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The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“‘You were the model of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you:
ruby, topaz and emerald,
chrysolite, onyx and jasper,
sapphire, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, O guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
I made a spectacle of you before kings.
By your many sins and dishonest trade
you have desecrated your sanctuaries.
So I made a fire come out from you,
and it consumed you,
and I reduced you to ashes on the ground
in the sight of all who were watching.
All the nations who knew you
are appalled at you;
you have come to a horrible end
and will be no more.’”
Originally posted by pthena
After the destruction, he figured that all the other major cities were laughing about it (probably delusion). In a fit of rage against the imagined insult,
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (my underlining)
Mythology and Lament: Studies in the Oracles about the Nations. By John B. Geyer. Society for Old Testament Study Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, xiii 214 pp., $99.95.
John Geyer offers the results of an intensive study of the Oracles against the Nations (or as he prefers, the Oracles about the Nations) in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (abbreviated as ON-IJE). The present study incorporates an earlier article (1986) by the author devoted to the ON-IJE with further investigation building upon recent studies of lament passages in the Hebrew Bible set against their larger Near Eastern background.
Geyer holds that the ON-IJE must be investigated, somewhat like an archeological site, at two levels: the most recent is creation mythology, widespread in the ancient Near East; the underlying and foundational level, however, is the Sumerian psalms of lament (p. x). These, Geyer claims, are the key to understanding the intention and meaning of the ON-IJE. He advocates a myth and ritual approach to the OT and is deeply troubled by our modern world and its religious wars. If I have heard Geyer correctly, he wants to contribute to a safer, more humane world by heading off a misappropriation of ancient religious texts for political, nationalistic agendas, a laudable endeavor.
Marna Temple (mentioned in the video) you can find online which makes the exact point the video does, that a temple is a representation of a garden, which in turn is a representation of what god does, of course through the king.
Wikipedia-Elephantine_papyri
The community also appealed for aid to Sanballat I, a Samaritan potentate, and his sons Delaiah and Shelemiah, as well as Johanan ben Eliashib. Both Sanballat and Johanan are mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah, 2:19, 12:23.[4]
Did Solomon's Temple Have
a Syrian Prototype?
Hiram, king of Tyre, worked closely with Solomon in the work of building a temple in
Jerusalem (see 1 Kgs 5:1-18). Volkmar Fritz appeals to this fact in his effort to demonstrate that
the temple in Jerusalem had a Phoenician or Syrian prototype.
[Solomon] . . . looked not to available Israelite prototypes, but to Phoenician exemplars, which
in turn we can now trace back to long-room temples in northern Syria and eventually back to the
megaron house in Anatolia, nearly 2,000 years before Solomon built his House of the Lord.
Probably has to do with economy of scale.
Books sure are expensive these days!
There's a more tangible motive for hostility in Joel ch3 v6 (speaking about Tyre);
"You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, removing them far from their own border"
It makes historical sense that surrounding nations would be cynically exploiting the new weakness of Judah, by seizing people as slaves, and by moving into their territories.
7 Behold, I will stir them up out of the place where you have sold them,
and will return your repayment on your own head;
8 and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah,
and they will sell them to the men of Sheba,
to a faraway nation,
for Yahweh has spoken it.”
Mythology and Lament: Studies in the Oracles about the Nations
Geyer's approach reminds me of Origen's allegorical method. Like Origen, he knows what the texts are really about. As an exegete, he wants to show us what is really there behind and beneath the text. Origen, of course, discovered Christian truth everywhere embedded in the text of the OT; Geyer finds the primal myths and rituals that explain these ancient writings. In fact, he has explained nothing.
Geyer affirms that God is holy and desires for all to be restored and returned to Eden. Evangelicals affirm what Geyer affirms but lament what he does not. God's historic and eschatological judgments get short shrift because particularism is not Geyer's frame of reference. Universalism is clearly his preferred theological orientation. In short, the theological message of the ON-IJE has been neutered.
Since this is a thread about Ezekiel's comments on Tyre, I will stand by my point rather than be diverted into other discussions.
(1) Which character is this passage referring to in the Garden of Eden?
And
(2) Which parts in the passage are referring to details specific to the time of the Garden of Eden, and which are referring to the time of king of Tyre?
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, O guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
Molock.
. . . you walked among the fiery stones . . .
That's funny because I did not even realize who she was, and I was just reading from her book, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities, the night before I watched the video. I may have payed more attention to what she was saying instead of thinking about what she looked like in her hjiab.
Nothing against junior academics on the make (and Francesca Stavrakopoulou has made full professor, congratulations), . . .