The vineyard is on fire. What use is the wood?
Poetry hits home when words are able to navigate between ordinary and extraordinary existence, as divine mystery manifests in the domestic or the overlooked. For Ezekiel, the language of prophecy aims to meet his listeners' familiar settings, and through that to unsettle their mind, and open it to other ways of looking at the world. And so he uses symbols like the grapevine that so many of them who were once farmers know too well, and he uses riddles to get them to ask questions about what reality may represent. Why do riddles matter here?
Yaakov Beasley writes about both riddles and the use of grapevines in today’s chapter:
“Ezekiel's penchant to speak in riddles and allegories come to the forefront during the next ten chapters..a vine; eagles and trees; fires, a cauldron...Yet Ezekiel rarely offers the solution to his riddles, forcing his listeners to discover the hidden meaning for themselves.
Carole Newsom writes that this is the power of Ezekiel's words – the metaphors serve to engage the listener, forcing their active involvement, and ‘does not allow its listeners to be passive; but requires them to participate in the construction of its metaphorical meaning’.
In chapter 15, Ezekiel presents his listeners with a sophisticated riddle – he introduces a situation, presents a series of rhetorical questions, then convinces his listeners of a truth about the situation, and only then reveals how it affects the reader – in other words, the listeners solve the riddle themselves. The riddle goes:
בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם מַה־יִּהְיֶ֥ה עֵץ־הַגֶּ֖פֶן מִכׇּל־עֵ֑ץ הַזְּמוֹרָ֕ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר הָיָ֖ה בַּעֲצֵ֥י הַיָּֽעַר׃ הֲיֻקַּ֤ח מִמֶּ֙נּוּ֙ עֵ֔ץ לַעֲשׂ֖וֹת לִמְלָאכָ֑ה אִם־יִקְח֤וּ מִמֶּ֙נּוּ֙ יָתֵ֔ד לִתְל֥וֹת עָלָ֖יו כׇּל־כֶּֽלִי׃
“O mortal, how is the wood of the grapevine better than the wood of any branch to be found among the trees of the forest? Can wood be taken from it for use in any work? Can one take a peg from it to hang any vessel on?
Ezekiel.15.2-3
The effectiveness of Ezekiel's illustration is in how it misleads its listeners. Of course, they would reply – no one uses vine wood for pegs. Vines do not surpass any wood at all - all they are good for is burning. Through sleight of hand, Ezekiel causes his listeners to ignore the obvious purpose of vine wood – to produce grapes!
Throughout The Bible, the fruitful vine symbolizes the Jewish people. This is a clever distortion of the historical tradition, and only too late, having given their cognitive assent, do the listeners realize that the vine, of course, is Jerusalem. As such, Ezekiel declares in God's name, the useless city will be burned and consumed.”
And so by the time the listeners or readers comprehend the metaphor, the vineyard, once providing grapes and wine, is up in smoke:
“Assuredly, thus said YHWH: Like the wood of the grapevine among the trees of the forest, which I have designated to be fuel for fire, so will I treat the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”
Ezekiel 15:6
As Newsom writes, this poetic-parable engages us in the full depth of the prophetic horror and its intention -- as we are invited ‘ to participate in the construction of its metaphorical meaning’.
In the following chapters as more riddles and symbols are revealed, ezekiel will yield one of his most famous, colorful and misogynistic messages - taking the metaphoric condemnation of Jerusalem to a dark and disturbing level that we’ll have to deal with as well.
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