Such will be the situation after God defeated Gog and sent him down to Sheol to join the prince of Tyre, who has already been condemned to be “no more for ever” (Ez. 28:3, 9, 19). Gog and the other nations he has gathered to come against a restored Israel will suffer a resounding defeat. Then God will invite all “the birds of every sort and all the beasts of the field” to come to the great feast that he has prepared, telling them, “eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, … at the sacrificial feast which I am preparing for you” Ez. 39:18-20). Cleansing the land by burying the dead left from the great demonstration of God’s power and justice will take seven months (Ez. 39:12). If bones are still found in the land after that, they will be properly buried. Restored Israel will dwell in a land that is not only enjoying peace and prosperity but is also ceremonially clean, fully cleansed from all ritual pollution.
This description of Israel as a nation ruled by a descendant of David in a pure land after a horrendous battle that ends with the total triumph of God is the harbinger of the apocalyptic descriptions that later were adopted, with significant modifications, by the author of Revelation. The oracles having to do with the situation of exile conclude with a reaffirmation of the agenda that informs the book. “The house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God, from that day forward” (because my ways are just!). “And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt so treacherously with me that I hid my face from them” (not because I am weak!). “Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel; I will be jealous for my holy name …when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies’ lands, and through them have vindicated my holiness in the sight of many nations” (Ez. 39:23-27). Ezekiel ends naming the city that is now the capital of a restored Israel: “The name of the city henceforth shall be, The Lord is there” (Ez. 48:35). In this way, Ezekiel’s apology for the exile and for the sovereignty and justice of God has been demonstrated. God will be vindicated. Ezekiel proclaims an all-powerful God quite capable to vindicate his good name. Whether his God is also just was, apparently, not thought demonstrated by all his readers.
In Ezekiel the Israelites are suffering at the hand of God as a just punishment for their sins. It is not the case that they are suffering for the sins of their fathers, as it was previously said, nor is it on account of evil forces that persecute them because of their desire to adhere faithfully to the statutes and commandments of the Lord, as will become the case in the future. In this universe, God is in complete control and the course of history is totally determined so that even the abominations that the Israelites have been practicing, on account of which they are being punished, are due to their rebellious nature and the bad laws that God gave them knowing of their coming rebellion against him. The restoration of the Israelites in their land does not involve the termination of history or the destruction of the present creation. Once the forces of Gog have been defeated and the burial of all those killed has been completed, after birds and wild animals feasted on their carcasses, the land will be purified and the river of life will flow from the throne of the temple in Jerusalem and give life to the waters of the Dead Sea (Ez. 47:8-9). The restoration does not bring about a new heaven and a new earth, but a renewed earth. This demonstrates that the two basic doctrines of biblical apocalyptic theodicy are absent in Ezekiel. It ignores the doctrine of The Fall and the doctrine of The Two Ages. The way in which Ezekiel describes the abominable conditions pervading in the world and the vindication of God’s power and justice, however, provided the tools with which the apocalypticists elaborated these two distinctive doctrines. Besides, his detailed descriptions of what God will do to demonstrate his power and justice anticipate the apocalyptic descriptions of how God will bring about shortly a world in which justice and peace are the norm and the sea, the fountain of evil and death, has been eliminated.
In reference to God’s vindication, Ezekiel accuses the people of Israel and the neighboring nations of defaming him by declaring him unjust and weak. His vindication depends on a demonstration of his power and his ability to keep covenant with his people. To accomplish this, Ezekiel looks forward to the restoration of Israel in her land, where she will live securely in an eternal covenant of peace because God will destroy all those who used to prey on her. To explain the absolute sovereignty and justice of God, Ezekiel makes God responsible for the existence of both good and evil in his world. He has given bad laws (Ez. 20:25-26), and in his anger for the abominations being done in Jerusalem, he “will cut off from you both righteous and wicked” (Ez. 21:4).
The flowering of apocalypticism was an effort to solve the problem left unsolved by Ezekiel. God’s vindication as sovereign and just is not quite being achieved while declaring that present evil also comes from God. God cannot be worshiped if he is conceived as the source of both good and evil, as one who punishes equally the righteous and the wicked. The cause of evil in the world must have a source other than God, even if to achieve his purpose God at times uses evil. Apocalypticism’s doctrine of The Fall was the tool with which it attempted to deal with this problem.
Zechariah
The prophet Zechariah gives dates that place his activity between the years 520 and 518 B.C.E., that is after the end of the exile in 537 B.C.E. He was an optimistic prophet who, like Haggai, belonged to the cultic establishment at the time when those who had returned to Jerusalem were involved in reconstituting a viable community of worshipers of Yahveh. Most scholars agree that in its present form the book consists of two separate documents. The first, chapters 1-8, contains Zechariah’s oracles encouraging the people to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem at a time when messianic expectations were high. Chapters 9-14 is a later document with eschatological reinterpretations of messianic themes after the conquests of Alexander the Great made Greece a player in the international horizon of the Fertile Crescent in the second half of the IV B.C.E. (Zech. 9:13). The prophecies of Haggai, Zechariah’s contemporary, see the political upheavals taking place after the death of Cambyses in July of 522 B.C.E. as propitious for the establishment of an independent nation ruled by a descendant of David, Zerubbabel, the current governor of Jerusalem under Persian rule (Hag. 2:6-9, 20, 23). At that time there were revolts in Babylon led by royals who called themselves Nebuchadrezzar III and IV. It was only in his second year that Darius was able to restore order within his domains. Zechariah’s first oracle is dated to the eighth month of Darius’ second year (Zech. 1:1).
The chapters that undoubtedly come from Zechariah deal with the ups and downs of the expectations for a full restoration of the fortunes of Israel with a descendant of David on the throne of Jerusalem. Chapters 1 to 6 contain seven visions, one of them in need of some rearrangement due to the intervention of later hands. The first one (Zech 1:7-17), seems to reflect on the disappointment felt when the revolts of the Babylonians against their Persian rulers did not succeed, thus taking away the possibility of an independent Jerusalem free from Persian control. In a night vision Zechariah sees a man riding a red horse and other riders on four horses of different colors. An angel then provides an interpretation of what is going on. It would seem that this angel is the man sitting on the red horse, but that is not explicit. The riders of the four horses have been patrolling the earth, and they come back to report that “all the earth remains at rest.” Hearing this the angel takes it to be bad news because it means that the Persians have squelched the Babylonian rebellion and that Jeremiah’s prophecy that God’s punishment would last seventy years, or Ezekiel’s prophecy that it would last forty, were not going