Last, but not least, he deliberately did not engage in mourning when his beloved wife died (24:16–18). He also trembled and shook as he ate his food and drank his water (12:18). Fourth, he cut off his hair and burned one-third of it, chopped one-third of it, and scattered the other third to the wind (5:1–4).įurthermore, for a period of time he packed his belongings on his back in the mornings and acted as if he were moving, while at night he began digging through a wall (12:1–7). Third, he ate a strange mixture of foods and grains baked into cakes, using dung as fuel (4:9–17). Second, he lay for a prolonged period on both sides, as mentioned previously (4:4–8). (Please read the biblical text describing the following actions of the prophet.) First, he drew an outline of Jerusalem on a large brick and then played army as he lay siege to the city (4:1–3). Most of Ezekiel’s signs or symbolic actions are recorded in chapters 4, 5, 12, and 24. It will also suggest another, saner explanation for the prophet’s deeds. A survey of these strange actions will provide the basis for this psychiatric diagnosis of Ezekiel. But Ezekiel’s silence, akin to a form of autism, was the mildest form of his unusual behavior. ![]() Consider Ezekiel 3:26: “And I will make thy tongue cling to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover for they are a rebellious house” (see also Ezek. Broome concluded, “There can be no doubt we are dealing with a true psychotic capable of great religious insight.” 1 One of the so-called evidences of this psychotic behavior was the occasional silence Ezekiel displayed. Broome published an article entitled “Ezekiel’s Abnormal Personality.” He proposed, on the basis of classic Freudian theory, that Ezekiel’s behavior was symptomatic of a recognizable mental illness, and that illness was consistent with paranoid schizophrenia, marked by periods of catatonia, narcissism, and masochism. It took Freud’s followers, however, to psychoanalyze the prophet as a severe mental case who only thought he was in contact with God. Klosterman, however, suggested that his illness was an expression of God’s working outside of the prophet’s consciousness. Finally, it shows the purpose and meaning of Ezekiel’s signs for us today.Īs early as 1877, the German scholar, August Klosterman, proposed that Ezekiel suffered from catalepsy-a condition marked by temporary loss of consciousness and rigidity of the body. 4:48)? This article first examines a proposed theory for Ezekiel’s behavior and then offers some defense of his actions. ![]() To what can we attribute behavior such as lying on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for 40 days (Ezek. ![]() On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that Ezekiel engaged in some rather bizarre actions, particularly in the earlier chapters of his book. To lovers of the Bible, such a diagnosis of a biblical prophet is nothing short of blasphemy. Was Ezekiel a paranoid schizophrenic? If not, he must, according to some writers, at least have had an abnormal personality.
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