In 1972, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:
“Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, and in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Heschel’s famous words echo loud and painful today, with so many asking critical questions about morality, empathy, responsibility and participation in violent political realities that rupture life as we know it, and challenge our humanity.
For Ezekiel, 2,600 years ago, the dire situation calls for extremes. He is sitting with a group of elders, exiles in Babylon, and rebukes them and their relatives back in Babylon for letting things get so bad. All are guilty, he declares, responsible for societal ills - and therefore none of those still in Jerusalem would survive the wrath that is coming. Ezekiel’s extremist message, delivered as a prophecy that he received from the divine source, threatens Judah with the sword, the famine, the beast and the plague.
Almost none would survive, he warns the people, only the very few most righteous. And even they would not be able to bring their loved ones along. To illustrate this despairing vision he names three mythic heroes, known to his contemporaries, and to us:
וְ֠הָי֠וּ שְׁלֹ֨שֶׁת הָאֲנָשִׁ֤ים הָאֵ֙לֶּה֙ בְּתוֹכָ֔הּ נֹ֖חַ דנאל וְאִיּ֑וֹב הֵ֤מָּה בְצִדְקָתָם֙ יְנַצְּל֣וּ נַפְשָׁ֔ם נְאֻ֖ם אֲדֹנָ֥י יֱהֹוִֽה׃
“Even if these three men—Noah, Danel, and Job—should be within the calamity, they would by their righteousness save only themselves—declares YHWH.”
Ezekiel 14:14
Why these names? And what’s the story?
Two of the three people he names were apparently already known by then - Noah and Job. Both had reputations of righteousness. God declared to Noah: “I have seen you righteous in this generation” (Gen. 7:1), and He called Job “perfectly straight-walking, God fearing, and avoiding evil” (Job 1:8). Neither of them belonged to the Hebrew or Jewish family.
But who’s Danel? Is it the Biblical Daniel - who may have been a contemporary of Ezekiel - or lived a generation later?
Many commentators over the years assumed that the Daniel named here was indeed the biblical Daniel. But although he is proclaimed virtuous, it’s an odd addition. Daniel is Jewish, unlike Noah and Job, and is never distinctively named as righteous. Most commentators shrugged and suggested that the common denominator between these three men is that each survived a crisis: Noah sails the flood; Daniel lived through the destruction of the Temple, and the lion’s den; and Job struggled through multiple disasters that befell him.
Modern research provided another perspective - the third survivor is not Daniel but someone named Danel. If we closely examine the spelling of his name we note that the biblical character is Da-ni-yel (with a yod), and this one is Da-ni-el (no yod).
Robert Alter explains who this legendary man may have been:
“It is now clear to all scholars that here Daniel does not refer to the protagonist of the Book of Daniel. One should note that the consonantal text allows us to pronounce this name as Dan'el. In the Ugaritic Epic of Aqhat, there is a righteous judge named Dan’el. These three figures, then, are three legendary righteous men, none belonging to the people of Israel. Job’s presence among the three reflects the fact that a story about a righteous man named Job was current in the region well before the composition of the Book of Job. The non-Israelite identity of the three is in keeping with the generalizing force of the declaration, “when a land offends against Me,” which is to say, any land.“
So why is Ezekiel telling his people and us about these three men who just may have survived Jerusalem’s first destruction? Then, and now, he challenges us to think about collective punishment and the possible limits of communal responsibility.
Another biblical scholar, Moshe Greenberg, commented on this unique trio of sole survival and their soul role, linking the words of Heschel and Ezekiel - to the big questions we may be asking today:
“Here they serve to underline the ruthless, rigorous discrimination God exercises when he punishes a wicked community.”
Ezekiel’s creative use of powerful metaphors will continue to deepen in the coming chapters, a poetic-prophetic set of symbols that were maybe meant and still are here - to wake us up.
Image: Daniel Job and Noah, the Three Righteous Men, Canterbury Cathedral, Window XV, detail / wikipedia
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