Gender in Divine Spaces and Visions in Ezekiel Open Access
Stuart, Rachel (Fall 2024)
Abstract
In the Book of Ezekiel, unusual patterns of grammatical gender appear throughout the prophet’s vision reports. The prevalence of feminine nouns is higher and the stability of assigned grammatical gender—indeed, of syntax overall—lower than in the book’s more narrative and oracular texts. While unusual syntactical patterns have often been the subject of detailed discussion by textual and redaction critics, few engage to the same degree of detail in final-form interpretations. Within Ezekiel studies in particular, I have encountered few authors willing to suggest that these grammatical oddities have any relevance at all for interpretation of the text. Commentators such as Walther Zimmerli and Janina Maria Hiebel ignore them as redactional artefacts or ordinary oddities of Hebrew grammar, while Daniel Block remarks only that they reflect a faltering attempt to make sense of an incomprehensible experience. Instead, I argue that reflecting upon Ezekiel’s changing use of grammar is essential for understanding the dissonance between the divine and human worlds he experiences. When the ḥayyôt of the ch. 1 vision—and, later, the bones of ch. 37—cannot be assigned a clear grammatical gender, the text reflects the ineffability of a mystical or theophanic experience. There is a holy chaos to the prophet’s visions of the divine, and in his more poetic moments, he is able to recognize and appreciate that holiness. Outside those experiences, however, the prophet presents a very rigid portrait of social gender roles, one which is theologically weaponized to explain the destructive chaos of the exile as a punishment for the defiance of those rigid gender roles. Reading Ezekiel with a careful eye to these oscillations of gender throughout the book highlights the prophet’s difficult task of searching for stability for himself and his people in the mortal realm while simultaneously acknowledging and transmitting the ineffability of the divine realm.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
GENDER IN DIVINE SPACES AND VISIONS IN EZEKIEL
Introduction
On Grammatical Gender in Biblical Hebrew
On Linguistic Relativism
The Appearance of the Likeness of Genderfluidity: Cognitive Linguistics and Ezekiel
Translation of Ezekiel 1
Cognitive and Interpretive Effects of Grammatical Gender
—Living Beings (m), or Living Beings (f)?
—The Four of Them
—Of Rims and Wheels
—Cognitive Conclusions
Shifting Appearances
—Under the Dome
—Above the Dome
On the Role of Gender Throughout the Book
The Gender of Agency
—After the Kebar Vision: Agency in Chapters 2 and 3
The Gender of Angels
—Feminine or Paragogic?: An Excursus on ḥašmalâ
The Gender of Bones
—Translation of Ezekiel 37:1–14
—A New Kebar
Conclusions
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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