“Give sorrow words”, wrote Shakespeare in Macbeth.
Ezekiel, like so many other seers and poets who saw death coming and brought forth words of comfort and woe - chooses stunning words of sorrow in today’s chapter. But some of them - either very obscure - or terrifyingly familiar -- are lost in translation.
Two of those words especially call out these days. The Hebrew word ‘Hamas’ most often translated as ‘violence’, and a word that only shows up once through the Bible - ‘Noh’, possibly translated as ‘wailing.’
The context is the day of doom that is approaching - the day of wrath:
הִנֵּ֥ה הַיּ֖וֹם הִנֵּ֣ה בָאָ֑ה יָֽצְאָה֙ הַצְּפִרָ֔ה צָ֚ץ הַמַּטֶּ֔ה פָּרַ֖ח הַזָּדֽוֹן׃
הֶֽחָמָ֥ס ׀ קָ֖ם לְמַטֵּה־רֶ֑שַׁע לֹא־מֵהֶ֞ם וְלֹ֧א מֵהֲמוֹנָ֛ם וְלֹ֥א מֶהֱמֵהֶ֖ם וְלֹא־נֹ֥הַּ בָּהֶֽם׃
Behold the day, behold, it is coming: the dawn has gone forth; the rod has blossomed, malice has flowered.
Violence is risen up into a rod of wickedness: none of them shall remain, nothing of their multitude, nor of their splendor: neither shall there be wailing for them.
Sefaria 7:10-11
The rod is a mysterious symbol, and many scholars have attempted to place its meaning. Is it a weapon or a scepter? It seems to indicate the rising phallic might of brute force. And then there is that word - Hamas. It shows up through the Hebrew Bible to indicate ‘violence’, or ‘rage’ or ‘theft’. In Arabic it likewise means ‘rage’. And here, and in other verses in this chapter, chilling as we read these words today -- it isn’t clear whose rage and violence this is -- the Babylonians who conquered, or the Judeans who will be victims of the violent rod?
Then there is the ‘hapax legomenon’ - a ‘ Greek term for a word of thing that appears only once’ in a literary context. In this case - the Hebrew Bible. What does the word ‘Noh’ mean?
Dr. Moshe Sokolow explores this further, citing several interpretations and translations:
“In this chapter, we encounter a hapax legomenon, Greek for “a thing said once,” a term that designates a word that appears only once in a specific context—in our case, the Tanakh.
“Lawlessness - Hamas - has grown into a rod of wickedness. Nothing comes of them, nor of their abundance, nor of their wealth; nor is there preeminence (no’ah) among them” (v. 11).
Since the word no’ah does not appear anywhere else in Tanakh, how can we know what it means? Methodologically, there are two approaches that can be taken. The first attempts to define the word based on its similarity to other known words. The second infers its definition from its use in the context in which it appears. Let us begin with the medieval exegetes.
All took it as a form of the verb N-H-H, and still arrived at different interpretations. Rashi and Kara interpreted it to mean “none of them follows after me,” while Eliezer of Beaugency, along with Radak, understood it as “they will not lament,” which is also the King James version: “neither shall there be wailing for them.” Malbim, not to be outdone, offered both possibilities. The concluding phrase in the JPS translation used here, “nor is there preeminence among them”, comes from their The Prophets (Philadelphia, 1978), which notes: “Meaning of Hebrew uncertain.”
Hapax notwithstanding, the reference to “the rod of wickedness” continues the ambiguity inherent in the previous verse that cited the budding of “the rod of arrogance” without specifying whether its subject is Israel or its enemy, Babylon. As Moshe Greenberg wrote in his commentary on Ezekiel for The Anchor Bible: “At any rate, the sense is the time is ripe for punishment. The rest of the verse is obscure.”
Words of sorrow don’t always survive the test of time. Whatever Ezekiel may have meant may seem obscure today but still we hear the horror, feel the anguish, stunned by the power of some of these ancient words and threats to stop us in our tracks today, stricken with terror.
Days of doom have come, as the prophets of doom predicated. Will there yet be a better day? Those prophecies also exist, and words will help us heal, and hold all visions, as we can try to learn from these poetries, and to lean on history - this is how we hold on to hope.
Image: Pacifict collages by French creative Blick http://misterblick.free.fr/
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