When war exists, raw and real, few metaphors can capture the horror.
Ezekiel’s words flow on and on - fantastic visions and strange riddles, symbols and stories that would only make sense and become meaningful afterwards, and through careful review - but not everybody was or is patient enough to unpack or understand his parables. Did his contemporary listeners even pause to try? How many of us listen to today’s poets or prophets who attempt complex ideas in anything longer than a paragraph?
This chapter starts with Ezekiel’s performing a public prophecy in which he stands looking towards the south - where he sees a fire that consumes a forest, and consoles the forest; Then he looks towards Jerusalem - also south of Babylon - and sees the sword that will devour, cutting down the holy city and all who live within its walls.
But the people mock his warnings, or avoid him altogether, and the rejected prophet sighs and exclaims:
וָאֹמַ֕ר אֲהָ֖הּ אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִ֑ה הֵ֚מָּה אֹמְרִ֣ים לִ֔י הֲלֹ֛א מְמַשֵּׁ֥ל מְשָׁלִ֖ים הֽוּא׃
“And I said, “Ahhhh!! Oh God, YHWH! ! They say of me: "He is just a storyteller.."
Ezekiel 21:5
“Just a stoytellers” is one way to translated his words. The Hebrew “Mamshel Meshalim” could mean ‘riddle maker’ or ‘posing parables’. Either way - it hurts to be thought of as a lesser-thinker or one engaged in petty tales.
In response, and to make sure the words he hears and than transmits do hit home, Ezekiel takes his parables up a notch, not just using obscure allusions but naming the real horror that’s about to come.
Fifteen names he mentions the sword in this chapter -- sharp and ready, swift and deadly, the Babylonian swords in the service of the furious god of Israel. You can practically hear the iron clink - no more metaphors and parables -- but gestures and words that cut through the oblivion as sharp as blades:
וְאַתָּ֣ה בֶן־אָדָ֔ם הִנָּבֵ֕א וְהַ֖ךְ כַּ֣ף אֶל־כָּ֑ף וְתִכָּפֵ֞ל חֶ֤רֶב שְׁלִישִׁ֙תָה֙ חֶ֣רֶב חֲלָלִ֔ים הִ֗יא חֶ֚רֶב חָלָ֣ל הַגָּד֔וֹל הַחֹדֶ֖רֶת לָהֶֽם׃
“Further, O you mortal, prophesy! Strike one hand against the other hand! Let the sword strike a second time and yet a third time; it is a sword for massacre, a sword for great carnage, and it will penetrate through them.”
Ezekiel 21:19
Ezekiel will keep on going back and forth between obscure riddles and parables - and specific harsh admonishments and warnings that name the horror as it is. And he will keep complaining that the people only see him as a storyteller - a foolish man of riddles and parables when what they want is the latest news or maybe consolations - but not philosophical projections on what’s wrong and what’s yet to come. Never mind that they don’t want to hear about their own responsibility to the situation.
He won’t be the last prophet to debate the best tools to deliver divinely received message and why parables can in fact be effective to make meaning out of the mess which is often life’s most difficult realities.
Several hundred years later another Jewish prophet, walking through Jerusalem, will master the art of parables as spiritual criticism and face similar suspicions from the people.
Jesus knew how to tell stories that were parables of the inner life and the political moment. His Parable of the Sower would become famous one day but when he told it for the first time, responses were hesitant - and recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 15:
“The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jesus, among so many other prophets, knew how to verbalize visions that will endure for generations, long after the sharp swords were put down, no longer dripping with blood. The power of the parable will be the prophet’s ultimate weapon and persist beyond the battles.
People might still scorn the storytellers, but it’s the big and small stories, parables and poems, parables and myths, that will always hold the power of purpose, for better or for worse, determining the ways people make sense of a crisis and climb out of the crash, long after those bloodshed subsides.
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When you began this project, how could you know where it could go? How could you, really, divine its purposes for you and for others? How could you know the fantastical halls of mirrors down which you would be led? How could you prepare for the ordeal except to have faith in the small voice that prompted you take it on? How touched you must be to find in yourself the resources of endurance, and, more importantly, the heart that truly is, in our time, the heart of the prophet, storyteller, poet, artist, and scholar. Who says the prophet is without honor in his own country? You are a prophet in two countries and in many lives you are honored. Meanwhile, head down, one for in front of another, you go on. What a privelge to be part of this. Peter