Alastair's Adversaria - Biblical Reading and Reflections: May 30th (Ezekiel 4 & Acts 7:17-34)

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

Ezekiel's 390 and 40 days. Moses in Stephen's speech. My reflections are searchable by Bible chapter here: https://audio.alastairadversaria.com/explore/. If you are interested in supporting this project, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (https://bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or buying books for my research on Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/36WVSWCK4X33O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035?mt=2.

Ezekiel chapter 4. And you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem, and put siege works against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it, set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. And you take an iron griddle, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city, and set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege. against it. This is a sign for the House of Israel. Then lie on your left side and place the punishment of the House of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the House of Israel. And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year, and you shall set your

face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city. And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege. And you take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emma, and put them into a single vessel, and make your bread from them. during the number of days that you lie on your side 390 days you shall eat it and your food that you eat shall be by weight 20 shekels a day from day to day you shall eat it and water you shall drink by measure the sixth part of a hin from day to day you shall drink and you shall eat it as a barley cake baking it in their sight on human dung and the lord said thus shall the people of israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where i will will drive them. Then I said, Our Lord God, behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth up till now, I have never eaten what died of itself, or was torn by beasts,

nor has tainted meat come into my mouth. Then he said to me, see, I assigned to you cows dung, instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread. Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. I will do this that they may lack bread and water, and look at one another in dismay, and rot away because of their punishment. There are various examples of prophetic sign acts and scripture. We might think of Jeremiah's breaking of the earthenware flask

at the entry of the pot shirt gate in Jeremiah chapter 19, or his hiding of the loincloth in chapter 13. The sign act with the loincloth is a good example of a prophetic sign that was performed in several stages, with its meaning only being revealed at the end. Ezekiel chapter 4 contains a similarly extended sign act, once again with several stages to it. The meaning of this elaborate sign act and its various elements has perplexed and been much debated by commentators, with many different potential interpretations having been proposed. We will have to puzzle our way through some of these, hopefully arriving at some better understanding by the conclusion.

In considering the meaning of such signs, it's important to bear in mind that the purpose of the signs is not merely one of illustration, although they can be a dramatizing illustration that intensifies the message of the prophet. If they merely serve such a purpose, the complicated and convoluted character of the sign here might lead us to believe that it failed in its primary purpose. Rather, meditating upon the sign should challenge and inform our interpretation of the reality, The unobvious character of the sign intentionally serves to provoke such meditation. The fact that a sign act like Ezekiel's was bizarre and performed over a very extended period of time would provoke considerable curiosity and speculation in the population. One could imagine many theories circulating among the Judean exiles

about what this strange prophet was doing and what it might mean. The fact that Ezekiel had seemingly been struck done by the Lord would likely have intensified this curiosity. Some have regarded prophetic sign acts as functioning as a sort of sympathetic magic, as the inaction of something using symbols that affected the corresponding reality. However, this is to mistake what is taking place. The symbols are connected to the affecting of a reality, but this is because the sign act is performed as a dramatic presentation of the efficacious word of the Lord.

In this chapter alone, Daniel Block identifies seven descendants, extinct acts that belong to this sign act. This continues into the following chapter. He writes, no fewer than nine clusters of actions are involved. One, the siege of the brick. Two, the erection of the barrier between Ezekiel and the brick. Three, Ezekiel's lying on his left and right sides respectively. Four, the bearing of Ezekiel's arm. Five, the binding of Ezekiel. Six, eating rationed food and drinking rationed water. Seven, eating cakes baked, over feces, eight, shaving and disposing of Ezekiel's hair, and nine, the isolation of a remnant of hair. Ezekiel begins by taking a brick and inscribing a plan of the city of Jerusalem, which presumably

would have been recognisable to those watching. Having engraved the city on a brick, presumably while it was drying, Ezekiel surrounded the city with a model siege, with a siege wall, a mound or a ramp, which would have made the wall of the besieged city accessible to the besieging army and their siege engines, a number of camps, several military divisions by which the city could be enclosed on all sides, and battering rams by which walls and gates could be breached. Having set up the model city and the siege around it, Ezekiel is then to place an iron griddle which would have been used to bake cakes between himself and the city. The prophet must then set his face toward the city and press the siege against it, with the iron griddle between him and it. Here the prophet seems to represent

the Lord, who has set his face against Jerusalem and the men of Judah. The iron griddle dividing the prophet from the city symbolizes the barred presence of the Lord who is acting as the enemy of Jerusalem and its rulers. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of the sign act is what follows. Ezekiel is instructed to lie on his left side, presumably facing the city. He is supposed to do this for 390 days. There are several questions raised by this part of the sign. First, what is meant by bearing their punishment at the end of verse 4. James Jordan argues that this should be translated as lift up, not bear. Ezekiel is not bearing the sin of the city in some expiatory sense, but lifting it up and placing the punishment of the House of Israel upon Jerusalem.

Second, what is the House of Israel referring to here? Comitators have commonly seen a distinction between the Northern and the Southern kingdoms here, especially as the House of Judah is mentioned in verse 6, lying on the left side relative to the city of Jerusalem, might also represent the Northern Kingdom of Israel's relationship to Jerusalem, and lying on the right side might represent the Southern Kingdom's relationship to Jerusalem. However, there are some complications with this interpretation. As Block observes, Ezekiel routinely refers to the House of Israel in a manner that makes it interchangeable with the House of Judah. At the very least, a sharp political separation between the northern and southern kingdoms does not seem to be operative.

The northern kingdom fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 722 BC. It was shorter lived than the southern kingdom, and the difference between the length of days associated with them is a peculiar detail here. Perhaps as James Jordan suggests, the distinction between the House of Israel and Judah here is a more subtle way of referring to the religious constitution of the people at various periods of their history. Another possibility is that the House of Israel refers to the unified body of the people and the House of Judah to that which formerly ruled over it in the period of the United Kingdom. Third, are the days days of punishment for past sin or past days of sin that will lead to punishment? Do the days look back to the past

sins of the nation or forward to a period of its judgment? If it does look back, from when does it look back, from the time when the sign is being performed in the early 590s BC, or from the year of the coming fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC? Do the 40 years associated with Judah look forward or look back? Are we counting back 430 years, or only 390? Given the variations in understandings of biblical chronology, relevant dates can also vary considerably, among people who calculate the 390 years back, which I think is the correct understanding, Blak calculates it from around the time of the building of the Temple of Solomon to the fall of Jerusalem. James Bejan calculates the 390 years from the time of Ezekiel's performance of the sign to the time of Absalom's coup and Israel's

rejection of David. The 40 years in his reckoning come later after the advent of Christ and before the destruction of Jerusalem. James Jordan, using a very different chronology, counts back 430 years to what his chronology has as the beginning of Solomon's reign. Leslie Allen mentions the possibility of the number 430, referring to the period of the duration of the monarchy in the history of the books of the kings. The emphasis on defilement in the context needs to be understood with reference to the presence of the Lord's Sanctuary in the midst of the people. However, he favours the alternative that the number 390 might refer to the period of the nation's disunity. anticipating promises of the nation's reunification later in the book.

We might find some help in understanding the numbers if we consider other pieces of relevant biblical evidence. In particular, some of the numbers in question should be familiar to us. An association between 40 days and 40 years is something that we see elsewhere in Scripture in Numbers Chapter 14, verses 33 to 34, where, as a result of the people's rejection of the promised land, after the spires returned with a bad report after 40 days of spying it out, the Lord declared to Moses

and Aaron, and your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness 40 years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, 40 days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity 40 years, and you shall know my displeasure. The combined numbers of 40 and 319, also make a number that should be familiar. 430, a number that is important enough to be repeated twice when it is given to us in Exodus chapter 12 versus 40 to 41. The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.

At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. So the numbers in question have symbolic and historical associations. They also need not be seen as absolutely exact, rather they can be rounded numbers. My suspicion is that the years ought to be understood to be moving backward through the history of Israel and Judah, so that the 40 years relate to a time that preceded the 390. Ezekiel's days are working down through a period of accumulated guilt, going all the way down to the bottom. Depending on the chronology that we use, there are a number of earlier dates that would seem noteworthy candidates for significance here.

the beginning of David's reign, which was for 40 years, the beginning of Solomon's reign, which was also for 40 years, the beginning and completion of the building of the temple, and the division of the kingdom. Depending on where we come down on the chronology, for instance, we could consider the 390 years to relate to the period where the house of Israel was in rebellion against David and the nation was divided, hence why it is called Israel, or the period after the building of the temple, where the nation was a self-defiling religious body. The 430 days symbolically represent the period as one of a sort of existence under Egyptian hegemony, much as they had been in Egypt eating Egyptian bread that had to be cut off with the

purging out of the leaven, so Israel has been living among the nations as a defiled nation themselves, and now they must be judged and later purified. If we see a connection with Egypt in the 430 days, perhaps the period of 40 days at the end is doing a sort of double duty, symbolizing both the continued judgment as part of the 430, but also transition and return, much as the period of Israel in the wilderness, where 40 days had also corresponded to 40 years, but where the 40 years were also after the fulfillment of the 430 in Egypt.

Ezekiel eats the defiling starvation rations of bread for the first 390 days, bread associating Israel with the nations, and perhaps also with their experience in Egypt, but seemingly not in the final 40. Jordan also observes the timing of Ezekiel's sign, seven days after the first appearance of the Lord to him on the fourth month and fifth day of the month

in the fifth year of Jeholyakin's exile. If we count off the days according to a lunar calendar, it takes us up to the final day of the sixth month of the sixth year. The next day, the Feast of Trumpets, would begin a seventh sabbatical year, perhaps anticipating a greater jubilee. to follow. This is an intriguing possibility, especially given the various jubilee themes that are at play throughout the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel, after the period of time is completed, is to set his face

toward Jerusalem, with his arm bared, and to prophesy against it, once again presumably representing the Lord in his judgment. The Lord declares that he will place cords upon Ezekiel, reminding the hearer of verse 25 of the preceding chapter, where the Lord had bound Ezekiel's mouth. And you, O son of man, behold, cords will be placed upon you, and you shall be bound with them, so that you cannot go out among the people. It seems as though Ezekiel was only performing the sign for a part of every day. Perhaps just as the Lord had restricted Ezekiel's speech, he prevented his body from moving during his performance of the sign, presenting thereby the inalterable character of his word. During the three hundred and ninety-day period, Ezekiel has to eat small rations,

about eight ounces daily of a bread of mixed grains, perhaps representing the sort of food that one would eat during a siege. Such a diet would bring a person to the brink of starvation. It also recalls the curse of Leviticus chapter 26, verse 26. When I break your supply of bread, 10 women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied. Versus 12 following might refer to the earlier loaf of bread or to a separate sign act, the creation of bread defiled by being cooked with human dung, representing impurity. Ezekiel recoils at the instruction that the Lord gives here, and the Lord concedes to him, making an allowance for him to eat food cooked over cow's dung instead. The sign corresponds to the

nation's defiling of itself over the period of the 390 years, but more directly point to the fate that it will suffer on account of its accumulated impurity. A question to consider, how do you imagine the exiles of Judah responding to the various stages of Ezekiel's sign act as it progressed through its different elements? Acts chapter 7 verses 17 to 34 But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they

would not be kept alive. At this time Moses was born and he was beautiful in God's sight and he was brought up for three months in his father's house and when he was exposed Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son and Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and he was mighty in his words and deeds. When he was 40 years, he was 40 years, he was 40 years. When he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling

and tried to reconcile them, saying, men, you are brothers, why do you wrong each other? But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him. aside saying, who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? At this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. Now when 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight, and as he drew near to look, there came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, and Moses trembled and did not dare to look.

Then the Lord said to him, take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt. In the middle of Acts chapter 7, Stephen continues to tell the story of Israel as part of of his defence before the council. The primary figures in Stephen's retelling of the Old Testament narrative are Abraham, Joseph and Moses, with references to David and Solomon at the end. However, by far the most important of these characters is Moses. Moses and the Exodus narrative offer Stephen a paradigm for thinking about the coming and the work of Christ and are the backbone of his

speech. Stephen's telling of the story of the patriarchs was purposefully moving towards and focusing upon the event of their going down into Egypt, in the promises of the Exodus given to Abraham, in the selling of Joseph into slavery, and in the carrying back of the bodies of Jacob and later Joseph to Canem for burial. As he turns to treat the Exodus, Stephen also casts a look back.

He refers to the time of the promise given to Abraham drawing near, and also to the king's forgetting of Joseph. Pharaoh commanded that the infants of the Hebrews, the baby boys, as we see in Exodus chapter 1, be killed. Moses, however, was spared. Moses is described as beautiful in God's sight. He is well-favored by the Lord. On a number of occasions in Scripture, we have descriptions of future leaders that speak of them as noticeably marked out from early on as persons favored by the Lord. That there was something unusual about Moses that marked him out from other infants is suggested in Exodus chapter 2 verse 2. The woman conceived and bore a son,

and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. We have a similar statement in chapter 11, verse 23 of the book of Hebrews. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. Moses was exposed next to the Nile in a basket, but was adopted and raised by Pharaoh's daughter, receiving education in all of the wisdom of Egypt, and being distinguished in his words and deeds.

A number of these details from Stephen's account are achieved by joining the dots of the biblical narrative, by reading between some lines, and perhaps also rest in part on some extra-biblical tellings of the story, much as modern tellings of the nativity's story might involve the donkey and somewhat more questionably in in-keeper. Here one of the details is the suggestion that the infant boys were to be killed by means of exposure,

a common form of infanticide in the ancient world, infants being abandoned to die from the harshness of the elements. As commentators commonly note, another of these details that Stephen likely derives from extra-biblical rabbinic tradition is the notion that Moses' life could be divided into three blocks of 40 years. Moses appeared before Pharaoh at the age of 80, in Exodus 7 verse 7,

and he led Israel for 40 years in the wilderness before his death at the age of 120. 40 is a significant period of time in Scripture. It is the length of the reigns of David and Solomon, for instance. It was the age at which Joshua was sent as a spy. It was the length of time in the wilderness. When he had attained to maturity, Moses intervened to defend a Hebrew who was being beaten by an Egyptian,

avenging him by killing the Egyptian. While many have regarded Moses' actions are sinful, Stephen presents his action as one expressive of being commissioned by God as a deliverer of his people. Moses was sent by God to deliver Israel and they did not recognize him. He was rejected by his people as a mediator who tried to get his brothers to be at peace with each other. Stephen's description of the event portrays Moses more as a reconciler and peacemaker than the account of Exodus does, for which Moses is more a man opposing injustice. Stephen's Moses is a ruler and a judge, as Christ is. Moses leaving Egypt has portrayed more as a result of the rejection of his people than due to the fear of Pharaoh, as it is in Exodus chapter 2 verses 13 to 15. When he went out the next day, behold two Hebrews were struggling together, and he said to the man in the wrong, why do you strike your companion? He answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. Moses had been sent by God to his people, but he was rejected by his own, and he fled to Midian. Like Joseph, who would also be the savior of his family, Moses was forced away from his brothers, becoming an exile. His brothers or his own people have not acknowledged him.

Stephen mentions some interesting details in his account. For instance, here he notes that Moses had two sons. If we were to read of an exile who had two sons, our minds might first go to Joseph, who fathered Ephraim and Manasseh in Genesis chapter 41 versus 50 to 52. That Moses had two sons is not actually mentioned in the account of Exodus chapter 2. Only Gersham is mentioned there. Eliezer, his second son, is not mentioned until Exodus chapter 18,

when Jethro his father-in-law brought Moses' sons and women. wife to meet him in Sinai. Perhaps part of Stephen's purpose here is to highlight resemblances between Joseph and Moses. Stephen also telescopes events on occasions, as he does in his description of the purchase of the tomb and the burial of the patriarchs in Shechem. After 40 years passed, an angel appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The symmetry of the passing of two periods of 40 years parallels the two visitations. The first time when he visited his brothers, the children, the children of Israel but was rejected in verse 23 in following and the second when the angel appears to him in the burning bush initiating the story of the exodus the commissioning of moses to lead the

exodus at the burning bush displays the fact of the lord's calling of him even though israel might earlier have rejected him a question to consider what parallels and contrast can you recognize between moses and joseph