Theological Dislocation

This first chapter of Ezekiel with its divine throne on wheels expresses a dual affirmation: the God of Israel reigns and moreover does so without restriction of location, alongside his people even in exile. This is a daring attempt to deal with the nation’s physical, psychological, and above all theological dislocation, after conquest by the Babylonians. God is presented as saying to Moses in Exodus 33:20: ‘You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live’. And yet Ezekiel 1 begins with the claim that ‘the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God’ and culminates with the statement ‘Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD’. That sentence involves several circumlocutions, but the claim is clear and bold indeed; and this is one of several reasons why the book’s place in the emerging canon was controversial. The Hebrew word hashmal in verses 4 and 27 (and also 8:2) is a mystery word, unique to Ezekiel. It is translated as ‘bronze’ or ‘amber’ in English versions (and as electron in Greek), but in truth it is obscure and tantalising. This may be significant in the growth of the Jewish tradition of ‘chariot’ mysticism based on this passage: perhaps since nobody really understood this word hashmal they took the route of trying to replicate Ezekiel’s experience? The word is elusive, as though hinting at something shocking and strange, evocative of excitement and of the numinous. It seems appropriate that Modern Hebrew uses this rare Ezekiel word hashmal to mean ‘electricity’! The contorted language of the passage reflects the confusion that might accompany the retelling of a dream. There is no good ground for doubting the text’s own claim that this is the account of a vision and, while it will of course have been shaped by its cultural context and conventions of writing, it is not to be explained away as a stylized piece. This is what the visionary Ezekiel saw, or at least his attempt to put it in words within this seminal text that Michael Lieb identifies as ‘a locus classicus of the visionary mode’, which in turn he describes as ‘a fundamental manifestation of the religious experience’ (Lieb 1991:16, 1). William Blake and Marc Chagall take on this famous passage and explore it through the visual medium. This goes to the heart of what artists have to offer in biblical interpretation, including what they might risk in portraying God. Their way is that of imagination and allusion, rather than that of explicit theology, systematic or otherwise. Wheels are prominent in the Blake image; Chagall hints at them less overtly, but they may be seen among the flames; and they feature in Giacomo Balla’s painting too. This prompts reflection on ‘theological geography’ and questions of movement and place. For ancient Israel, defeat meant, for many, displacement from the homeland. Chagall himself was no stranger to migration (as his story took him from Belarus to France and beyond) and it is a perennial experience of human beings, not least in our own time. This passage is a call to fortitude in journeying into the unknown and the future, trusting that theophanies may be possible in any place. Blake and Chagall are part of a long and diverse history of the reception of this chapter. This history even includes attempts to interpret the ‘divine chariot’ as an extraterrestrial spacecraft (Von Däniken 1969; cf. Lieb 1998: 42–73). Did Ezekiel see not the deity but a visitor from another world? For many of us this may seem fanciful, but accounts of encounters with the unexpected seem sometimes to intersect with ideas about technological innovation. This brings us back to Balla and his colleagues’ excited sense of marching into a future of fresh discoveries, attended also by the anxiety of the new, somewhat perhaps as today we confront the promise and maybe the threat of artificial intelligence and even the prospect of sentient robots. And this may further prompt reflection on how divine power and human capacities relate: the Futurists looked to human technological advance whereas Ezekiel proclaims the God who reigns and moreover does so without restriction of location. References von Däniken, Erich. 1969. Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past (London: Souvenir) Lieb, Michael. 1991. The Visionary Mode: Biblical Prophecy, Hermeneutics, and Cultural Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) _______. 1998. Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)