Texts in Conversation
In Numbers 16, Aaron’s incense burner stops a deadly plague and saves Israel. Ezekiel inverts the same priestly gesture with seventy elders raising incense burners in secret to idols, making the ritual that stopped wrath now the cause of it.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Numbers 16:46
Hebrew Bible
45 “Get away from this community, so that I can consume them in an instant!” But they threw themselves down with their faces to the ground. 46 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take the censer, put burning coals from the altar in it, place incense on it, and go quickly into the assembly and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone out from the Lord—the plague has begun!” 47 So Aaron did as Moses commanded and ran into the middle of the assembly, where the plague was just beginning among the people. So he placed incense on the coals and made atonement for the people. 48 He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped.
Ezekiel 8:11
Hebrew Bible
10 So I went in and looked. I noticed every figure of creeping thing and beast—detestable images—and every idol of the house of Israel, engraved on the wall all around. 11 Seventy men from the elders of the house of Israel (with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them) were standing in front of them, each with a censer in his hand, and fragrant vapors from a cloud of incense were swirling upward. 12 He said to me, “Do you see, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in the chamber of his idolatrous images? For they think, ‘The Lord does not see us! The Lord has abandoned the land!’”
Search:
Notes and References
… Were the elders in this liturgical netherworld offering incense to Egyptian deities to enlist their support (see Ezekiel 17:15; Jeremiah 37:5, 7, 11)? Were they warding off terrible demonic powers, identified with an imminent enemy assault? The latter suggestion is provocative, given that there is an ironic reversal of Numbers 16:41–50 (the Masoretic Text 17:6–15) here in Ezekiel. The episode of liturgical censing in Numbers 16 aimed to drive away a terrible plague. Numbers 16:41–50 is an episode within a story of rebellion in the wilderness authored by priests of the same theological stripe as Ezekiel. In the episode, the congregation of Israel faces a massive punishment from God on a par with the threat facing Judah in Ezekiel’s time. Like the elders in Ezekiel 8:11, Aaron engages the crisis by sending up incense from a censer. As Everett Fox translates Numbers 16:11, “Moshe said to Aharon: Take [your] pan and place upon it fire from the altar and put smoking-incense [there]; go quickly to the community and effect-appeasement for them, for the fury is [still] going-out from the presence of Yhwh—the plague has begun!” Ironically, the seventy elders of Ezekiel 8:11 manage to turn Aaron’s successful rite of censing completely on its head. As a priest, Aaron lights his incense at the public altar, a sacral point of interconnection with heaven. As laity, the elders offer clandestine incense, connecting with Sheol and death …
Cook, Stephen L.
"Irony in Ezekiel’s Book" in Häner, Tobias and Virginia Miller (eds.) Irony in the Bible: Between Subversion and Innovation
(pp. 234-235) Brill, 2023
* 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.