Stephen Barkley
The book of Ezekiel has everything Pentecostals should love: visions of God’s glory, the presence of God streaming out like a river, dry bones coming to life, the Holy Spirit in action. Despite this, Ezekiel has been “virtually ignored” by Pentecostals in published literature (13). A. Rebecca Basedo Hill seeks to remedy this with her book-length monograph on the prophet Ezekiel. Here’s what Hill has accomplished:
The goal of this study was to present a literary and theological study of the interrelationship between the glory and holiness of YHWH in the book of Ezekiel from a Pentecostal context. To achieve this goal, this study focused on the vision-narratives that describe the glory of YHWH (chs. 1–3, 8–11, and 40–48) and employed a critically informed Pentecostal hermeneutical strategy of seeing and hearing the book of Ezekiel. (149)
There’s much to appreciate here. Hill has developed a pentecostal-informed hermeneutic of seeing and hearing that suits Ezekiel’s visual and auditory experiences of the presence of God. Consider how this works even in the first chapter of Ezekiel. The prophet sees God’s throne, supported by living creatures and wheels while hearing “like the sound of mighty waters, the thunder of the Almighty, a sound of tumult like the sound of an army” (Ezek 1:24). God engages both sight and sound to make his presence known.
Hill then uses this hermeneutical lens to explore the three visions of God’s glory:
- God appears to Ezekiel in Babylon (Ezek 1–3)
- God leaves his temple in Jerusalem (Ezek 8–11)
- God shows up in Jerusalem again (Ezek 40–48)
Within these visions Hill explores the connection between the glory and holiness of God.
In addition to Hill’s constructive work on Ezekiel, the chapters surveying the history of Ezekiel scholarship are also useful for anyone taking a deeper dive into this most enigmatic of prophets.
Visions of God in Ezekiel may be the first Ezekiel monograph from a Pentecostal perspective, but it’s not the last. Next up on my reading list is Lisa R. Ward’s A Pentecostal Encounter with Ezekiel’s Visions: The Spirit, Power and Affectivity. There are riches to be discovered in this odd prophetic masterpiece!
Hill, A. Rebecca Basedo. Visions of God in Ezekiel: Pentecostal Explorations of the Glory and Holiness of Yahweh. CPT Press, 2019.
