Digital Verbum Edition
Stephen L. Cook offers an accessible translation and interpretation of the final sections of Ezekiel. These chapters, the most challenging texts of scripture, describe the end-time assault of Gog of Magog on Israel and provide an incredible visionary tour of God’s utopian temple. Following the approach of Moshe Greenberg, the author of the preceding Anchor Yale Bible commentaries on Ezekiel, this volume grounds interpretation of the book in an intimate acquaintance with Ezekiel’s source materials, its particular patterns of composition and rhetoric, and the general learned, priestly workings of the Ezekiel school. The commentary honors Greenberg’s legacy by including insights from traditional Jewish commentators, such as Rashi, Kimhi, and Eliezer of Beaugency. In contrast to preceding commentaries, the book devotes special attention to the Zadokite idea of an indwelling, anthropomorphic “body” of God, and the enlivening effect on people and land of that indwelling.
“The second section in chapters 40–48 is an archetypal vision of a temple-centered world” (Page 4)
“These chapters outline a systematically ordered world organized around God’s temple.” (Page 4)
“Ezekiel’s utopia is not the eschatological realization of God’s reign” (Page 5)
“the group of Zadokite authors who composed Ezekiel 38–39” (Page 5)
“Milgrom 2012, 43). Would-be trespassers still need to be terrified by leonine cherubim (41:17–20); atonement is still required (45:17, 20); the ideal David of 34:23–24 and 37:25 is nowhere in sight. In particular, Israel’s promised eschatological heart transplant is not presupposed (Ezek 11:19–20; 36:26–27; Lyons 2010, 28).” (Page 5)
2 ratings
Ken McClurkin
4/29/2023