… as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, even if Noah, Daniel and Job were in it, they could save neither son nor daughter. They would save only themselves by their righteousness. – Ezekiel 14:20

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 7, 2014): Ezekiel 14

In the ancient Ugaritic texts, there is a story about a wise man named Danel. Danel is described as a good and just man; one who judges the cause of the widow and defends the rights of the orphan. The text itself is from Northern Syria and was written around the fourteenth century B.C.E. It is a text that has a lot of parallels with Hebrew writing, including Hebrew parallelism and the use of the word El to describe God – a word that is also used to describe God in some portions of the books of Moses. But the texts are not Hebrew. The last Ugarit King, Ammurapi, reigned somewhere around 1215 to 1180 B.C.E. At that time the king wrote a letter describing the dire situation of the near eastern peoples struggling under a threat from the Sea Peoples – seafaring raiders from the Aegean Sea in southern Europe. Apparently the help never came and the city was destroyed around 1178 B.C.E. – around 600 years before the writing of Ezekiel. And yet, even though Ugarit was gone, the story of this wise man named Danel continued to be told throughout the Middle Eastern cultures. Danel became the pattern and description of a just man.

The original Hebrew text of this passage mentions the name Danel, and not Daniel. Translators have most likely made the change to Daniel because Danel is not a wise man from Hebrew literature (both Noah and Job are heroes of the Hebrew Bible.) But there is a problem with the interpretation that the wise man mentioned in this passage is being Daniel. Daniel was a contemporary of Ezekiel, In fact, portions of the story of Daniel occur after the events being described by Ezekiel. And the reality is that the story of Daniel and the captivity would not be complete, nor a part of the wisdom literature of Israel until well after the time of the writing of Ezekiel. To include Daniel in this list really doesn’t make sense. And the placing of the name Danel between Noah and Job would also seem to indicate that Danel had to be a man from antiquity. This would seem to rule out Daniel – and leave us with the Ugarit Danel as our best option in our attempt to identify the man that Ezekiel was describing.

And all three of these men are linked by their inability to save their cultures. Noah’s righteousness was only good enough to save himself and his family during the time of the flood, Job righteousness was only good enough to save himself, he lost all of his children in the tragedy at the beginning the story told by the book that bears his name, and while Danel might have been concerned about the widows and the orphans and had become the pattern of a just man, in the end Danel could not save his culture either. His city burned and his culture died. All that was left was this story of wise man who had once lived in northern Syria. Ezekiel’s message is clear. Each one of the exiles needed to be righteous in order to be saved, they could not depend on anyone else. Daniel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah would not be able to save Israel any more than Noah, Danel and Job could save theirs. Each person needed to develop their own relationship with God. And each person still does.      

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 15

Personal Note: Happy Birthday to my Son, Craig. I hope you have a great day.