‘Face to face’ can mean tender or erotic intimacy. It can also be a battle between two enemies, way too close for comfort. Jacob wrestles with an angel, face to face, and that’s how Moses meets God in the tent of time, a sign of supreme prophecy. But when Ezekiel uses this term in today’s chapter he is saying something else -- a prophetic vision for the future that combines both rage and recognition of a bond that even with all its problems is ongoing.
This chapter begins with a request. The exiled elders of Judah gather with Ezekiel to ask for guidance from God. But instead of gentle words, Ezekiel begins a harsh history lesson that ends with a violent vision of the future redemption. The redemption won’t be a joyful in-gathering of the exiles back to their homeland - it will occur with wrath and vengeance, and ‘face to face’ with the fierce source of life and death.
What is this prophecy about? It helps to notice when it happens - a clear clue is given by the fact that the elders come to Ezekiel “in the 7th year on the 10th day of the 5th month.”
Assuming that Ezekiel’s chronological era began with their exile, headed by King Jehoiachin in 597 BCE, this gathering of elders took place on 10 Av 591 BCE, four years to the day before the Temple would be destroyed. Is the mention of the date critical so that we hear the ominous tones of what’s about to happen? As the first waves of exiles already know - the biggest threat to their people may be not just the physical destruction of their homeland -- but their dissolution into foreign culture in their new home. That seems to be what Ezekiel, speaking for YHWH, is most worried about.
What is the biggest threat to the continuation of the Jewish people? Physical violence or spiritual dissolution among other cultures?
Once again, these days, mid war, this question is not theoretical. As Israelis wrestle with existential threats and moral challenges, some are wondering if it’s time to get out - and some do, while Jews worldwide are faced with difficult dilemmas of affinity and loyalty, moral obligations and the stretching-thin of solidarity.
For Ezekiel, one of the first prophets to live through the dire existence of exile and face its consequences - what’s at stake is two fold: The physical loss of a safe homeland - and the potential dissolution into foreign culture in the new home. So when the elders come to him for counsel he surprises them with his version of history - past, present and future.
The past begins in Egypt - where the Exodus was necessary not just because the Hebrews were not free but because they were very close to total assimilation into Egyptian culture. YHWH took them out with a mighty hand just before they lost their identity. Then, for forty years in the wilderness, the people and their God kept fighting about golden calves and other forms of foreign ways that YHWH hated.
And in the future, Ezekiel predicates, a second Exodus will happen, once again, from Babylon this time, the people would be extracted, to avoid their becoming just like any other Babylonian minority.
The fear of foreign influence is understood and not without solid proof. The Kingdom of Israel, a century earlier, was decimated by the Assyrian Empire, with a clear policy of spreading minorities in other lands, forbidding their use of native language or forms of religion. That’s how the ten tribes were lost to history. Ezekiel’s vision is aware of this and offers a narrative for the days to come -- saving, if with force, the people from losing its unique relationship with their history and god:
וְהוֹצֵאתִ֤י אֶתְכֶם֙ מִן־הָ֣עַמִּ֔ים וְקִבַּצְתִּ֣י אֶתְכֶ֔ם מִן־הָ֣אֲרָצ֔וֹת אֲשֶׁ֥ר נְפוֹצֹתֶ֖ם בָּ֑ם בְּיָ֤ד חֲזָקָה֙ וּבִזְר֣וֹעַ נְטוּיָ֔ה וּבְחֵמָ֖ה שְׁפוּכָֽה׃ וְהֵבֵאתִ֣י אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֶל־מִדְבַּ֖ר הָעַמִּ֑ים וְנִשְׁפַּטְתִּ֤י אִתְּכֶם֙ שָׁ֔ם פָּנִ֖ים אֶל־פָּנִֽים׃
“With a strong hand and an outstretched arm and overflowing fury I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered, and I will bring you into the wilderness of the nations; and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.”
Ezekiel 20:35-36
What is the ‘wilderness of nations’? Scholars debate it but the general consensus is that it is a sort of ‘no-man’s land’ - a neutral territory that is neither the Holy Land nor the rest of the familiar lands of exile - where the next phase of the people’s future will be settled - face to face with the divine.
In this enforced intimacy, without proximity to other allies, Israel will work it out with YHWH - it’s a sort of face-off, to determine who will live and who will die, and who will revoke the foreign ways to become again the people of the covenant. After this interim trial, those who merit - or choose to - will come back to the promised land, to rebuild their nation.
Or so Ezekiel suggests to the elders of Judah, exiled and challenged to give solace to their people, maintain their ways and survive on several levels - physical and metaphysical, political and spiritual.
Is it a helpful vision? The future face-to-face encounter with YHWH in a no-man’s land can be both a promise or a threat. The Hebrew word ‘Panim’ - ‘Face’ can be also read as ‘P’nim’ - ‘within’, or ‘internal’. The vision here is for an encounter with the most intimate, if sometimes terrifying aspects of one’s self.
Perhaps what the prophet is telling his people is what we know from history, and what we are learning again these difficult days -- that it sometimes takes violence and radical rupture to shake us up, to bring us home into what matter most, to re-evaluate priorities and proximities and - if we’re lucky - or if we’ve really done the inner work - come face to face with our inner truth, the source of all - and recover or rediscover, the intimate most sense of being at home in our body, sense of self and soul.
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