Ezekiel 1:3 "There"

"The word of Yahweh came to Ezekiel the priest, son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar, and there the hand of Yahweh came upon him." (Ezekiel 1:3)

The importance of small words may sometimes be overlooked by a casual reader. But in the case of Ezekiel 1:3, it is likely that the word "there" carries great significance.

In Hebrew, the prophet Ezekiel did not need to add this word to ensure that the reader understood the location of where Yahweh's hand came on Ezekiel (see Ezekiel 37:1; 40:1). The seeming superfluity of the word "there" struck me as I read and translated the Hebrew text.

In both Ezekiel 1:3 and 3:22, Yahweh's hand comes on Ezekiel in a specific place - "there" - in the land of the Chaldeans. Dr. Block comments on the likely significance of this specificity:

"For readers who found incredible the announcement that the heavens had opened to an exile on foreign soil, the editor highlights the location by inserting the emphatic 'there.' For those tempted to view Ezekiel's visionary experience as a flight of fancy, the insertion affirms that this was the occasion on which the prophet was conscripted into the divine service" (Ezekiel, 82-83).

Yahweh spoke to His people while they were exiled and away from the Promised Land, and for some, for Yahweh to reveal visions to exiles would have been entirely unexpected. And Ezekiel's vision was firmly grounded in the historical and geographical reality of the exile to foreign land. For some, this is ostensibly shocking activity on Yahweh's part - He revealed things to his people where? Not in the Promised Land but in Chaldean Land? In translation, it is entirely important to somehow capture the highlighting function of this "there."