Diglossia, revelation, and Ezekiel's inaugural rite

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 1998 by Fredericks, Daniel C

It is possible as well that prophetic standards of good practice had deteriorated to some extent, as had the rest of the culture. False prophecy could well have been couched in poor, unacceptable diction, a habit of the sort only a dramatic inaugural rite could break.

IV. MOSES AND EZEKIEL: PRIESTS AND PROPHETS

Who was more likely to spearhead the conservation of appropriate language and diction than the priestly guild, the guardians of the culture? Such conservation abounds even today with the use of archaisms in our contemporary religious and liturgical language. Ezekiel, like Moses, was a prophet. Even more than Moses, he was an official priest as well. His priestly background explains his qualifications to speak about temple and cult among other matters. His prophetic call finalizes the authority of his message, which he delivered to an exiled population whose culture had been stripped of its most significant visual aids.16 If the message is so significant, then it is understandable to highlight the equal significance of it being carried in the most eloquent and persuasive manner-which of course meant in the standard literary language of the day. The contorted grammar and style of chap. 1, then, is perhaps a rhetorical prop that gives the book a context in which to elevate and authenticate a prophetic message that transcends any "deep-lippedness" or "heavy-tonguedness." A cultic message must only be conveyed in the proper literary language. Eloquence is everything.

Moses certainly thought so as well, and it is his self-effacing admission of lack of eloquence that forms an important parallel with Ezekiel, who also begins his prophecy in a noneloquent way. In fact God strikes poor Ezekiel dumb, allowing him to speak only the proper words at the proper time. Rather than a brother to help speak the words of God, as Moses was afforded, Ezekiel swallows those divine words. Unlike Moses' impediment, however, which is only referred to as kebad lason, Ezekiel's first attempt at relaying a divine vision is itself related in and is public evidence of kebad lason.

Further parallels between Moses and Ezekiel have been offered that would give greater reason to see Ezekiel 1 as an auditory aid to any conscious paralleling of Moses' and Ezekiel's calls to their prophetic roles. Such parallels would give Ezekiel the credibility he would need to address a discouraged people. The vision of God itself "makes clear that Ezekiel came as close as any Israelite since Moses to seeing the face of God, and the prophet's message must therefore have divine authority."17 H. McKeating notes numerous parallels between Ezekiel's message and that of Moses and concludes: "What Moses does for the first tabernacle and the first settlement, Ezekiel is attempting to do for the second temple and for the restoration."ls Lack of eloquence, then, is only one of several parallels between the two prophets.

One might object that since Ezekiel was a priest and part of the elite he would not have had any tendency toward the colloquial in the first place. But by colloquial I do not mean crass slang or street language. Rather, I refer to the ordinary language of day-to-day conversation. It is furthermore an assumption that priests and the higher echelon did not speak in standard literary Hebrew diction, so Ezekiel would have had a diglossic mode of verbal communication. The question is whether this diglossia is evident as we move from his initiation vision to his inaugural rite. Given the sorry state of Israelite prophecy at the time, pristine prophetic conveyance may not have been a priority even for Ezekiel.