What will help us heal is humility in our humanity.
Some leaders, past and present, have the audacity to claim that they are above the law, defying criticism or accountability. When a leader assumes not only total control but also divine authority -- society is bound to suffer - and eventually rebel.
Today’s chapter of Ezekiel meets another chapter in Jewish history -- the first night of Hanukkah, a holiday with rich and lesser known history that is also linked to leaders who wanted to be worshiped not just as kings - but as gods. And it didn’t go well. This year, lesser known lessons about Hanukkah have important information to share with us as we watch this brutal war unfold - a war on land and dignity, freedom and justice - and also a religious war, whether explicit or not.
Let’s begin with Ezekiel, speaking up against the King of Tyre, in the final chapter of three in which the exiled prophet predicts a dire end to this wealthy powerful kingdom in the north. The king’s fault, the prophet claims on behalf of his god - is that this mortal thought himself a god:
בֶּן־אָדָ֡ם אֱמֹר֩ לִנְגִ֨יד צֹ֜ר כֹּה־אָמַ֣ר ׀ אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִ֗ה יַ֣עַן גָּבַ֤הּ לִבְּךָ֙ וַתֹּ֙אמֶר֙ אֵ֣ל אָ֔נִי מוֹשַׁ֧ב אֱלֹהִ֛ים יָשַׁ֖בְתִּי בְּלֵ֣ב יַמִּ֑ים וְאַתָּ֤ה אָדָם֙ וְֽלֹא־אֵ֔ל וַתִּתֵּ֥ן לִבְּךָ֖ כְּלֵ֥ב אֱלֹהִֽים׃
O mortal, say to the prince of Tyre: Thus said YHWH:
You have been too haughty and have said, “I am a god; I sit enthroned like a god in the heart of the seas,” whereas you are not a god but a human, though you deemed your mind equal to a god’s —
Ezekiel 28:2
Prof. James Diamond explains Ezekiel's words in their cultural context, as they are
“reflecting a feature endemic to ancient Near Eastern cultures whose kings were considered divine. The Egyptian Pharaohs for example were thought to descend from their pagan deities. Political corrosion compounds its abhorrent pagan theology. The state and its population are there to worship and promote the interests of king and, therefore the deified king easily becomes a tyrannical oppressor rather than a public servant.”
If this was the common practice -- why is the King of Tyre such a target for specific attack?
Robert Alter suggests that it isn’t just the king attacked here for excessive hubris - but the kingdom of Tyre itself:
“Why Ezekiel should have directed all these prophecies of doom against Tyre is not entirely evident. The Phoenicians had been trading partners of the kingdom of Judah since the time of Solomon, and they were in no way allied with the Babylonians, as were the hated Edomites. The prophet’s objection to Tyre appears to have been theological rather than political: this prosperous maritime kingdom, enjoying luxurious wealth from its trading activities, had in the prophet’s view committed the primal transgression of imagining that it was godlike.”
Or in other words -- Ezekiel imagines a religious war, a bitter battle not just about power and wealth but also between competing theological narratives and views of the world.
This is where the world of Ezekiel in the 6th century BCE meets the birth of Hanukkah - in the 2nd century BCE.
The Babylonians are long gone by then, replaced by the Seleucid Empire, Syrian-Greeks, the proud heirs of Alexander the Great who reshaped the maps of the Middle East and the world.
The king at the time is Antiochus the 4th, also known as Epiphanes - a title he chose, which means ‘The Divine is revealed through me’, seated on the throne from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC.
This was the first of the line of rulers to name himself a deity on coins -- just one of the many reasons his critics called him ‘Epimanes’ - the mad one. But it was the Judeans, under his rule in their land who rose up against his godlike claims and erupted in what would become the rise of the Maccabean revolt.
Historians argue the complex conditions that led to this armed resistance -- stemming from a long bitter civil war among the Judeans, likewise focused on religious debates and attitudes. But from all historical sources what seems to have tipped some of the more pious Judeans over the edge was the emperor’s set of decrees forbidding most traditional Jewish practices, persecuting devout Judeans who refused to cooperate, and demanding that he is worshiped as a god.
The prohibitions included the abolition of Shabbat, circumcision and the study of Torah, as well as worship of the emperor in the temple of Jerusalem, with the sacrificial offerings of pigs.
The desecration of the Jerusalem temple was one of the main reasons for the rage that would erupt and ignite the rebellion by some local pious priests who refused to give up their religious ways and would become known as the Maccabees, and later as the Hasmonean Dynasty.
The rage against a human king who thinks himself a deity and desecrates the temple is already felt in Ezekiel’s tirade against the King of Tyre - centuries earlier. But is isn’t the Jerusalem temple that is abused here - but the ones in Tyre -- an internal indication of corrupt and harmful leadership in which there is no separation between the power of religion and that of the state:
מֵרֹ֣ב עֲוֺנֶ֗יךָ בְּעֶ֙וֶל֙ רְכֻלָּ֣תְךָ֔ חִלַּ֖לְתָּ מִקְדָּשֶׁ֑יךָ וָאוֹצִא־אֵ֤שׁ מִתּֽוֹכְךָ֙ הִ֣יא אֲכָלַ֔תְךָ וָאֶתֶּנְךָ֤ לְאֵ֙פֶר֙ עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ לְעֵינֵ֖י כׇּל־רֹאֶֽיךָ׃
“By the greatness of your guilt,
Through the dishonesty of your trading,
You desecrated your sanctuaries.
So I made a fire issue from you,
And it has devoured you;
I have reduced you to ashes on the ground,
In the sight of all who behold you.”
Ezekiel 28:18
While the triumph of the Maccabean revolt led to temporary reprieve from religious persecution and political independence - the Maccabees quickly became their own version of corrupt leaders, mired in internal strive and greed, eventually slaughtering so many of their Judean opponents that by the time the rabbis write the Talmud they prefer to minimize the role of the revolt as much as possible. That’s how we got the charming fable about a jar of oil that lasted for eight nights - a story that only surfaced 600 years after the events.
Ezekiel concludes the futurist visions about Tyre’s claims for divinity and superpower with a promise to his own people -- that one day, in the future, Judah will be built again, and its people will come home, be secure on the land, safe and secure in their knowledge of their own spiritual truth, free to express political and religious identities.
However we embrace this ancient story this year, as Hanukkah begins, and as yet another war breaks our hearts and captures our attention - I hope that we are able to echo Ezekiel’s words and prioritize humility - not losing sight of what we imagine sacred, worth defending, and yet knowing that there is a bigger story here, and more than one narrative, and that history, come what may, will show us and surprise us — with kindness — who will persist, how survival of the soul will matter more, and what will help us live, love and rise, with humility and hope, lighting up each night with pride and purpose.
Let there be hope, peace and healing. Let there be light. Meaningful Hanukkah to all.
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Amen...And for me there is the challenge/opportunity at this time in my life to recognize those grandiosities, those occasions when I forget my own limitations, and to accept that I am clay.