EZEKIEL 11 AND 24 -- THE CITY AND THE POT

I have run into a number of Christians over the years who brag that their method of looking at the Bible is superior to any other because they take it all as the literal truth. However, once you try them out on a specific example, they are likely to readily back-pedal and redefine “literal” as meaning the most natural reading, which could by the way could be either literal or figurative.

So what do we do about the statements in these chapters regarding the people in Jerusalem who were experiencing a series of incursions into Israel by the Babylonians who were taking away much of the populace as captives? Since they are referred to three times in chapter 11 alone as pieces of meat in a pot (see Figure 1), that is obviously not to be taken as literal in any real sense of the word unless the Babylonians happened to be cannibals who intended to make stew meat out of them.

                                      Figure 1: Repeated Vocabulary in Ezekiel 11:1-15

    A. I saw Pelatiah son of Benaiah (1)

        B. mortal (2)

            C. This city is the pot, and we are the meat (3)

                D. prophesy (2x) (4a)

        B'. mortal (4b)

            C'. The slain are the meat, and this city is the pot (7)

                    E. I will judge you at the border of Israel (10a)

                        F. You shall know I am the LORD (10b)

                    E'. I will judge you at the border of Israel (10c)

            C''. This city shall not be your the pot and you not the meat (11)

                        F'. You shall know I am the LORD (12)

                D'. prophesying (13a)

    A'. Pelatiah son of Benaiah died (13b)

        B''. mortal (15)

When running into metaphors or similes in the Bible, one need first to consider the context in which these the figurative statements take place. I have already alluded to that above. But the next step is a bit trickier since one subsequently needs to decide what sort of literal and/or historical reality might lie behind each figurative image. And here I not unfrequently find myself jumping to the wrong conclusion.

Ezekiel 11:3

This first time this image appears is a prime example. To explain, I happen to enjoy cooking. Thus, when reading about a pot of meat, probably simmering on the open fire with some vegetables and savory spices, the interpretation I naturally came up with for this image was as follows: Those living in Jerusalem had been witnessing raids on the surrounding small towns and countryside in which the inhabitants were being readily gobbled up by the Babylonians as a sort of salad or appetizer. However, the main course they were really looking forward to was Jerusalem itself with its riches and influential inhabitants. Therefore the statement by the Jerusalemites in Ezekiel 11:3 indicated that they were shaking in their boots waiting for the inevitable attack on their city to begin. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any reputable Bible scholars who saw things the way I did.

Hulst says, “Two different lines of interpretation are possible in this verse. The DNV and RSV translations explain the text as meaning that the people who give wicked counsel feel themselves safe. No one needs to be concerned about the possibility of the city's destruction so that houses will need to be built. That time is not near. The other possible sense is to take the text as an interrogative sentence...The idea, then, is that those who remain in Jerusalem after the first deportation of 597 B.C., reject the prophetic warning of impeding judgment. They feel that they are so safe that they can unmolested proceed to build their houses.”

Note that neither of Hulst's possibilities is remotely similar to the one I had come up with. And it is not just Hulst who takes this general line of interpretation. To quote one other example from the scholarly literature on the subject, Cook states, “Having a false confidence in Zion's ironclad invulnerability (the pot), they assure the populace of the city's security.”

Ezekiel 11:7

The plot (if not the pot) thickens in this next occurrence of the same image. Whereas it was the leaders in the Jerusalem community who utilized it in verse 3, in this case it is God himself who speaks, and he does so in order to contradict those leaders. We now find out that from God's viewpoint the chosen “meat” are not at all the present inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, but again there is some ambiguity as to who they really are.

Thus, Bruce admits that “it is uncertain whether the bodies should be understood as the victims of these leaders' ruthlessness or as those doomed to be slain by the sword at the capture of Jerusalem.”

Ezekiel 11:11 

This verse basically repeats the thought of v. 7. 

Ezekiel 24:1-14

Just about the time we think Ezekiel has exhausted all the meaning he can get out of the pot and meat analogy, it pops up again at the end of Ezekiel 24. Its position there is not exactly a random one. It turns out that the major divisions of the long book of Ezekiel are almost universally recognized as consisting of chapters 1-3, 4-7, 8-11, 12-24, 25-32, 33-37, 38-39, and 40-48 (See the posts titled “Ezekiel: Introduction to the Literary Structure” and “How is the Book of Ezekiel Organized?” for more information.) Note that the two places the image occurs serve to conclude two adjacent divisions of the book.

In Chapter 24 the imagery becomes a little more detailed to the point where it can rightly be called an allegory (v. 3) rather than a simple metaphor. All the steps to prepare a stew are given in the first verses.

As to the meaning of this passage, Beasley-Murray suggests the following scenario: “Perhaps Ezekiel was actually preparing a meal in a cauldron when the word of God came to him, declaring it to be symbolic of the judgment of Jerusalem. The use of the figure is wholly opposite to that in 11:3.” At last we come to the meaning of the image which I had mistakenly felt applied to that earlier passage!

Greenberg summarizes the opening of the passage with the following words: “Here the cook is imaginary and the cooking process is particularized in order to call vividly to mind the care that went into it [i.e. preparation of the stew] so as to heighten the shock of the sequel.”

Then Wakely walks us through the meaning of that sequel: “In Ezek 11:3 the complacent, undiscerning and arrogant survivors of the 597 BC deportation boasted that they were safely hidden in Jerusalem...However in Ezek 24:10, the place of protection has become the place of danger. Yahweh commands that logs be piled under the cauldron (Jerusalem) and the fire kindled...After the flesh (of the city's inhabitants) has been well boiled, the broth is to be emptied out and the bones burned up. Some have sought to give an interpretation to each detail in the allegory...but others...have argued that Ezekiel was not interested in such individual details, but only in the ultimate result after the cauldron had been subjected to the intense heat. The stain of spiritual impurity and social corruption with which Jerusalem was so radically contaminated could be removed only by a blazing inferno of destruction.”

Problems of exact interpretation continue to plague those trying to understand the pot and meat imagery to any detail. Thus, although the general thrust of this passage is fairly clear, there are still controversies which continue to be debated in the literature concerning, for example, whether verses 3-5 originally constituted a popular work song (see the discussion in Block's massive commentary on Ezekiel).