Ezekiel 2:1

Hebrew Bible

1 He said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak with you.” 2 As he spoke to me, a wind came into me and stood me on my feet, and I heard the one speaking to me. 3 He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the house of Israel, to rebellious nations who have rebelled against me; both they and their fathers have revolted against me to this very day. 4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and hard-hearted, and you must say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ 5 And as for them, whether they listen or not—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them.

Acts 26:16

New Testament

14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? You are hurting yourself by kicking against the goads.’ 15 So I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord replied, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But get up and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this reason, to designate you in advance as a servant and witness to the things you have seen and to the things in which I will appear to you. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes so that they turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a share among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

 Notes and References

"... Bowker suggests that Paul in the “perfectly ordinary process of merkabah contemplation reflected the voice of commission to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 2.” Whereas Ezekiel was told to go not to strangers but the house of Israel, Paul became convinced that it was not the Christians who were the rebellious people but the Jews who had commissioned him. What may have happened is that Ezekiel 1–2 offered a coherent context for the sudden reversal of his beliefs. Ezekiel 2 took on a dramatic new meaning. Bowker notes that Ezekiel 2:1, 3 is quoted in part in Acts 26:16. The lack of explicit reference to the merkabah in the testimonies about Paul is the result of the fact that Saul’s occupation at the time of the vision paled into insignificance compared with the transformative effects of the vision itself. Though visions were often regarded with suspicion, these were part of rabbinic orthodoxy, a form of “higher education,” to be undertaken only by the very well trained (as stated in the Mishnah) ..."

Rowland, Christopher "Paul as an Apocalyptist" in Stuckenbruck, Loren T. (ed.) The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testamenmt Thought (pp. 131-154) Fortress Press, 2017


"... The place to begin is Acts 26:16. Here the risen Jesus says to Paul, 'Get up and stand on your feet.' ... As already observed, the revelatory voice in Ezekiel 2:1 utters the same words. That this is a coincidence is highly unlikely ... the precise phrase is altogether unattested in secular Greek texts, and it appears only once in the LXX, in Ezekiel. Further, only one extant Hellenistic Jewish work ever uses it, and that is Joseph and Aseneth 14:8 and 11, where the author is, as we shall see below, clearly dependent on Ezekiel 1-2 ..."

Allison, Dale C. Acts 9:1–9, 22:6–11, 26:12–18: Paul and Ezekiel (pp. 807-26) Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 135, No. 4, 2016


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