“Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love. It humbles my heart, for you are everywhere.”
Inspired by the verses of the 12th century CE Sufi poet Hakim Sanai, these are the final words of the haunting 2017 film The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who talked about this choice in an interview quoted here. Like Sanai and Del Toro, Ezekiel, in his own poetic way, also imagined the divine as an overwhelming and complete presence -- and in this chapter he also imagined the divine as the shape and sound of water.
In his elaborate and detailed vision of the future temple, the priest-prophet-poet has already described in the previous few chapters each of the gates and courtyards of the imagined sanctuary. In today’s chapter he does not just mention a mysterious angel, clad in copper, mostly silent, who serves as his tour guide - he also describes the moment in which the Divine Presence returns to the temple. In the earlier chapters of his visions, shortly after his own exile and after the temple burned down, Ezekiel tells us that the Shechina - the Presence of God - left the temple and Jerusalem, to be with the suffering people in exile. In this vision - a quarter of a century of diasporic reality later - he imagines the divine return. It is a homecoming of fantastic proportions - a multi-sensory sensation:
וְהִנֵּ֗ה כְּבוֹד֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בָּ֖א מִדֶּ֣רֶךְ הַקָּדִ֑ים וְקוֹל֗וֹ כְּקוֹל֙ מַ֣יִם רַבִּ֔ים וְהָאָ֖רֶץ הֵאִ֥ירָה מִכְּבֹדֽוֹ׃
And there, coming from the east with a roar like the roar of mighty waters, was the Presence of the God of Israel, and the earth was lit up by that Presence.
Ezekiel 43:2
The eastern gate, like a sunrise, opens to welcome the water-like voice of the divine, while light, like sunrise, fills the field the vision. It’s enticing to imagine Ezekiel, sitting by the rivers of Babylon in Tel Aviv, with visions of water and sunlight overcoming his senses as he longs for the future redemptive return.
But he is not the first to use this soundscape to describe the indescribable reality which is the divine.
“like the roar of mighty waters” was already used by Ezekiel to describe the sound made by the flapping wings of the cherubim he visioned in the first chapter of this book: “I could hear the sound of their wings like the sound of mighty waters, like the sound of Shaddai, a tumult like the din of an army” (1:24).
A similar expression was also used by Isaiah as he describes the tumult of the nations of the world. And another echo of this metaphor can be found in Psalm 93, imagining that God is as “The ocean sounds its pounding above the thunder of the mighty waters.”
Dr. Moshe Sokolow suggests that Ezekiel’s choice of symbolic languages for the experience of the divine is inspired by earlier depictions of the primordial feminine force familiar in the Babylonian society where the Jerusalem born prophet now found himself:
“Scholars have assigned this reference various mythological connotations, some of which resonate with biblical texts. For example, ancient Near Eastern mythology - with which Ezekiel, living in Babylon, may have had an acquaintance - spoke of a goddess of the sea named Tiamat who spawned various monsters who played a role in the creation epic. Her name and location sound suspiciously like the Hebrew word tehom/tehomot (deep waters), and is eerily reminiscent of the second verse in the Torah that reports that even before God initiated creation - by saying “Let there be light” - there was “darkness upon the face of the depths” (vechoshekh al penei tehom).”
It’s interesting to note that the homecoming that Ezekiel imagines is of an experience of the great sound of water -followed by the illumination of the world - echoing perhaps the narrative of Genesis, and possibly its earliest inspirations from the Sumerian mythos.
Whatever the inspiration - for Ezekiel, this chapter marks the initiation of the new temple, the ray of light into a future in which the exiles and their deity are able to return home and rebuild their temple. His words will keep echoing for generations, both as metaphor and as a blueprint for a messianic future, even though some many of the dimensions he suggests make little sense and seem to be architecturally impossible.
Nevertheless, he claims:
זֹ֖את תּוֹרַ֣ת הַבָּ֑יִת עַל־רֹ֣אשׁ הָ֠הָ֠ר כׇּל־גְּבֻל֞וֹ סָבִ֤יב ׀ סָבִיב֙ קֹ֣דֶשׁ קׇדָשִׁ֔ים הִנֵּה־זֹ֖את תּוֹרַ֥ת הַבָּֽיִת׃
“This is the instruction for the Temple on top of the Mountain: the entire area of its enclosure shall the holy of holies. Thus far the instructions for the temple.”
Ezekiel 43:12
Somewhere between poetry and prophecy, the sense of the divine as water or light, temple or temporary existence - is the gap that waits for our imagination and the void that keeps inviting us to find our own way home. For Ezekiel, a few more chapters left will chart the tensions that still guide us today -- between spirit and reality, political facts and religious longing -- the harsh truth of war and the dream of being back home, safe and at peace.
May homecoming be everybody’s reality and every life revered as a sacred sanctuary and divine domain, as we pray with every poet and prophet for safety, peace and hope.
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