The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

Ezekiel’s personal dislocation was, perhaps, revealed in his strange, distorted actions—the weird mimes he felt compelled to perform to bring the people’s predicament home to them. When Ezekiel’s wife died, Yahweh forbade him to mourn; another time, Yahweh commanded Ezekiel to lie on one side for 390 days and on the other for 40. Yahweh tied him up, shut him in his house, and stuck Ezekiel’s tongue to the roof of his mouth, so that he could not speak. Once Yahweh forced him to pack his bags and walk around Tel Aviv like a refugee. He was afflicted with such acute anxiety that he could not stop trembling, could not sit still, and had to keep moving about restlessly. This—he seemed to be telling his fellow exiles—was what happened to displaced people: they no longer had normal responses, because their world had been turned upside down. They could not relax or feel at ease anywhere at all. Unless the exiles appreciated this to the full—saw things as they were—they would not be able to heal. It was no good looking on the bright side or telling themselves that they would soon be home, because this was simply not true. They must strip themselves of these delusions.