Texts in Conversation
In Ezekiel, God's spirit carries the prophet to the valley of bones. In 3 Enoch, that spirit is named among the heavenly winds, giving the force behind the prophet's vision a place in heaven's weather.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Ezekiel 37:1
Hebrew Bible
1 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and placed me in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones. 2 He made me walk all around among them. I realized there were a great many bones in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said to him, “Sovereign Lord, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and tell them: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Lord’s message. 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: Look, I am about to infuse breath into you and you will live.
3 Enoch 23:7
Hebrew Book of Enoch
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
There blows the "Wind of H'" as it is written (Ezek. xxxvii. 1): "and he carried me out by the wind of H' and set me down". There blows the "Evil Wind" as it is written (1 Sam. xvi. 23): "and the evil wind departed from him". There blow the "Wind of Wisdom" and the "Wind of Understanding" and the "Wind of Knowledge" and the "Wind of the Fear of H'" as it is written (Is. xi. 2): "And the wind of H' shall rest upon him; the wind of wisdom and understanding, the wind of counsel and might, the wind of knowledge and of the fear of H'".
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Notes and References
“... Interestingly, too, the lengthy passage that describes the winds (3 Enoch
23, §35)59 does not make use of the metrological imagery that I noted to be sig-
nificant in the Parables; rather, it brings together an array of biblical texts that
speak of the winds and combines their imagery. In fact, there is only one point
in 3 Enoch where scales/balance imagery is used, in 18:20 (§27):
Why is his name called Šoqedḥozi? Because he weighs men’s merits in
scales in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he.60
So, while there appears to be more entanglement with the content of Parables
of Enoch and 2 Enoch than is seen in the biblical material or even in b.Ḥagigah, ...”
Macaskill, Grant
The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity
(p. 138) Brill, 2024
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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