Torah portion is Va-Yigash Genesis 44:18-47:27; Haftorah is Ezekial 37:215-28
By Irv Jacobs, M.D.
LA JOLLA, California — This short prose passage is preceded by Ezekiel’s fantasy of dry bones, becoming miraculously reunited, flesh added, and breath restarted—the metaphor of coming to life of the dead house of Israel, from the grave.
The connection to the Torah portion is a stretch. The Torah portion portrays a family event, the reuniting of Joseph, viceroy of Egypt, with his family from Canaan, whereas this haftorah portrays an unrealizable hope—the reunification of all the long dissipated and lost people of Israel (North), with the soon-to-be destroyed nation of Judah (South). [1]
I have chosen the translation and commentaries of Prof. Robert Alter of UC Berkeley for this essay. [2]
We understand that all prophets were ‘man of spirit crazed.’ In the case of Ezekiel, we have an extreme case. [3]
His fantasy was imagery of a re-united Kingdom, such as was under Kings David and Solomon some 400 years earlier. The sentiments in this haftorah passage can be dated c. 587 BCE, i.e. the imminent destruction of the Southern Kingdom of Judah by Babylon. By that time, Ezekiel himself had already been in exile 10 years in Babylon, since 597 BCE. [4]
The Northern Kingdom had been destroyed 135 years earlier, with its 10 Tribes lost forever.
Against this reality, Ezekiel hopelessly imagines the restoration of the United Kingdom. He proceeds to create metaphoric imagery thus: two sticks of wood, one representing the North (Ephraim), the other the South (Judah).
Here goes his text:
And put them together each to each as a single stick…
in your hand…And the sticks upon you shall write shall be in your hand before their eyes.
Thus said the Master, the LORD: I am about to take the Israelites from among the nations where they have gone…and bring them to their soil…a single nation…a single king…no more…two nations. [5]
And they shall no more be defiled by their foul things…and their trespasses. [6]
Here comes the mandatory upbeat ending:
And My servant David shall be king over them…and they shall have a single shepherd. And by my laws they shall go…My statutes they shall keep…And they shall dwell in the land…where your fathers dwelled…evermore.
And I will seal them with a covenant of peace…everlasting…and I will set My sanctuary in their midst evermore [7]…And the nations shall know that I am the LORD hallowing Israel…evermore.
Here we have our most crazed prophet, Ezekiel imagining the undoing of long remote history, even bringing back 10 long dissipated, beyond recall, tribes. His imagery is fantastic fantasy.
According to scholars such as Alter, his Hebrew literary skills were amateurish.
Given the historical setting of this prophecy, Ezekiel is far beyond realistic. He himself has already been in Babylonian exile for 10 years, by the time of this prophecy.
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NOTES
[1] Etz Hayim, The Jewish Publication Society, 2001, New York, p. 290
[2] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Prophets Vol. 2, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2019, pp. 1049, 1166-7
[3] Alter, op. cit. 1049
[4] ,Ibid, 1049
[5] an extravagant hopeless prophecy, as per above.
[6] an acknowledgement of the exile for Judah’s sins
[7] i.e. the ‘restored’ Temple
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Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis. He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.