Diglossia, revelation, and Ezekiel's inaugural rite

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

VII. CONCLUSION

What sort of language is reflected in Ezekiel 1? First, it is possible that Block is correct and that the language is "heavy-tongued" because of the emotional effect of Ezekiel's experience on this discourse. Those who believe that emotion can significantly affect grammar might find a synthesis here. Second, having said that "heavy-tongued" need not mean a foreign language it could still refer to a garbled attempt to form grammatically correct sentences by a foreigner. The lack of gender consistency and eloquence in Ezekiel 1 is like a foreigner trying to speak Hebrew without adequate mastery of the grammar. Why Ezekiel would recount the vision in the clumsy speech of a foreigner would be hard to understand, however. Third, if the divergent grammar and language is not at all identifiable, perhaps it is an intentional, artificial corruption of the language designed to contrast with an acceptable literary language-a rough form of grammar and syntax.

Finally, "heavy-tongued" could refer to the looser grammatical conventions of the daily language, a vernacular dialect. For lack of any better identification of the source of this divergent diction of the inaugural vision, this would be the preferred hook on which to hang the hypothesis. But such a preference can be held only tentatively.

Whatever sort of language Ezekiel 1 is, and regardless of any definitive or identifiable source, one thing is certain: Its source is not the honeycomb to which Ezekiel compares the ingested words of God: "Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in the mouth" (Ezek 3:3). Immediately after Ezekiel's comparison with sweet honey, the Lord emphasizes that Israel expects more than noneloquent or sour words spoken grammatically incorrectly and stylistically clumsily.

What appears to be happening in Ezekiel 1-3 is a reaffirmation of an official, literary language that tolerates no deviance from the norm. God himself must go to the extreme of forcing the consumption of the revelation as well as holding Ezekiel's tongue captive, only to let it loose to speak the divinely dictated words. Evidently in Ezekiel's case there was no room for the more organic or dynamic inspiration of the revelation of God that allowed for the synergy of human experience and divine message to combine and convey authoritative pronouncements. With Ezekiel the risk seemed too great to do anything else than to control all of his body movements, including his tongue. There was only one way to speak and reveal God's mind, and that way included standard literary conventions. A. Cody remarks that Moses' (Exod 33:1-4) and Isaiah's calls (Isa 6:1-7) "contain imagery expressing God's powerful separation from this profane and common world."zl Is this not exactly what we see as we proceed from Ezekiel 1 to chaps. 2-3a clear separation of noneloquent speech from the holy words of God's own prophecy written on a scroll?

1 Cf. e.g. N. Habel, "The Form and Significance of the Call Narratives," ZAW 77 (1965) 297323; R. Youngblood, "The Call of Jeremiah," Criswell Theological Review 5/1 (1990) 99-108.