Sworn Enemies The Divine Oath, the Book of Ezekiel, and the Polemics of Exile BZAW 436

Casey A. Strine explores how the book of Ezekiel uses the exodus origin tradition to craft a national identity for the Judahite exiles in Babylon that contests competing interpretations of the recent past advanced by internal and external opponents. In this study, he demonstrates that Ezekiel utilizes formulaic language - especially YHWH´s oath - in order to define Israel´s identity around the exodus from Egypt, particularly asserting that YHWH favors a community outside Israel and under foreign oppression. Subsequently, this national identity is employed to refute an autochthonous origin tradition based upon the characters of Abraham and Jacob current among non-exiled Judahites (Ezek 11, 33, 35-36). Strine also argues that this same formulaic language is employed to contradict Babylonian claims that YHWH was powerless to help the exiles. YHWH swearing as I live´ not only challenges the underlying ideology that the destruction of Jerusalem indicated Marduk had defeated the Judahite deity, it repeatedly introduces passages where YHWH performs actions that the Babylonians would attribute to Marduk. This raises the issue of whether Ezekiel includes a nascent monotheism, which Strine explores with respect to recent contributions.

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