Ezekiel is a very difficult book. Its images are strange. Its pronouncements are harsh. And more than that, its world is foreign. We are not, after all, post-exilic Jews living in Babylon. In light of all these obstacles, the ESV study notes advises readers to “give themselves to the sheer strangeness of what is presented.” This is actually really good advice, and I think it’s what Ezekiel did himself. He sees incredible visions, so he pulls at the very hem of language trying to describe what he sees. He hears God speak, so he enacts living parables, becoming himself a sign to the people. He gives himself to the strangeness.
Before all of that, Ezekiel does something that is even more striking—he eats the very words of God. This is how things begin for Ezekiel. He is in Babylon with the rest of the exiles, and God shows up, in all his glory and strangeness. And in the midst of an overwhelming vision, of God wrapped in light carried by seemingly mythical beasts on a chariot with spinning wheel within wheels, Ezekiel falls to his face. In the same way that the vision stretches language to its limits, Ezekiel is taken to the edge of himself. He is so overwhelmed and weakened that as the Son of Adam that he is, he must be reanimated by the Spirit of God (Ezek. 2:1-2).
But then something else happens that is almost more incredible. To nourish and refresh him, God spreads before him a scroll and commands him to eat it. God commands Ezekiel to eat the word of God. The scroll is spread before him like a feast, and Ezekiel takes and eats, and what he tastes, though its contents were lamentations and woe, is as sweet as honey.
There is something in Ezekiel’s experience that helps us approach the book ourselves. We like Ezekiel must feast on the words of God. It has all the complexity and depth of a five course meal prepared by the most meticulous and subtle of chefs. And the implication is clear. If we will not savor, then we will not taste. This is not a meal to be scarfed. It is meant to be savored. This is not merely functional food meant to fuel the body so that you can get you through the day. It is food as art, food as culture, food as community. Bu we, it seems, don’t want such a feast. Ezekiel, like foreign cuisine, turns the stomach, and like so many Americans in Paris, we crave McDonald’s over the city’s richest fare. We want all that is pungent and earthy in the Bible processed and made palatable.
And our problems with Ezekiel are indicative of our unspoken problems with all the Scriptures. We really don’t want metaphor and mystery. We really don’t want narrative and poetry. We would prefer the Bible to say what it means. We want the Bible to explain things precisely with the concern and care of a technical manual, complete with attendant diagrams. Don’t believe me? Flip through your favorite study bible and you are likely to find outlines, charts, diagrams, maps, all of them means of, if I can say it this way, digesting your food for you. I am not against such helps (I did, after all, just quote the study Bible of the hour). They are often wonderful. But they can also whitewash the Bible’s inherent strangeness. And more than they can obscure the flavor and taste God intended, a flavor and taste we can only get if we are willing to feast.
Will you take the scroll, will you taste, and savor?
Over the next few weeks, I plan to blog through Ezekiel in an attempt to feast on it and give myself to its strangeness.