" ... Take thee a stick ... and then take another stick ...”
Ezekiel 37.15-16 (AV)
A Linguistic and Cultural Consideration of What Ezekiel Meant by “stick”
(and What He Did Not Mean by 'stick')
What Mormons Have Long Taught
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long taught that the sticks referred to in the above quoted verses from the book of the prophet Ezekiel means books of sacred scripture. They have understood the "stick of Judah" to be the Holy Bible, because it is largely a product of the people of Judah and the Children of Israel associated with Judah, and that the "stick of Joseph" (Ephraim) and those of the house of Israel associated with him to be the Book .of Mormon.
Some deny that there is any such inference to be made. Their fundamental purpose in denying the connection is, if it was shown that the Bible foretold God’s provision of an additional book of scriptures they would have to take a more serious look at the Book of Mormon. Since taking a serious look at the Book of Mormon is an anathema to them, they strenuously reject the possibility of Ezekiel's prophecy of the Book of Mormon. To justify this rejection they have to show that stick has nothing to do with writing or recording.
If one was not looking for anything but a simplistic reading of the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, one could be forgiven for not understanding what was present in the text. However, a case can be made for an alternate reading that should make the most dyed-in-the-wool cynic at least sit up and take notice.
Peter and the Stick
Ezekiel 37.12-22 forms part of the subject matter of a piece of writing posted by Evangelical Christian scholar, Peter Ould, on the Mormon Ring website. In subsequent correspondence over the meaning of "stick," Peter has insisted that stick means ‘stick,’ that it only means "stick," and that "stick" also means ‘a piece of wood.’ He asked me pointedly what I thought sticks were made of.
I asked him what the Hebrew word translated here as "stick" was; why it had been translated into "stick," and could it mean anything else? To date he has failed to provide satisfactory answers to these basic questions. What he did provide was the following:
Please don't make me do this to you Ronnie. If you've studied this passage you'll know that the word stick here is "Stick". The Hebrew is "stick". Why did the translators choose to render it in English as a stick???[Sic] BECAUSE IT'S A PIECE OF WOOD.
Face it Ronnie, it's a piece of wood. If you're going to say there is an alternative translation then at least have the decency to admit you believe so because the prophet tells you. But to hide behind academia is not worthy of you.
Hebrew and English
It will be no surprise to most readers that the word "stick" is not Hebrew but English. Ould makes the point repeatedly in what could be interpreted as a spirit of triumph. However, his triumphalism over what he considers the dark, priest-ridden mind of a Latter-day Saint who also, he alleges, takes refuge behind the dark places of Academia is premature, because he is wrong.
Stick or Bust!
The word in Hebrew is "etz" which Ould appears not to know. He significantly fails to say why "etz" has been translated as "stick" in these verses, or whether it could have been translated as any other word. His reason for not doing this has been determined, not by scholarly application of linguistics (a facility with which he believes himself more than adequately endowed), but because of the nature of his own library.
What’s Etz, Doc?
Presumably, if Peter did know of a Bible translation that rendered "etz" into something other than "stick" he would happily reconsider his position. Nevertheless, although he has made much of his ability in linguistics, he does not apply their principles to his own research; he has a different method for that.
I actually sat down, put away my commentaries and thought about it. I went to my Hebrew/English dictionary to look up the meanings of words - searched for those in the rest of the Bible. Once I had formed my judgement on the passage I then started to look at various commentaries to check whether I was understanding things correctly.
Linguistic Errors
So particular is Peter Ould that the principles of linguistics be correctly applied, that he is unforgiving when others make what he considers to be linguistic errors, as he show by his petulant outburst against LeGrand Richards:
I don't need to go into deep and meaningful discourse on what Ariel is and so forth, because Richards has already discredited himself by making such a basic error. As someone who speaks German and English fluently, I find such linguistic mistakes annoying because they show a basic lack of respect for rules of translation.
Yet, his admission of exactly how he arrives at the meaning of a particular Biblical text is alarming. He confesses that he:
- thinks about the English text in a passage
- then looks up the words in his English/Hebrew lexicon
- finds out other passages in the Bible where the same word has been used, (presumably to aid his understanding of the English terms)
- then, having made his judgement on what a particular passage means, he checks his Bible commentaries to see if he has guessed right.
Doubtless, if his commentaries do not agree with his determination of meaning, he abandons his personal reading and accepts the explanations provided by his commentaries.
Ould’s Linguistic Deficiencies
How odd that one so insistent on "respect for rules of translation" when it comes to the work of others, did not look up all the entries in his Concordance of the Bible under "etz." Had he done so, he would have found a very mixed bag. Instead of deciding that "etz" means a stick – by which he means a piece of wood – he would surely have had more to think about and would have given me a less emphatic answer to the question what "stick" was in Hebrew [perhaps even providing the Hebrew word] and the various ways it is trnslated in AV, and been eager to discuss the alternate possibilities. Instead, he writes:
Please don't make me do this to you Ronnie. If you've studied this passage you'll know that the word stick here is "Stick". The Hebrew is "stick". Why did the translators choose to render it in English as a stick??? BECAUSE IT'S A PIECE OF WOOD [empasis in original].
The sad thing here is that he has not made better use of his English-Hebrew lexicon. Had he done so, he would have discovered several interesting ideas to consider.
Am I Prophet-Driven or Academically Stupid?
So certain is he that "stick" means "stick" in Hebrew as well as in English that he attempts to pre-empt any objections that I might have. He points out that the only possible alternative reading that could be in my head will have been put there by the Prophet-President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hedging his bets, he affirms that if, on the other hand, I am going to offer him a learned reply, he accuses me of "hiding behind academia"!
Face it Ronnie, it's a piece of wood. If you're going to say there is an alternative translation then at least have the decency to admit you believe so because the prophet tells you. But to hide behind academia [sic] is not worthy of you.
He provides further insight into his exegetical methodology when he writes:
In Ezekiel 37 my point is this, that the verse actually interprets itself, that this is one prophecy over which there is no debate. God himself gives the meaning of the prophecy straight after he makes it. It's all very clearly to do with the restoration of the two kingdoms as one.
When asked why he does not discuss the Hebrew word he is interpreting and the possible variations of translation and interpretation, he insists:
The points I make are short and precise. That's the style I use. The reason why I don't beat around the bush here is because it's simply not needed. Anybody reading this text can see the meaning of the prophecy in an instant.
Continuing his reasons for not discussing alternate readings, and why he does not deal with Le Grand Richards' arguments in a more complete way, he states:
(Ezekiel 37) A proper response to this criticism needs to take into account verses 20 and onwards. Instead, Le Grand [Richards in his, ‘A Marvellous Work and A Wonder’] ignores them. Why?? Because they blow his argument out of the water. They explain the verse and leave no room for doubt. Trying to read an alternative meaning into the two sticks is abusive of Scripture and there is simply no call for it.
Could They Be Scrolls?
At one point, he attempts to deal with LeGrand Richard’s point that the "stick" refers to the winding rod of a scroll of writing. While I agree with Ould that Latter-day Saints have been mistaken when thinking of the sticks as winding rods, I cannot agree that the sticks have nothing to do with writing. God did show Ezekiel pieces of wood, something that has escaped the usually vigilant Ould, but he does not see the wood for the sticks and fails to register any significance in them. For him to be so close and yet remain blind to what is before his eyes is in some respects understandable, yet tragic.
Are the sticks made of wood? Of course!! What else is a stick made of. That's why even the LDS KJV footnote here recognises that the Hebrew is "wood". I understand the argument that Richards and others have made that the sticks may refer to the pieces of wood upon which the scrolls are wrapped, but this simply isn't the case. If it was, and the point of the prophecy was that there was another set of scriptures in the New World then how much easier for God to give Ezekiel a vision of scrolls instead of pieces of wood. You would need to demonstrate that calling scrolls "sticks" was a common feature of 7th Century BC Hebrew writing and that simply hasn't been done.
Is God Ever ‘Clear’ or Does He Make Us Search for Meaning?
In the above paragraph, Ould makes two further points worth noting. The first is that it would have been easier for God to show Ezekiel exactly what he had in mind. This is, as we shall discover, exactly what God did. The second point demonstrates the attenuated and circumscribed world of Ould when it comes to the ancient world and its customs. It is sad to realise that unless it is written in a book that happens to be sat on Peter’s bookshelf he will probably never learn anything. It is not a matter of calling sticks scrolls, or vice versa, in the seventh century BCE, but of whether what is written in this passage has any connection with Hebrew writing during that period. Ould seems unaware of the site of Ezekiel’s prophesying. The scene was not Palestine, but Babylon.
Peter Ould plays hard ball! What he means by preliminary text is not clear, but I will presume he simply means the ‘text.’ Whether it is clear that it refers to a book of sacred scripture that has to do with some of the descendants of Joseph and Ephraim remains to be seen. Although Ould’s preconditions are hard, his anxiety is understandable.
Does the Truth Lie Somewhere Between Eretz Yisrael, A Glazed Look, and Uncontrollable Laughter?
Not satisfied with his own rendition that God is talking to Ezekiel about a couple of wooden sticks, he enlists the aid of a Jewish friend. When Peter refers him to the words of the Prophet Ezekiel, the poor man goes into a trance-like state – described by Ould as having that glazed Eretz Israel look in his eyes. However, hearing the Mormon interpretation brought him to his senses and gave him a good, long laugh.
Whether the Jewish friend understood Hebrew, the book of Ezekiel, or common inscriptive methods in use in 7th century BCE Babylon, we are not informed.
What Was Ezekiel Told To Tell Us?
What was Ezekiel on about? Was it simply an illustration of the restoration of the House of Israel and the House of Judah sometime in the future? Or is there more in this chapter than meets the uncritical eye? Consider the following.
- Thus saith the Lord Elohim: "Come from the four winds, O spirit, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into [the bones], and they lived and stood upon their feet, a great army.
- Then he said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are surely cut off forever.
- Therefore, prophesy, and say to them, "Thus says the Lord Elohim: ‘Behold I will open your graves, O, my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel.
- ‘And you shall know that I am the YHWH, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people.
- ‘And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, YHWH, have spoken, and I have done it says YHWH.’"
- The word of YHWH came to me again, saying, "Son of man, take an etz and write upon it for Judah and the Children of Israel associated with him.
- Then, take another etz and write upon it for Joseph (this is the etz of Ephraim), and all those of the house of Israel associated with him;
- ‘and join them together into one etz, that they may be one in thine hand.
- ‘And when thy people shall say to you ‘Will you show us what you mean by these [etzoth]? Say unto them,
- ‘Thus saith the Lord Elohim: Behold, I am going to take the etz of Joseph (which is in the hand of Ephraim), and the tribes of Israel associated with him, and I will join them with the etz of Judah, and make them one etz, that they may be one in mine hand.
- ‘When the etzoth on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them,
- ‘Thus says the Lord Elohim: "behold I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them into their own land;
- ‘And I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them; and they shall no longer be two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms.
Why Not "Rod" or "Sceptre?"
Others argue that a better interpretation of etz would be "rod" or "sceptre," meaning the symbolic rod of office and signifying restoration of monarchical rule over the unified kingdom, by combining the symbolic sceptres of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms under one king, who will be like the heroic King David, ruling both the former Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah as a united tribal confederacy.
It is not surprising that Latter-day Saints are accused of taking these verses out of context to prove their point. Joseph Smith pointed out the correct meaning of the etzoth in these verses. Was he being dishonest in order to vindicate his claim of a divine origin for the Book of Mormon? Before we look at some remarkable evidence in support of Smith’s claims, let us do what Ould should have done and apply the science of linguistics to the problem.
What Were the Translators Up To?
The word etz appears about three hundred times in the Hebrew scriptures. In the Authorised Version, where it appears in chapter 37 of Ezekiel it is translated "stick." In the LXX, it is translated "rod."
The question must be asked, "Why did the translators of the AV translate etz as "stick" only fourteen times out of three hundred? Further, why did they use seven of the fourteen in chapter 37 of Ezekiel, when in other places they have translated it as "tree" (162 times), or "wood" (103 times)?
The Riddle of the Septuagint
The LXX was translated by Jewish Hebrew scholars who knew their own tongue, although they lived in the Graeco-Roman world, and had an understanding of the language. They interpreted etz as "wood" [xulon] 249 times, but as "tree" [dendron] only 15 times. Obviously, they saw "wood" as the primary meaning of etz. Gk. [rabdos = rod]. What is peculiar is that this is the only instance in the LXX where etz has been translated as "rod."
Why Did the Translators Do Such Such a Thing?
The answer to this question is vital because this passage is the one that modern translators rely on in the main to determine their understanding of this passage.
The RABDOS Theory
Some have conjectured that the translator was influenced by the story in Numbers 17.2-3, where the Lord required each tribal chief to write his own name upon his staff [rabdos] and leave it in the tabernacle overnight. The tribal name connection is obvious and to some extent matches the end of Ezekiel 37 concerning the unification of the kingdoms.
However, there is a flaw in this transposition. The word translated as “rod” in Numbers 17 is not etz but matteh, a Hebrew word whose meaning is “staff.” If Ezekiel meant “staff,” why didn’t he say “staff?” Ould tells us that God makes it clear. In that case, it is obvious that God did not mean staff, stick, or rod, but something else.
The interpretation used in LXX is unique. The interpretation used in the AV is virtually statistically unique. Since they are both very different translations, they can not both be correct. Could both of them be wrong? We shall see.
The Riddle of the Sticks
The riddle gives new significance to recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries in Iraq. Modern Iraq covers almost all of ancient Mesopotamia, homelands to the former empires of Assyria and Babylon. In 595 BCE, when Ezekiel the priest was called to be prophet to the exiles he was living in Tel Abib in Babylonia among fellow Jews who had been transported there in Nebuchadnezzar’s galut.
What Ezekiel Would Have Seen in Babylon
As Prophet-Priest Ezekiel walked through the streets of Tel Abib and other Babylonian cities, he would have witnessed the familiar sight of scribes pressing the ends of wedge-shaped reeds into either tablets of moist clay or other writing medium to form the complex cuneiform documents of that period and location.
Modern scholars know that other forms of writing were used in Mesopotamia, such as papyrus, parchment, and wooden tablets. Although only the clay tablets (in superabundance) have survived to bear record of this ancient civilisation, references to other writing materials have survived, written on the ancient tiles.
Writing on Wood?
Although archaeologists fully understood the references to papyrus and parchment, they were puzzled by references to writings on wood. How could cuneiform be written on wood? It was tentatively suggested that they could have painted the characters onto the wooden surface. However, this theory was abandoned some years ago when San Nicolo discovered two clay tablets in the library of the Eanna Temple at Uruk in southern Babylonia, one of which dated from 596 BCE, twelve months before Ezekiel’s call to the prophetic office. The other tablet was a little earlier, dated at 582 BCE. The writers of both tablets refer to drawing beeswax and some other substance, that San Nicolo could not identify. The writers told how they drew supplies of beeswax, along with the mystery ingredient, from the temple storehouse to make a filling for their wooden writing tablets.
Filling! What Filling?
A "filling!" This puzzled San Nicolo until he remembered that both the Romans and the Greeks had made wooden writing tablets by scooping out the insides of wooden boards to a depth of a quarter of an inch, leaving a border around the outer edges to protect the wax filling. The hollowed out portions received a thin filling of wax and scribes wrote on the wax. Several boards could be placed together without the surfaces touching, thus preserving the writing inscribed thereon.
A Piece of Wood! (Peter Ould Agrees)
Could the Babylonians have done the same thing? San Nicolo recognised that for a cuneiform writer, writing on beeswax and writing on moist clay amounted to much the same thing, whereas painting on a wooden board would have involved a much different, more complicated, and time-consuming process. He concluded that the Babylonian wooden writing tablet referred to on the ancient clay tiles were wooden, wax-filled writing boards, and published his conclusions to the scholarly world. He hypothesised that the reason none of them had survived was that they were made of highly perishable materials.
Five years later, to the utter amazement of the archaeologists involved, a discovery was made in territory once part of the ancient empire of Assyria that confirmed San Nicolo’s theory to the nth degree.
The Well at Calah Gives Up a Secret
Archaeologist Max Mallowan was leading the dig at Nimrud, a city known as Calah in Old Testament times. Deep in a well, under a thick layer of sludge were discovered some ancient and mysterious artefacts quite unlike any others that had been discovered.
The first find was a broken, flat ivory board about six inches square and a half-inch thick. By the end of the day workers had discovered the other half of the broken ivory board.
Writing Tablets
At the end of the excavation, they had recovered fragments of two complete sets of writing tablets; one made of ivory, the other of walnut, but each set comprising sixteen boards each. Both sets were the same sizes: thirteen inches by six inches by half an inch thick.
Wax Filling
All the boards had had their surfaces cut down by one sixteenth of an inch, with a half-inch border left around the edges. The lowered beds had contained the wax filling, of which some biscuit-like fragments were discovered; some still in situ, and some mixed into the sludge that had hidden and protected them for so many years. Most of the writing had been smeared off by the action of the sludge, but the evidence was there for all to see, and one fragment contained legible cuneiform.
Hinges
The cover boards had wax filling only on their insides. Their external surfaces had no such provision and had hinge marks on one side only. All the other boards had hinge marks on both sides so that they could be connected together like a Japanese folding screen. The artefacts made such extensive records that Mallowan could announce with justification the he had discovered the oldest known examples of books.
Books!
The wax fillings were subject to laboratory analysis that provided the answer to San Nicolo’s mystery ingredient. It turned out to be sulphide of arsenic and was mixed in the ratio of one part to four parts of beeswax. The arsenic product kept the wax supple enough to write on for some time and gave it a bright yellow appearance.
The small, neat writing preserved on one of the wax fragments is so compact that the thirty writing surfaces of the book would have held around seven-thousand-five-hundred lines of text. The inscription on the cover of one of the books reads:
Palace of Sargon, King of the World, King of Assyria. He caused (the text that begins with the words) Enuma Anu Elil to be inscribed on an ivory tablet and set in his palace of Dur-Sharrukun.
Following the death of King Sargon in 705 BCE, his palace was looted and the books ripped apart, probably to take the hinges that may have been of gold, and the ‘worthless’ boards tossed down the well.
Wooden Writing Tablets
This discovery confirmed San Nicolo’s hypothesis. It had long been known to scholars from cuneiform references to isle’u, that wooden tablets had been used in the old Babylonian kingdom as far back as 1700 BCE. One thousand years later, they were being used in Assyria for making
… religious texts, rituals, reports and royal orders … and for registering the names of individuals, the registration details of an estate, bills of lading for ships, and a recording oil distribution …
Once a set had been positively identified, scholars recognised that Assyrian bas-reliefs provided visual evidence of their use.
The Cuneiform Evidence
They also turned up on equally ancient monuments of the Arameans of Northern Mesopotamia. No example of Hittite writing boards has been discovered to date, but San Nicolo noted that the Hittites, who also employed cuneiform script, mentioned writing some of their records on "wood" and even had a special term for the scribes who did so.
Roman and Greek Versions of Wood Writing Books
Classical scholars have long known that Greeks and Romans used similar wax tablets. Zacharius wrote the name of his son John the Baptist on one such table. Moreover, they continued to be used in Europe at least until the Fourth century CE.
Therefore, writing on wax boards was a rather common practice from at least 1700 BCE until 1500 CE in many Middle East and European cultures.
Wooden Writing Books in Palestine
In her book wherein she draws a picture of daily life in Old Testament times, EW Heaton warns of the dangers facing an unprepared reader of the Hebrew Scriptures:
To open the pages of the Old Testament is, indeed, to enter a foreign territory and its exploration is bound to be fruitless and frustrating, unless we discover by a little preliminary study what to expect, what to look for, and what kind of people we are likely to meet. We shall lose our bearings, if we read our Western civilisation into the Old Testament and assume that the Israelites were exactly like ourselves except for their "Arab-type" clothes.
Papyrus was the chief but not the only writing material. It is unlikely that clay tablets were not used in this period, but animal skins were tanned for leather documents and wooden tablets were almost certainly used (Isaiah 8.1; 30.8).
Putting Ezekiel in Context
What light does the foregoing throw on the verses in Ezekiel 37? All sensible people agree that the interpretation of the passage must be consistent with what we know of the language in which the original was written, and must also be in harmony with the culture in which it was written, and with the background and sitz im leben in which the text was produced.
The language of Ezekiel was Hebrew, a sister language to the Aramaic spoken in Babylon. Ezekiel’s context is the Babylonian world with its customs and practices. The Babylonian word is is cognate to the Hebrew word etz, both of which mean, "wood."
Wood or Stick Made of Ivory! & the New English Bible
How are we to understand the fact that the ivory tablet is called in the Akkadian text,
"an isle’u made of shinpiri" meaning "a wooden [writing] tablet made of elephant tooth [ivory]"
On the face of it, this seems an absurd contradiction, but we use drinking glasses made of plastic. The evidence is clear; is le’u no longer meant "wooden tablet" but "writing tablet" in the same way that the Latin for book is liber, a word originally meaning "tree bark," yet librarians are not experts in the tree-barkology.
With this in mind, we can clearly see how we might justifiably translate the words of Ezekiel as:
"These were the words of the Lord to me: ‘Man, take one leaf of a wooden tablet and write on it, ‘Judah and his associates of Israel.’ Then take another leaf and write on it, ‘Joseph the (wooden tablet) leaf of Ephraim and all his associates of Israel.
Now bring the two together to form one tablet – then they will be a folding tablet (book) in your hand.’"
This translation is faithful to what we know of Ezekiel’s language and culture.
The above translation is taken directly and without any change from the ‘New English Bible’ [NEB], a modern translation sponsored by major Protestant Churches in Great Britain, whose translation of Ezekiel 37 vindicates the Latter-day Saint custom of regarding the "sticks" as written records; one from Judah and the other from Joseph through his son Ephraim.
Continued in next column over
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