, 1897,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

EZEKIEL, in all respects one of the Greater Prophets, has a very special place in the history of literary form. What in his predecessors has been occasional and subordinate becomes in his prophecy a dominant form of utterance. And again, the reflection in written record of the prophetic life and ministry takes shape in Ezekiel as an elaborately arranged literary work.

The form of discourse so characteristic of Ezekiel may be termed Emblem Prophecy. Its simplest illustration is when, for example, the prophet appears before his audience holding in his hands two sticks, with the name of Judah written upon the one and Israel upon the other. In the eyes of the people he solemnly joins these sticks together, and from this emblematic text proceeds to enlarge upon the healing of the national schism, and the glory of a united people under a Davidic rule. Of course, such objective emblems have been seen in other prophets: in Isaiah, walking barefoot as a captive; in Jeremiah, holding up his stained girdle; in Samuel, rending his mantle before Saul. The use of dumb show as a starting-point for other modes of presentation has characterised literatures widely separated from one another. In the early tragedy of the Re

naissance the spirit of a scene was regularly conveyed in emblematic action to the eye before the dialogue commenced; and this has been made familiar to the most general reader by the example of it preserved in Hamlet, where the gesture of pouring poison into the sleeping king's ear startles the conscience of the guilty murderer in the audience before a word of the play has been spoken. In written literature dumb show becomes hieroglyph; and, in connection with such names as Alciati in Italy, Jacob Catz in Holland, Quarles in England, Emblem Poetryhieroglyphic texts with discourses in verse - formed for more than a century the chief religious literature of Europe, and, though now forgotten, furnishes thousands of volumes to the libraries of curious collectors.

In studying Emblem Prophecy it is very important to recognise that the emblem is no more than the text, from which a regular discourse takes its departure. This principle will guard the student against opposite errors of interpretation. On the one hand, some writers have not only read the symbolic action of Biblical prophecy with extreme literalness, but have treated it as if it constituted the prophecy itself. It is true that there was in Israel a rude prophecy which consisted wholly in action, and which is still to be seen in the fakirs and dervishes of Semitic peoples, with whom a reiterated howl or a contorted body is the whole of their religious act. But the prophets of Biblical literature use such gesture language only as a pro

logue to verbal utterance. On the other hand, some commentators show a tendency to explain away the dumb show of prophecy, until it is left as little more than a literary image. They are actuated by a feeling that much of what is so described seems puerile and beneath the dignity of prophecy. But such a feeling is one to be resisted, more especially if the reader be of the English-speaking peoples: it is due largely to the notorious deficiency in gesture which makes our speech so dull and clumsy to our European neighbours. Any one who has heard a Gavazzi preach, or seen a Salvini act, will know how much of dignity, as well as force, accompanies the vivid action that half tells the tale before words come to complete it. Thus to herald speech with dumb show is only an extension of the well-known principle of oratory, that the significant gesture should, by however slight an interval, precede the words, the mind being thus unconsciously inflamed by force of curiosity into a receptive attitude that is of itself a mode of emphasis.

It will be well to take particular examples. The emblematic action in the Book of Ezekiel reaches its greatest minuteness in the Mimic Siege of Jerusalem (I. iv).

Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it a city, even Jerusalem and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mount against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it round about. And take thou unto thee an iron pan,

and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

Moreover, lie thou upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be unto thee a number of days, even three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And again, when thou hast accomplished these, thou shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it unto thee. And thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with thine arm uncovered; and thou shalt prophesy against it. . . . Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof; and thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it. ... And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp sword, as a barber's razor shalt thou take it unto thee, and shalt cause it to pass upon thine head, and upon thy beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair. A third part shalt thou burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled; and thou shalt take a third part, and smite with the sword round about it; and a third part thou shalt scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them. And thou shalt take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts.

...

This passage has been a stumbling-block to interpreters. So sympathetic a writer as Stanley has been misled into say

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