The body and being of God in Ezekiel

Abstract

Understanding the way Ezekiel conceives of God as an embodied deity helps us see how he understands God as a “self.” In his visions of the k^ebôd YHWH (“Glory of YHWH”), Ezekiel describes the divine body in anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic ways, using language and imagery from both the Priestly (P) and Zion-Sabaoth (Z-S) traditions. As a result, Ezekiel blends two different ways of understanding God’s nature. Like P, God in Ezekiel is unified in body, but like Z-S, Ezekiel understands God to be capable of being radically present with different groups of Israelites simultaneously—that is, fluid in nature. This has implications for the way Ezekiel understands sacred space: he looks forward to a time when the sacred center is stable, but depicts a present reality in which no sacred center exists at all.