The Recognition Formula in the Book of Ezekiel: The Prophet’s Imagination of Hope

Walter Brueggemann argued that an important aspect of the prophetic imagination was that of hope, a hope that energized the community of faith to challenge the hegemonic culture of the day. This article adds to Brueggemann’s affirmation of the power of hope, by entering into a discussion of hope found in Ezekiel. In this study, I propose that Ezekiel drew upon Israel’s pre-exilic eschatological traditions, characterized by the cyclical periodization of history. Key to Ezekiel’s confrontation of the catastrophe of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and the experience of exile, is his use of the Recognition Formula (“then you will know that I am Yahweh”). As it was used in Ezekiel, the Recognition Formula proclaimed Yahweh’s power to bring about the eschaton of the failed first temple period and to create a new era defined by a future temple. Ezekiel’s prophecies energized his traumatized exilic audience by imagining an alternative to Jerusalem’s destruction and the experience of exile in Babylon. Instead, Ezekiel proclaimed that they would recognize the power of Yahweh in the establishment of a second temple era, one that secured the presence of God.