Ezekiel Chapter 6 African American Parallels

Category : Parallels

Ezekiel 6 presents a prophetic oracle against the mountains of Israel, condemning the idolatrous high places and foretelling their destruction. This chapter’s African American parallels center on the desecration of sacred spaces, the conflict between ancestral veneration and idolatry, and the inescapable memory of trauma in the landscape itself.

1. Prophecy Against the Mountains: Profaning the “High Places”

Context (Ezekiel 6:1-7): God commands Ezekiel to prophesy against the mountains of Israel, declaring that He will bring a sword against them and destroy their high places: altars, shrines, and incense stands used for idol worship.

African American Parallel: This act symbolizes the desecration and co-option of African sacred spaces and practices. Under slavery, traditional African religions, ancestor veneration, and sacred rituals were violently suppressed. The “high places,” such as sacred groves or communal ritual spaces, were destroyed. In their place, a new religious landscape was imposed. The struggle became one of preserving spiritual memory and identity against a system that demanded religious assimilation. The “idols” here parallel the false gods of the slaveholding theology (e.g., using Christianity to justify bondage), which had to be spiritually dismantled.

2. Scattering Bones Around the Altars (Ezekiel 6:5)

Context: God declares, “I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars.”

African American Parallel: This is a powerful image of trauma literally surrounding sites of corrupted worship. It evokes:

  • Lynching trees near churches, where Black bodies were tortured and murdered in a grotesque perversion of Christian community.
  • The unmarked burial grounds of enslaved people on plantation lands, their bones lying around the very property that was an “altar” to the idol of white supremacy and economic greed. The landscape itself holds the evidence of the crime.

3. The Survivors in Exile: Remembrance and Loathing (Ezekiel 6:8-10)

Context: A remnant will survive and be scattered among the nations. There, in exile, they will remember God and how they were broken by their idolatrous hearts. They will “loathe themselves” for the evils they committed.

African American Parallel: This reflects the complex psychology of survival and identity formation in diaspora. The survivors of the Middle Passage and slavery, scattered across America, had to forge a new identity.

  • Remembrance: The preservation of Africanisms in music, storytelling, food, and religious expression became an act of sacred memory.
  • “Loathe Themselves”: This parallels the internalized oppression and colorism that arose, a painful self-rejection fueled by the standards of the dominant culture. It also speaks to the collective grief and repentance some community voices have expressed over internal failures (e.g., violence, misogyny) seen as a betrayal of communal survival.

4. The Land Itself Bears Witness (Ezekiel 6:13-14)

Context: The devastation will be so complete that they will know God is the Lord when their slain lie among their idols and around their altars, “on every high hill and mountain top.” The land itself will be laid waste.

African American Parallel: This connects to the concept of the landscape as a monument to racial trauma. From the auction blocks in Charleston to the bridges of Selma, the American geography is strewn with these “high places” of idolatry (to racism, greed) and suffering. The land bears silent witness. The environmental injustice in Black communities today, toxic waste sites, flooded neighborhoods, can be seen as the continued “laying waste” of the places where the community dwells.

5. The Groaning of the Broken Heart (Implied)

Context: While not explicit in Chapter 6, the overarching theme is the breaking of the “lustful heart” that turned from God. The result is a groaning of the spirit.

African American Parallel: This finds expression in the foundational sound of the spirituals and the blues, a music born from a broken heart, groaning under the weight of exile, yet often directed toward God. It is the sound of holy lament from the “mountains” of suffering.

Overall Parallel: Sacred Geography Under Siege

Ezekiel 6 maps the conflict onto the land itself. For the African American experience, the “mountains of Israel” are transformed into:

  • The plantation as a site of both forced labor and covert spiritual resistance.
  • The Black church as a rebuilt “high place” for the true God in a land of idolatry.
  • The urban center of the Great Migration, which became both a promised land and a new site of struggle.

The chapter’s warning is that the places where a people mix the sacred with the profane (idols of oppression with the worship of liberation) will be shattered, forcing a painful, clarifying remembrance in exile. The community’s survival depends on correctly identifying which “altars” must be torn down.

Recommended Readings

Allen, J., Als, H., Lewis, J., & Litwack, L. F. (1999). Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Twin Palms Publishers.

This book is a collection of photographs documenting lynchings in America, accompanied by essays from the editors.

Cone, J. H. (2022). The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation. 50th Anniversary Edition. Seabury Press.

This work by James H. Cone explores the spirituals and blues as expressions of Black religious experience.

Singleton, T. A. (Ed.). (2020). The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Routledge.

This edited volume examines archaeological findings related to slavery and plantation life.

Stuckey, S. (2013). Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. Oxford University Press.

Sterling Stuckey’s book analyzes the development of Black nationalist thought and culture in America.

Wells-Barnett, I. B. (1996). Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892–1900. Bedford/St. Martin’s. (Original works published 1892–1900)

This collection, edited by Jacqueline Jones Royster, compiles Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s writings on the anti-lynching campaign.

Ezekiel Chapter 5: African American Parallels

Category : Parallels

Ezekiel 5 presents a vivid depiction of divine judgment through powerful symbols: hair, a razor, fire, and sword. These symbols resonate with African American experiences, highlighting themes of fragmentation, intra-community violence under pressure, and the spectacle of public punishment.

The Razor and the Hair: Fragmentation of the Community

Context (Ezekiel 5:1-4): God commands Ezekiel to shave his head and beard, which are symbols of dignity and covenant. He is instructed to divide the hair into three parts:

  • One-third is burned in the city.
  • One-third is struck with the sword around the city.
  • One-third is scattered to the wind.

A small remnant is tucked into his garment, but even some of these are later thrown into the fire.

African American Parallel: This act can be interpreted to symbolize the violent fragmentation of the Black community:

  • The Razor/Sword: Represents systemic violence, such as slavery and Jim Crow laws, that forcibly divided families through sale, lynching, and terror.
  • The Three Parts: Reflects the catastrophic dispersal and different fates of the African diaspora:
  • Burned in the City: Those who perished in the hold of slave ships, on plantations, or in urban poverty.
  • Struck by the Sword: Those killed by racial violence, lynchings, police brutality, and race riots (e.g., Tulsa, Rosewood).
  • Scattered to the Wind: The Great Migration, a forced dispersal not to freedom but to different forms of segregation and inequality in northern cities.
  • The Few Hairs in the Garment: Represents the fragile hope of preserving culture, dignity, and community against all odds, yet still under threat.

“In the Midst of the Nations” and Becoming a Spectacle

Context (Ezekiel 5:5-8, 14-15): God declares that Jerusalem was placed “in the center of the nations,” but for its rebellion, it will become a spectacle of ruin and a warning to other nations. Her punishment will be carried out “in the sight of many nations.”

African American Parallel: This speaks to the historical use of Black suffering as a public spectacle and cautionary tale:

  • The public auction block, lynching postcards, and televised images of fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham made Black suffering a public spectacle.
  • This served both as a warning to other Black people (terror) and, perversely, as a form of entertainment or moralizing for the dominant culture.
  • America’s racial sin has been a visible, global spectacle, affecting the nation’s international standing.

The Cannibalism of Desperation (Ezekiel 5:10)

Context: A specific punishment: “Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers.”

African American Parallel: This extreme symbol parallels how oppression can pit the community against itself, creating desperate, self-destructive dynamics. It echoes in:

  • The brutal force of respectability politics, where some members of the community, internalizing oppression, police and condemn others for “bringing shame.”
  • The violence of intra-community crime fueled by systemic neglect, economic deprivation, and the trauma of a prolonged “siege” environment.
  • It is a metaphor for the consumption of one’s own future, the destruction of youth by systemic forces.

The Triple Punishment: Pestilence, Famine, and Sword (Ezekiel 5:12, 17)

Context: God promises to send a triad of calamities: plague, famine, and violent death.

African American Parallel: This triad maps onto the interlocking systems of destruction faced by the community:

  • Pestilence: Disproportionate health crises, from higher infant mortality to COVID-19 disparities, rooted in systemic neglect.
  • Famine: Food deserts, economic starvation (e.g., sharecropping, wealth gap), and nutritional poverty.
  • Sword: The constant threat of racialized violence, from slave patrols to modern police violence.

Overall Parallel: The Burden of Representation and Judgment

Ezekiel 5 portrays the prophet embodying not just suffering but the divine judgment upon his own people for their sins. This creates a complex parallel: Black prophetic voices have often had to deliver searing internal critique (e.g., against colorism, misogyny, violence) while the community is under external siege. It’s the painful role of diagnosing self-destructive behaviors that are, in part, products of the larger oppressive system.

The chapter is a grim allegory for a community experiencing totalizing catastrophe: scattered, burned, and turned into a warning. The African American parallel lies in seeing that history not as random tragedy but as a structured, almost liturgical enactment of a national sin’s consequences, from which a remnant must strive to rebuild.

Recommended Reading

Gaston, S. (2021). Historical Racist Violence and Intergenerational Harms: Accounts from Descendants of Lynching Victims. American Sociological Review, 694(1), 1–19.

Gomez, M. B. (2016). Policing, Community Fragmentation, and Public Health: Observations from Baltimore. Journal of Urban Health, 93(Suppl 1), 154–167.

Sweeney, M. A. (2013). Reading Ezekiel: A Literary and Theological Commentary. Smyth & Hel

Ezekiel Chapter 4: African American Parallels

Category : Parallels

Symbolic Warnings of Inescapable Judgment

In Ezekiel chapters 4, the prophet enacts symbolic actions that serve as performative prophecies. These acts do not merely predict the future but actively participate in bringing it about. This concept of performative prophecy is evident in the African American tradition, where spirituals functioned as “coded prophetic warnings” operating on two levels: a surface meaning acceptable to slaveholders and a hidden meaning that announced hope for liberation and escape (Teachers Institute, 2026).

The Brick of Jerusalem and the Siege (Ezekiel 4:1-3)

Context: God commands Ezekiel to draw a map of Jerusalem on a clay brick, build miniature siege works against it, and then set an iron pan between himself and the city. He is to lie on his side facing the model for a total of 430 days, bearing their punishment.

African American Parallel: This act parallels the ways Black existence in America has been a lived, bodily “siege.” The iron pan represents the unbreakable barrier of segregation and racism, a divine decree of separation for a time. The prolonged bearing of the posture mirrors the centuries-long burden of systemic oppression. It is not just talked about; it is physically endured. Think of the sit-ins at lunch counters, a silent, physical enactment of protest against the “iron pan” of segregation, embodying the demand for justice through vulnerable presence.

Bearing the Iniquity (Ezekiel 4:4-8)

Context: Ezekiel is told, “I assign you the years of their iniquity.” His body becomes a living ledger, bearing the consequence of the nation’s sin for a prescribed time. The left/right side positions may symbolize the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

African American Parallel: This speaks directly to the concept of Black people bearing the weight of America’s original sin. The doctrine of white supremacy and the economic foundation of slavery created a national “iniquity.” While the oppressor was often in denial, the oppressed community bore its physical, economic, and psychological consequences generationally. The prophet/community embodies the cost of the nation’s moral failure.

The Siege Rations: Defiled Bread (Ezekiel 4:9-17)

Context: God commands Ezekiel to survive on a meager, measured diet of a coarse grain mixture, cooked over human dung. This violates priestly purity laws, symbolizing the defiled, desperate conditions of exile and famine. After Ezekiel’s protest, God concedes to allow cow dung as fuel.

African American Parallel: This is the scarcity and innovation of survival cuisine. The meager, mixed grains find a direct parallel in the creation of soul food. Enslaved Africans were given the poorest rations, the leftovers, scraps, and coarse grains. From this “siege diet,” they innovated sustaining and culturally rich dishes. The “defilement” angle parallels how Black life and culture were deemed “unclean” or inferior by the dominant society, yet became a source of sacred sustenance and identity. The negotiation over the fuel (dung) speaks to the small, hard-won concessions within an oppressive system.

The Measured Water and Trembling Fear (Ezekiel 4:16-17)

Context: Water, too, is rationed. God says the people will eat and drink “with anxiety and dread” because of the coming destruction.

African American Parallel: This reflects the constant insecurity and measured survival under systems of control. From the careful rationing during slavery to the economic precarity of sharecropping and redlining, the ability to secure basic sustenance has always been fraught with “anxiety and dread.” It also speaks to the thirst for justice, a fundamental need met only in carefully measured, insufficient drops by the system.

Overall Parallel: Prophetic Embodiment

Ezekiel 4 isn’t about preaching; it’s about being a living, suffering sign. The African American parallel is found in:

  • The hunger strikes of civil rights activists.
  • The physical endurance of marchers facing violence.
  • The Black body itself as a site of protest and testimony, from auction blocks to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.
  • The cultural alchemy of turning “siege rations” (soul food, blues music) into a cuisine and art form of profound depth.

This chapter illustrates that, for a community in exile, prophecy is often a physical, grueling, and deeply embodied act of bearing witness to the truth of their condition and to the judgment on their captors.

Recommended Reading

Cone, J. H. (1972). A Black Theology of Liberation. Orbis Books.

Joyce, J. M. (2007). VIII—Epistemic Deference: The Case of Chance. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 107(1_pt_2), 187–206.

Lawrence-McIntyre, C. (1987). The Double Meanings of the Spirituals. Journal of Black Studies, 17(4), 379–401.

Teachers Institute. (2026). Our songs, our story: From spirituals to hip-hop- the use of music in the African-American culture. Available from https://theteachersinstitute.org/curriculum_unit/our-songs-our-story-from-spirituals-to-hip-hop-the-use-of-music-in-the-african-american-culture/?utm_source=openai

Ezekiel Chapter 3: African American Parallels

Category : Parallels

“Stunned for Seven Days”

Margaret Odell (2005) analyzes Ezekiel’s seven-day period of stupor (Ezekiel 3:15) as a phase of traumatic absorption and preparation. She asserts that the seven days of sitting “stunned” (shamem) among the exiles is not merely passive waiting, but is a state of shock, desolation, and profound internalization. This period represents the prophet absorbing the full psychological and emotional impact of the bitter-sweet scroll he has just ingested and the devastating vision he has witnessed.

Odell connects this stupor to the “burden” of the prophetic word. The seven days are the necessary somatic and psychological expression of carrying a message of both doom and (eventual) hope before being able to articulate it publicly. She frames this time as a critical preparatory phase in which Ezekiel is effectively “overwhelmed into silence” by the divine word, thereby solidifying his identification with the people to whom he is sent. The public ministry (beginning with the “watchman” speech in verse 16) emerges from this period of traumatic absorption.

Nancy Bowen’s 2010 commentary on Ezekiel provides an additional exegetical foundation for understanding the prophet’s muteness and binding as theological sign-acts demonstrating that prophetic speech is governed solely by God’s timing and purpose. Bowen interprets Ezekiel’s intermittent muteness (Ezekiel 3:24–27; 33:21–22) as a state where the prophet’s speech is entirely under divine control; he speaks only when God opens his mouth. She also interprets Ezekiel’s being “bound with ropes” by his own people (Ezekiel 3:25) as a literal symbol of the social and psychological pressure used to silence challenging truth-tellers from within (Bowen, 2010).

While Bowen does not explicitly apply this framework to the Black radical tradition, the parallel is striking. For the historical context of how figures like Malcolm X and the early Black Panthers were systematically silenced, a complementary source is James H. Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Johnson, 1991). Cone suggests that Malcolm X’s voice was “bound” by media distortion, political ostracism, and even internal community resistance, and how he understood his own speech as a divinely compelled truth breaking through a forced silence (Johnson, 1991).

Reference

Bowen, N. R. (2010). Ezekiel. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Abingdon Press.

Cone, J. H. (1991). Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Orbis Books.

Johnson, C. (February 12, 1991) Book review: Well-rounded look at two Black heroes : Martin & Malcolm & America: A dream or a nightmare by James H. Cone. Orbis Books.

Odell, M. S. (2005). Ezekiel. Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary. Smyth & Helwys.

Resonance of Ezekiel’s Prophetic Identity with Black Prophetic Witness

The book of Ezekiel presents a prophet whose identity is shaped by shared humanity, vulnerability, internal critique, and the burden of warning. These themes, while rooted in the historical context of the Babylonian exile, have found powerful resonance in Black theological readings that see Ezekiel as a model for prophetic witness within suffering communities. The following sections draw on Sweeney’s Ezekiel: A Literary and Theological Commentary (2013), which provides a careful exegesis of key passages.

Eating the Bitter-Sweet Scroll

The vision of eating the scroll (Ezekiel 3:1–3) symbolizes the prophet’s internalization of God’s word, both its judgment (“bitter”) and its divine authority (“sweet”). Sweeney (2013) comments that the scroll tastes sweet; however, its content contains a message of lament, mourning, and woe. The prophet must fully ingest the painful truth before speaking it.

This image has been used in Black preaching and theology to describe how prophetic voices must first absorb the bitter history of racial terror and divine judgment, transforming it into the “sweet” fuel of unshakeable conviction. The metaphor is well recognized in homiletics. Gardner C. Taylor, renowned as the “Dean of Black Preachers,” was celebrated for his prophetic preaching that confronted societal injustices, including racial discrimination. His sermons often exposed the sin of racism and called for repentance, blending sharp critique with hope and grace. In his book Faith in the Fire: Wisdom for Life, Taylor reflects on enduring trials and the importance of patience, emphasizing that while we are called to face “bitter trials,” patience involves active waiting, especially during difficult times (Taylor, 2011). Additionally, in African American Preaching: The Contribution of Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, Gerald Lamont Thomas provides a historical overview of African American preaching, highlighting Taylor’s significant role in the cultural legacy of Black preaching (Thomas, 2007). While specific references to the metaphor of transforming the “bitter” into the “sweet” are not readily available in these sources, the themes of confronting and transcending adversity are central to Taylor’s preaching and the broader tradition of Black homiletics.

 For a direct womanist engagement with prophetic internalization, see Wilda Gafney (2017), which reads prophetic texts with attention to embodied suffering and community accountability. In her work, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (2017), Gafney engages with prophetic internalization by reading prophetic texts with attention to embodied suffering and community accountability. Gafney’s approach is rooted in womanist biblical interpretation, which emphasizes the experiences and perspectives of Black women, focusing on themes of power, authority, voice, agency, hierarchy, inclusion, and exclusion. This perspective aligns with the metaphor of transforming the “bitter” into the “sweet,” as it highlights the process of internalizing and reinterpreting suffering to fuel conviction and action (Gaffney, 2017).

References

Gafney, W. (2017). Womanist Midrash: A reintroduction to the women of the Torah and the throne. Westminster John Knox Press.

Taylor, G. C. (2011). Faith in the fire: Wisdom for life (Rev. ed.). Hay House.

Thomas, G. L. (2007). African American preaching: The contribution of Dr. Gardner C. Taylor. University Press of America.

The Watchman’s Burden

The watchman metaphor (Ezekiel 3:16–21; 33:1–9) establishes the prophet’s ethical responsibility to warn, regardless of reception. Sweeney (2013) explains that “the watchman is accountable for delivering the warning, not for whether the people heed it.” This creates a burden of unavoidable speech.

Black prophetic figures such as Ida B. Wells (anti-lynching), Fannie Lou Hamer (voting rights), and Martin Luther King Jr. (in his later, radical phase) embody this burden: they spoke judgment on a nation knowing they might be rejected. For scholarly treatments of King’s later prophetic critique, see James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America (1991), and for Wells as a prophet, see Emilie M. Townes, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (2006). The Ezekiel watchman framework can be constructively applied to these figures, even if no single source has done so with the level of detail described in earlier claims.

References

Gafney, W. (2017). Womanist midrash: A reintroduction to the women of the Torah and the throne. Westminster John Knox.

Cone, J. H. (1991). Martin & Malcolm & America: A dream or a nightmare. Orbis Books.

Townes, E. M. (2006). Womanist ethics and the cultural production of evil. Palgrave Macmillan.

Sweeney, M. A. (2013). Reading Ezekiel: A Literary and Theological Commentary. Smyth & Helwys.

Ezekiel Chapter 2: African American Parallels

Category : Parallels

“Son of Man” in Exile

In his 2013 commentary, Ezekiel: A Literary and Theological Commentary, M. A. Sweeney interprets the prophet’s title “Son of Man” (ben ‘adam) as emphasizing his shared humanity and vulnerability within the exiled community. This linguistic point establishes that the prophet’s authority is not derived from royal or priestly privilege but from his membership in the suffering people. This perspective aligns with the Black prophetic tradition, where leaders emerge from and are deeply connected to the communities they serve.

 Sweeney’s commentary further discusses Ezekiel’s role as a “watchman” to the exiles (Sweeney, 2013), emphasizing the prophet’s responsibility to warn the people of impending judgment. He further examines the symbolic acts required of Ezekiel, such as lying on his side and eating defiled bread, which serve to illustrate the fate of the people. Ezekiel’s prophetic identity is thus one of vulnerability: he is called to embody the fate of his people through symbolic acts such as lying on his side and eating defiled bread (Ezekiel 4–5), thereby physically enacting that fate (Sweeney, 2013).

Ezekiel’s commission to a “rebellious house” (Ezekiel 2:3, 3:9) entails a dual critique: confronting both the external oppressor (Babylon) and Israel’s internal failures (idolatry, despair, moral compromise). Sweeney (2013) suggests that the phrase “rebellious house” shapes the prophet’s task, requiring him to speak truth to power and also to call his own community to account.

While Sweeney does not directly apply these ideas to Black theology, the parallel is evident: the Black prophetic voice must address both systemic injustice (white supremacy) and internal community challenges (internalized oppression, class division). This dual focus is a recurring theme in Black theological ethics, though no single scholarly source has developed it using Ezekiel’s “rebellious house” motif as explicitly as some constructive arguments suggest.

References

Sweeney, M. A. (2013). Reading Ezekiel: A literary and theological commentary. Smyth & Helwys.

Ezekiel Chapter 1: African American Parallels

Category : Parallels

Ezekiel’s Throne-Chariot and the Great Migration: A Theological Reflection

The connection between Ezekiel’s vision of the mobile throne and the Great Migration (c. 1916–1970) is profound. For millions of African Americans leaving the rural, terror-filled South for Northern and Western cities, this period was not merely a demographic shift; it was a theological exodus, an embodied search for the “Promised Land.” Ezekiel’s text provided a powerful framework for understanding their journey.

The Great Migration as Lived Eschatology: A “Chariot” Heading North

For Ezekiel, the merkabah (throne-chariot) revealed that God was not confined to the ruined Temple in Jerusalem. God’s presence could, and did, travel into the heart of Babylon. As Howard Thurman (1976) most likely would have suggested, given his theological viewpoints, this image of a mobile God was central to African American faith under oppression. The parallel to the Great Migration is direct: for sharecroppers in Mississippi and Alabama, the dominant religion of the white South often presented God as sanctifying the racial order. The Great Migration was, theologically, a rejection of that stationary god. The belief that God could be encountered in Chicago, Detroit, or Harlem and that God’s throne was mobile enough to accompany them on the Illinois Central railroad was a radical act of faith, mirroring the exilic conviction that Yahweh journeys with the captives.

The “Wheels within Wheels”: Complex, Mysterious Providence

The mechanized, mysterious movement of the wheels spoke of a divine purpose often inscrutable to those living through it. Kirk-Duggan (1997) has shown how this image functioned in the spirituals as a symbol of God’s hidden yet active sovereignty amid suffering. The Great Migration was driven by a complex interplay of push factors (lynching, Jim Crow, economic peonage) and pull factors (wartime industrial jobs, reports of less violence), as documented by Isabel Wilkerson. For migrants, the journey North was an act of both desperation and hope: a “wheel within a wheel.” The divine ruach (spirit/wind) in the wheels could be seen in inexplicable moments of grace and guidance: the stranger who offered a meal, the clandestine network of information about where to go, the sudden opportunity for work.

The “Eyes All Around”: God as Witness and Guide

For African Americans on a dangerous journey (fleeing the Klan, navigating unknown cities), the belief that “God sees me” was a survival theology. It was not merely about divine surveillance but about guidance and protection. Arthur C. Jones, a clinical psychologist and music scholar, has extensively studied African American spirituals. He founded The Spirituals Project at the University of Denver, focusing on preserving and revitalizing these sacred songs. Jones’s work (2005) highlights how spirituals articulate the conviction that God witnesses the suffering of the oppressed and acts on their behalf. While specific references to the “eyes all around” imagery in his publications are not readily available, his broader research supports the interpretation that spirituals convey themes of divine observation and protection.

African American spirituals often served as coded messages, providing guidance and hope during perilous journeys, such as escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad. Songs like “Follow the Drinking Gourd” offered directions to freedom, while others conveyed messages of divine protection and the belief that God was watching over them. This aligns with the interpretation of the “eyes all around” as a metaphor for God’s providential care.

Hence, the “eyes all around” in Ezekiel’s vision symbolize God’s omniscient presence, a theme that resonates in African American spirituals, which convey the belief in divine observation and protection during times of suffering and migration.

Movement “Without Veering”: Toward a Destination of Freedom

In Ezekiel’s account, the wheels’ ability to move straight in any direction symbolized divine purpose and unwavering intent. While the reality of the North was often disillusioning, for  Northern racism was different but pervasive, the theological narrative of the journey remained oriented toward freedom. The Migration was seen not as aimless wandering but as a collective movement toward a “new Jerusalem,” however imperfect. The “chariot” was headed toward a promised, if not fully realized, liberation from what many called the “Babylon” of the Jim Crow South.

A New “Sanctuary” in a Foreign Land

Just as Ezekiel 11:16 recast God as a “sanctuary” in exile, the migrants built new sacred and communal institutions in the North. The rapid growth of storefront churches, Black newspapers, social clubs, and civic associations was the practical outworking of the mobile throne theology. God’s presence was being reestablished in a new land through new community structures. Massive congregations like Chicago’s Olivet Baptist Church became centers of spiritual, social, and political life for the newly arrived (Wilkerson, 2010).

The Sober Counterpoint: The “Babylon” of the North

A mature theological reading must also acknowledge the disillusionment. The North proved to be another “Babylon” of segregation, redlining, and police violence. Here, Ezekiel’s vision takes on a second layer of meaning: the mobile throne means God is also present in the midst of ongoing exile. The Great Migration did not end the exile; it relocated it. The theological task became, as it was for the exiles in Babylon, how to sing the Lord’s song in this new, still-unjust land. The answer lay in the same vision: God’s throne is still mobile, still watching, and still moving toward a freedom not yet fully realized.

In sum, the Great Migration can be understood as a mass, historical enactment of Ezekiel’s throne-chariot theology. It was a journey fueled by a faith in a God who travels with the exiled, sees their suffering, guides their path through mysterious providence, and promises, through the very act of movement, a future of greater freedom. It was a story of a people, like Ezekiel, discovering that the glory of God had, in fact, left the old temple and was now moving with them on a train heading North.

References

Jones, A. C. (2005). Wade in the water: The wisdom of the spirituals (2nd ed.). Orbis Books.

Kirk-Duggan, C. A. (1997). Exorcizing evil: A womanist perspective on the spirituals. Orbis Books.

Kirk-Duggan, C. A. (2014). Womanist theology as a corrective to African American theology. In A. B. Pinn & K. G. Cannon (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of African American theology (pp. 267–279). Oxford University Press.

Thurman, H. (1976). Jesus and the disinherited. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1949)

Wilkerson, I. (2010). The warmth of other suns: The epic story of America’s great migration. Random House.

Ezekiel: A Prophetic Blueprint for Resilience and Restoration

Category : Parallels

Ezekiel provides the biblical archetype for a community processing the trauma of exile, reestablishing its identity around a God of justice who is present in suffering, and sustaining a prophetic hope for collective resurrection and restoration. This archetype has been, and continues to be, profoundly mirrored and embodied in the African American journey.

Both communities experienced cataclysmic displacement and collective trauma. During the Babylonian exile, Judah was defeated, the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed (587 BCE), and elite members of Hebrew society were forced into deportation. For the people of Israel, this was not just a military loss but also a theological crisis, shattering the core identity and covenant-based worldview. A similar crisis ensued for African Americans who were exiled from ancestral lands, languages, and cultures. The forced enslavement aimed to erase their identity as an act of “social death.”

Both communities grappled with a theological crisis and the relocation of the Divine. Presented with a “Christian” theology that was used to justify slavery, Africans in diaspora began to ask, Where is God? Their answer was to connect with the Deity through covert worship meetings and later the Black Church. Their religious practices assured them that God was not on the side of the oppressor in the big house white church, but present with the suffering in the brush arbors and the hush harbors, those secret, secluded, often wooded places where enslaved African Americans met, away from overseers, to worship, pray, and find strength in each other.

Prophetic judgments were pronounced against corrupt systems in both communities. Just as Ezekiel’s oracles condemned the corruption, idolatry, and injustice of Judah’s political and religious leaders, prophetic voices in the African American community called out the moral and spiritual hypocrisy of a nation that professed Christian liberty while practicing racial tyranny.

For both communities, metaphors of death led to prophesies of hope. For the prophet Ezekiel, the vision in the valley of dry bones pertained to a despairing people whose bones were dried up and whose hope was lost (Ezekiel 37:11). In response, Ezekiel prophesied life to a nation that was politically and spiritually “dead.” For African Americans, the metaphor of social and spiritual death under slavery and oppression found perfect expression in this text. Black spirituals and sermons transformed the vision into a central statement of eschatological hope: God could and would resurrect a people from conditions of mortal despair.

Both communities experienced the promise of restoration. Ezekiel’s later prophecies shift to promises of return, cleansing, and internal transformation: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you” (Ezekiel 36:26). The detailed blueprint for a new Temple and land (Ezekiel 40-48) symbolizes a reconstituted, just, and holy community. Likewise, the long struggle for freedom, civil rights, and equality among African Americans embodies this hope for a restored community and a just society. It is the hope for a nation with a “new heart,” representing a commitment to a national moral renewal that is forever “not yet” fully realized but continuously worked toward.

The above examples illustrate how Ezekiel’s archetype provides a profound framework for understanding resilience and the ongoing pursuit of justice. Both the Babylonian exiles and the Africans in diaspora endured suffering and corrupt systems, all the while sustaining hope for collective resurrection and social restoration. Their journeys trace a common arc from displacement and theological crisis toward a re‑imagined divine presence.

Parallels for Key Themes in Ezekiel

Category : Parallels

Parallels to the African American experience are based on several key theological themes described in the following paragraphs.

God of the Oppressed: The theme of God acting in history to “reverse the fortunes of the powerless” and challenge imperial powers is the core thesis of Black liberation theologian James Cone’s work.  Cone notes, “The God of the oppressed is taking sides in the historical struggle of freedom. In this struggle, God acts ‘to reverse the fortunes of the powerless’ and ‘to unmask the pretensions of the powerful’” (Cone, 1975, p. 63). Cone systematically argues that God’s identity is revealed in the history of liberation of the oppressed, drawing explicit parallels between the God who delivered Israel from Egypt and the God who sides with Black Americans in their struggle. While Cone focuses broadly on the biblical narrative, his hermeneutical principle can be applied directly to prophets such as Ezekiel.

Prophetic Justice: B. K. Blount’s work (2007) explicitly connects the prophetic tradition, including Ezekiel’s call for justice, to contemporary social justice movements. He frames the African American biblical interpreter as a “witness of resistance,” using scripture to advocate for life in the face of death-dealing systems. The direct application of Ezekiel’s call for justice to modern cries of “Black Lives Matter” is a clear extension of this hermeneutic, as analyzed in his commentary and related essays.

Reunification and Identity: Ezekiel’s vision of two sticks can be interpreted as a call to bring together the broken, divided members of the Black community, fostering unity amid fragmentation. In “The Functional Aim: Building Community,” M. J. Brown (2004) analyzes how African American interpreters use texts like Ezekiel 37:15-28 (the two sticks) to address internal community fragmentation caused by systemic oppression. He documents how this passage is interpreted not merely as a historical note about Israel and Judah, but as a divine mandate for healing, reconciliation, and unity within the Black community, a restoration of collective identity and purpose.

These parallels don’t imply identical situations, but they show how a biblical narrative of communal trauma, prophetic critique, and resilient hope has provided a powerful theological framework for interpreting and enduring the African American exilic journey.

References

Blount, B. K. (2007). Then the whisper put on flesh: New Testament ethics in an African American context. Abingdon Press.

Brown, Michael Joseph. (2004). Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship. Trinity Press International.

Cone, James H. (1975). God of the oppressed. Harper & Row.

Womanist Perspectives on the Exile

Category : Parallels

by Lorrie C. Reed, M.Div., Ph.D.

Interpreting the Book of Ezekiel from an African American perspective often emphasizes themes of exile, forced displacement, racial trauma, the struggle for identity, and ultimate restoration (resurrection). Moreover, from a womanist theological perspective, I would argue that any analysis of “the African American experience” that does not explicitly attend to gender, sexuality, and the specific violences faced by Black women is incomplete and potentially oppressive in its own right. The themes of exile, prophetic witness, and liberation provide frameworks and direct parallels.

This premise, which is anchored in the African American experience, asserts that Black women have been banished from their homeland and from full personhood within both White society and Black communities shaped by patriarchy. The gendered metaphors of exile in Ezekiel 16 and 23 reinforce this notion, where Jerusalem is portrayed as an abused and exiled woman. A womanist reading might reclaim these troubling texts, not to blame the victim, but to highlight how systems of power (Babylonian, patriarchal) use sexualized violence as a tool of conquest and control. The “exile” is not just geopolitical but also bodily and spiritual.

In my opinion, the “exile” in Ezekiel symbolizes not just physical displacement but a state of spiritual and social rupture. The “inherited exile” of Black women in the United States is an exile created by the intersecting oppressions of racism, sexism, and classism, which alienate them from full belonging in society and often within religious communities.

I argue that just as Ezekiel’s prophetic dirges named the trauma of exile while holding space for hope and critique, Womanist cultural production (through literature, music, activism, and theology) similarly voices lament, resistance, and the envisioning of liberation from America’s oppressive structures. By framing Black women’s experience through the exilic narrative, womanist thought does not accept oppression as natural. Instead, it follows Ezekiel’s pattern: naming the reality of evil in order to envision and work toward a “New Jerusalem,” a community defined by justice, wholeness, and salvific hope.

Visions of Judgment and Restoration:

Category : Parallels

Parallels between the Babylonian and African American Exile Experiences

by Dr. Lorrie C. Reed, M.Div., Ph.D.

The Purpose of This Project

This project is part of a Bible study series that aims to draw parallels between the Book of Ezekiel and the African American experience in the U.S. and involves examining themes of exile, suffering, prophetic critique, and hope for restoration.

The prophetic experience of Ezekiel unfolds within the brutal reality of forced displacement following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. The event represented a catastrophic rupture involving the loss of homeland, national identity, and, most fundamentally, the temple, the locus of divine presence and worship. It was a profound and traumatic disorientation for Ezekiel and his community, severing them from the physical and spiritual anchors of their existence.

The Babylonian exile finds a powerful analogue in the African American experience, initiated by the violence of the Middle Passage and chattel slavery. This system constituted a primary, mass exile, violently removing people from their ancestral lands, languages, and cultural frameworks, creating a diaspora defined by profound loss and alienation.

I contend that both communities experienced the profound theological insight that divine presence accompanies the oppressed in a foreign land. This realization became a cornerstone of hope for exiles in Babylon and the African diaspora.

The African American experience witnessed the development of Black theology and the institution of the Black church, which stood as a powerful testament to God’s sustaining presence amid systemic oppression. These spaces became the “sanctuary” in a hostile land, affirming that the divine was not the oppressor’s property but was instead in solidarity with the enslaved and marginalized.

Throughout African American history, prophetic voices arose to condemn the moral bankruptcy of a national system built on slavery and later Jim Crow segregation. Prophetic voices from Frederick Douglass to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pronounced judgment on America’s hypocrisy and called for a righteousness rooted in justice.

Then, there was the potent lament in the valley of dry bones. The prophetic voice was commanded to prophesy to these bones, resulting in their re-clothing with flesh and spirit, symbolizing national resurrection from the death of exile. For African Americans, this text articulates a hope for social and spiritual resurrection amid the dehumanizing “death” inflicted by slavery and oppression, asserting that no condition is beyond the reach of God’s revitalizing power.

Finally, Ezekiel’s prophecy shifts decisively from judgment to the promise of restoration. God pledges to gather the scattered people, cleanse them, and perform an inner transformation: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you… I will put my Spirit in you” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). In the African American experience, the enduring struggle for freedom, civil rights, and full equality embodies this persistent hope for a restored and just society. It represents a journey toward the promise of a new heart for the nation and a restored community.

I will post new insights regularly. In the meantime, shalom!

Dr. Lorrie C. Reed, author of Witness in the Dust and Deep River Crossings.

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