Marking Nations Around New Jerusalem: The Mental Map of Ezekiel in the Babylonian Context

Abstract

The present study looks at how gentilics, usually attested in traditional biblical topoi from the Pentateuch, are re-contextualized in Ezekiel to provide a mental map of the peoples of the known Earth during the Exilic period. The basic constituents of Ezekiel’s mental map of foreign peoples recall some of the configurations known from the Babylonian mental map tradition. One known iteration of the latter is the Babylonian World Map (BM 92687). The document presents several interesting features as to how mental maps are formed in the Babylonian context. Its composition may date back to the late eighth century BCE. It is an iteration of the Babylonian mental map with a unique unmarked epicentre. Furthermore, it was probably impressed on clay on the occasion of a military campaign or itinerant work concerning specific toponyms in southern Babylonia. Finally, it was copied for scribal purposes in the Neo-Babylonian period. The present study proposes that these dynamics of the Babylonian mental map help understand Ezekiel’s mental map of foreign peoples. Aspects of Ezekiel’s mental map owe to an older Hebrew tradition partly known from the Pentateuch, although it is a unique iteration for Ezekiel’s oracles against the nations with historical references to the Exilic period. Jerusalem is the epicentre. Two main rings of foreign peoples encircle Jerusalem. The first circle comprises Judah’s neighbours from the east, south, west, and northwest. The second circle picks up from the northwest going up the coast, then south to Egypt, and finally east and northeast with Gog of Magog. Ezekiel concludes with the Temple Vision confirming Jerusalem’s central position. This case study implies that Ezekiel encountered and independently adapted aspects of the Mesopotamian mental map. Comparisons such as the one attempted here can illustrate the potential of ancient Near Eastern intertextuality and cultural hybridity.

1. Introduction

The Babylonian background of Ezekiel has been the subject of multiple studies (Bodi 1991; Rom-Shiloni and Carvalho 2015; Ganzel 2021; all with a further bibliography). Different segments of Assyrio-Babylonian texts, iconography, and literature have been highlighted to explain or better understand selected compositional, textual, or lexical elements in the Book of Ezekiel traditionally attributed to the Exilic period, with some scholars considering a post-Exilic era milieu (Greenberg 1997; Klein 2008; Tooman 2011).1 Jewish communities in Mesopotamia were in contact with the Babylonian culture around them during both periods. One also recalls that the cuneiform tradition continued well into the first century CE (Geller 1997). The extant and edited cuneiform literature is considerable but not complete, whereas Aramaic and other alphabet-based texts (Ammonite, Moabite, etc.) were more widespread than their present-day state of discovery. Their impact should, therefore, also be considered in the background for Ezekiel’s composition (Postgate 1993). One can also include ancient Iranian traditions, known again from limited sources (Russell 2003; Annus 2009), remembering that ancient Iranians were active in Mesopotamia (Dandamayev 2015). Given that alphabet-based text traditions co-existed with cuneiform literature, the Book of Ezekiel can be included amongst the former. Alphabet-based and cuneiform texts shared the same ancient Near Eastern space. Ezekiel was among the texts within the same space of literary interactions. In other words, Ezekiel’s Babylonian context can be seen in light of an ancient Near Eastern intertextuality.

Wisnom describes intertextuality carefully as follows: “A system where texts relate to each other. It encompasses all types of text within it, and all the different ways that they can relate, whether by deliberate allusion, quotation, use of stock phrases which are shared by other texts, echoing of a concept, or even just a casual similarity which reminds the reader of something they came across elsewhere… Intertextuality is really a property of language itself, in that in any language, culture, or literary system, there are bound to be phrases, topics, figures of speech that recur, and which are the building blocks we use to create new utterances, sentences, and images. This, at least, is closer to what the term originally meant when it was coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966 (Kristeva 1982), as a philosophical statement about the nature of language” (Wisnom 2020, pp. 1–2). Going beyond the influence of one source over another, or a literary allusion, Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality rather seeks to explore how components of a textual system, such as a given genre, contains a system of signs that may be transposed to lead into new articulations (Kristeva 1980, p. 17). A given word’s meaning is dynamic and can be better understood by its use in other texts and genres (Alfaro 1996, p. 268). A deliberate allusion is only one facet of a given intertextuality. A literary allusion refers the deliberate use of specific markers for the import of specific external texts or themes in a given source text (Ben-Porat 1976). Markers in Babylonian texts were unique terms, lexemes, phrases, or specific lines from a given source text (Weissert 1997, pp. 192–93; Adalı 2011, pp. 100–3; Wisnom 2020, pp. 2–3). The Book of Ezekiel is known to allude to verses from within itself and from other parts of the Bible (Lyons 2007; Tooman 2011). The multiple discussions of Babylonian elements in the Book of Ezekiel have mostly rather been concerned with the influence of the former on the latter (Peterson 2012, pp. 28–33). Most of the research, therefore, touches only upon one part of ancient Near Eastern intertexuality, one between the Book of Ezekiel and cuneiform texts (Bodi 1991; Rom-Shiloni and Carvalho 2015; Ganzel 2021; all with further bibliography). The present research is situated within this portion of the presently discussed ancient Near Eastern intertextuality, although we will try to go beyond merely trying to detect influences in Ezekiel. This will be attempted by investigating how similarities between the mental map of Ezekiel and that of the Babylonian World Map offer a case of intertextuality between two cultural frameworks.

The formulation of ancient Near Eastern intertextuality implies that Ezekiel’s Babylonian context should go beyond criteria of comparisons decided purely on the themes evoked in Babylonian cuneiform sources. Admittedly, the present state of finds favors comparisons with cuneiform sources, as the latter offers the most sizable database. This imbalance should nevertheless be kept in mind in drawing pertinent conclusions. The Book of Ezekiel is not a passive recipient of Mesopotamian concepts. It contains deliberate adaptations into its own theology (e.g., Nissinen 2023, p. 59). Ezekiel alludes to parts of the Pentateuch, to forms of texts transmitted in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The latter two represent pre-Exilic Hebrew traditions that supply the kernel of Hebrew religious law (Peterson 2012, pp. 61–68).2

Ezekiel’s role as an independent interpreter of the Exilic world and its intertextuality must also be considered. The Book of Ezekiel rejects polytheism and maintains Hebrew law. This dynamic co-exists with various themes and topoi prevalent in the polytheism-dominated Babylonian cultural world around the Jewish communities between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. The Jewish community mostly did not emulate Babylonian sources but rather the latter provided models. The Hebrew tradition elaborated on these models with its own standards and innovations (e.g., Ganzel 2021). In exploring these issues, this study will be based on the final form of the Book of Ezekiel. This approach will help focus on the book’s Babylonian context with regard to its mental map and will allow for information to consider for researchers with different methodologies, such as for those interested in literary structures or holistic interpretations, or those who opt for text-critical approaches to try to discern layers of authors or editors.

The present study will seek to see how Ezekiel’s intertextuality in a Babylonian context redefines Ezekiel’s use of gentilics and geographical names to provide a mental map. The notion of a mental map refers mostly to a community’s mental images of geographical spaces around them; it is built on shared perceptions, views, and values of such spaces to serve as the basis of individual or communal actions (Gould 1973, pp. 182–84). Ancient Mesopotamia’s mental map is intricately connected to its cartography, although the two should still be distinguished. Geographical information was transmitted in writing from cuneiform’s invention until the last wedge was impressed on clay. Maps drawn or geographically described merely in text comprise a diverse range of genres. These included itineraries and maps that contain drawings, as well as verbal descriptions. Most maps focused on the urban landscape, on fields, economic assets, or celestial topics, at times utilizing mathematical tools (Millard 1987; Rochberg 2012). On the other hand, Mesopotamia’s “mental map” can be traced especially in maps and itineraries, although it is not limited to these genres. It can also be detected in a wider range of genres. This is why close readings of texts can uncover perceptions and values concerning geographical space, along with ideological and other tropes based mostly—although not exclusively—on verbal descriptions (Pongratz-Leisten 2001; Michalowski 2010, p. 148). A full exploration of these is certainly beyond the present study. An example of the Babylonian mental map about the known world is impressed upon a clay cuneiform tablet held in the British Museum (BM 92687), dubbed the Babylonian World Map (BWP, edited in Horowitz 1998, pp. 20–42). It is unique among known Mesopotamian (and to some degree also Mediterranean) maps (Horowitz 1998, pp. 27, 38–41, although see shortly below that its cosmic river was also known to archaic Greek geographical tradition as Oceanus, which means that at least some of the BWP’s content was known from elsewhere in the Mediterranean). BM 92687 may be described as “a diagram to show the relation of these places [the lands and regions mentioned] to the world of the Babylonians” (Millard 1987, p. 111), and “a diagrammatic image of the world” (Rochberg 2012, p. 32). It is a document that expresses geographical ideas about the known earth. In this regard, it is clearly an expression of the Babylonian mental map of the world. Regardless of whether it was or was not a part of Mesopotamian cartography and the predominant genres of maps, it was certainly part of the Mesopotamian mental map tradition (Pongratz-Leisten 2001, pp. 274–76).

The BWP contains the drawing and visuals of several lands outside Babylonia and toponyms in southern Mesopotamia, along with the world’s distant regions and the cosmic river. The descriptions are not always fully preserved but they do have mythic elements (Horowitz 1998, pp. 33–40). Passages about mythical beings in distant lands can be found, and descriptions sometimes allude to legends and epics about Sargon of Agade and Utnapištim of the Gilgamesh epic, as well as themes from the Babylonian creation epic Enuma elish, and perhaps the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, all probably pointing to a Neo-Assyrian period for some of the descriptions (Pongratz-Leisten 2001, pp. 275–76; Zamazalová 2013). BM 92687, as an expression of the Babylonian mental map tradition as presently discussed, frames lands and regions in concentric circles. The BWP is a document of the ancient Near Eastern context. This is a context shared by Ezekiel. The order of the oracles against the nations (OANs) in the final and canonical form of Ezekiel follow a similar circular route, thereby inviting the comparative analysis to be undertaken in this study. To this end, BM 92687 (i.e., the BWP) is first discussed further in the next section, especially with regard to its circular frames. Ezekiel’s OANs are selected because they openly name and address foreign lands that comprise most of the known world. They also present an underlying mental map and a geographical order amidst their mostly non-geographical content (for the general content and several complex issues concerning OANs in Ezekiel and in other books of the Hebrew Bible, see (Crouch 2011; Lee 2016; Bezzel et al. 2022)). The OANs treated in this study are those against the lands Ammon (Ezekiel 25:1–7), Moab (25:8–11), Edom (25:12–14), Philistia (25:15–17), Tyre (26–28), Sidon (28:20–23), Egypt (29–32), Edom (35:15, 36:5), and Magog (38–39), in this geographical order. In Ezekiel’s canonical form, this geographical order ends with the Temple Vision (40–48). This vision draws certain descriptions from its Babylonian milieu but “in many ways it is revolutionary”, offering original content to strongly express a sinless New Jerusalem where the temple’s purity is protected (Ganzel 2021, pp. 151–52). YHWH does not abandon it, unlike before when, according to Ezekiel, the sins of Israel and Judah led to divine abandonment. Several themes in Ezekiel’s OANs are also connected with the treatment of Judah’s sins in the theology of the Book of Ezekiel (Lee 2016; Langley 2022, pp. 174–75).

The present study explores Ezekiel’s combined use of gentilics and foreign lands, with Jerusalem placed at the centre of a mental map. It is proposed that Ezekiel’s mental map shares features with the Babylonian mental map as exemplified with BM 92687, i.e., the BWP. The features center on the circular framing of foreign lands with a view of the entire known world. A comparison between the two sources show how gentilics and geographical names are re-articulated and Ezekiel’s underlying configuration of geographical names, phrases, and formulae are diversified to provide its own mental map within an ancient Near Eastern intertextuality.

2. The Babylonian World Map

An ancient Near Eastern intertextuality strongly suggests that aspects of Ezekiel’s mental map of foreign peoples may be understood in part by recalling aspects of the Babylonian mental map tradition. The mental map of any society is rich and not all of it is documented. The BWP is one surviving iteration of the Babylonian mental map. It presents several interesting features as to how mental maps are formed in Babylonian context. The known world in the BWP is delineated in a circle rather than the four corners (Horowitz 1998, p. 21). The obverse contains a drawing of the known world bound by a giant cosmic ocean in the form of a circling saltwater river, corresponding to Oceanus in Greek tradition (Horowitz 1998, p. 26; Zamazalová 2013, pp. 61–65). This is not the modern ocean but rather the salt sea that was believed to surround the known world. In Akkadian, this salt sea is named marratum or “bitter river”. It includes different bodies of salt water in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf (Horowitz 1998, p. 41). One recalls that Greek Oceanus was also a river god.

Assyria, Babylonia, Der, and Urartu are major geographical regions in the BWP, where a limited number of other geographical names are included. The choices probably reflect a given period. The period in question is not self-evident. Several clues may point to the reign of Sargon II (722–705 BCE), king of Assyria (Zamazalová 2013, p. 23). The BWP also mentions the Chaldean tribe and region of Bīt Yakin. This was the powerful Chaldean tribe that rivalled Sargon II in southern Babylonia (Zamazalová 2013, p. 50). Urartu was another rival of the same king until the Assyrian victory against this kingdom in a military campaign dated to around 714 BCE (Mayer 2013). The mention of lands beyond the Ocean coincides with the time when the Assyrians were expanding into the Mediterranean in collaboration with Tyre and Phoenician vassals against Ionian and other peoples who were sometimes dubbed under the term Yamnāya; Cyprus was one of the major targets (Zamazalová 2013, pp. 32–40). As mentioned above, the BWP mentions Sargon of Akkad, and one of his rivals in legend, Nur-Dagan of Purušhanda in central Anatolia (Horowitz 1998, p. 36). This also pertains to Sargon II’s interest in the lore of Sargon; furthermore, the Great Wall on the BWP may point to Sargon II’s chain of fortresses established in central Anatolia (Zamazalová 2013, pp. 25–32).

Four equally distant points are assumed along the circular ocean, covering most of the known world (Horowitz 1998, p. 21). Beyond the ocean, the BWP lists eight distant regions (nagû) for which additional descriptions are provided (Horowitz 1998, pp. 30–33). The mention of the canal, swamp, and similar topographic features can be seen as natural barriers accompanying the ocean (Zamazalová 2013, pp. 40–41). This includes the “ruined cities” (ālānu abtūtu) mentioned on the obverse of the BWP, corresponding to the two “city” (uru) notations on opposite parts of the map (Horowitz 1998, p. 21, nos 2, 11). City (uru) seems to refer to uninhabited ancient cities no longer possible to identify (Horowitz 1998, p. 33).

The epicenter of the BWP, interestingly enough, is not Assyria or Babylonia. Rather, it is curiously marked in a different way. Piotr Michalowski puts it this way: “…we expect Babylon to occupy the central space, but the point representing this city is actually somewhat further north, and the center is marked, but not inscribed, so that one is at a loss to determine just what the person who drew this meant to represent at this central point” (Michalowski 2010, p. 147). The mark at the centre is a small circle (Horowitz 1998, p. 21). Its function is unknown. It may have represented the location of the scribes who composed the BWP. In any case, Delnero situates Babylon’s role in the BWP as follows: “Although there is little doubt that Babylon occupies a place of importance on the map, reducing the significance of the map to the centrality of Babylon makes it difficult to read or interpret the map in any other way. But once the static, core-periphery interpretation of the map is abandoned, or the possibility of other interpretations is considered, it becomes easier to recognize that the locations on the map are interconnected points that take the viewer on a visual journey from one end of the map to the other, revealing a critical aspect of the map that had previously been overlooked” (Delnero 2018, p. 34).

Delnero points that a key part of the BWP includes the canal (bitqu) and the swamp (apparu). These topographical features do not seem to be cosmological. They also seem connected somehow with the BWP’s distant regions (nagû). Another toponym in the BWP, i.e., Habban, probably corresponds to Bīt-Habban, a region east of the Tigris and touching upon the Zagros. The BWP also mentions the league (bēru) distances in the distant regions. The mention of the bēru is common to itineraries. One may posit, therefore, that the BWP expressed an itinerary that proceeds in a circular way, going along the mentioned topographical features (Delnero 2018, pp. 29–34). Delnero proposes that the itinerary begins with Habban (Delnero 2018, Figure 1) and runs counterclockwise along the inner circle of the ocean (marratum “river” in Babylonian, also traversable) on the BWP, also following the direction of the cuneiform writing (Delnero 2018, pp. 32–36). The second itinerary begins from the outer rim, which Delnero proposes could run clockwise following again the direction of the inscription, and the second-person durative verb alāku, ‘to go’, accompanied descriptions of the regions with distances and also supports this (Delnero 2018, p. 33).

The BWP was probably a mental map drawing and text impressed on clay on the occasion of a military campaign or itinerary, perhaps during the reign of Sargon II. The manuscript is a Neo-Babylonian copy, perhaps dated c. 600 BCE (Millard 1987, p. 111; Finkel 2008, p. 17; Zamazalová 2013, p. 23). After the BWP was composed during the period of Sargon II from the late-eighth century BCE, it was then transmitted during later Babylonian periods. The BWP is, therefore, not a static copy but an iteration of several key geographical regions and the conceptualization of the main land, the ocean, and distant regions. The use of concentric circles in the mental map appear to be a common practice since at least the eighth century BCE. This explains its origins in the Neo-Assyrian period and its continued transmission into the Neo-Babylonian period. At least two Babylonian mathematical texts include illustrations similar to the BWP. One has two concentric circles around a residential area (Böhl Collection 1821) and the other three concentric circles for a city ringed by a ditch and a dike (BM 85194) (Horowitz 1998, p. 42).

3. Ezekiel’s Circles of Gôyîm and Mental Map

Gentilics in the Bible occur in several ways to describe ethnicities with presumed ancestries and territorial associations. The Deuteronomistic tradition (Deuteronomy-2 Kings) and the Holiness tradition (Leviticus 17–26) provide key information on the main types of terms, idioms, and themes used (Rainey 2019, pp. 96–137). Genesis’s genealogical system and ancestral narratives are strongly connected to the same corpus, which bears upon biblical gentilics (Crüsemann 2002; Kennedy 2009). These are picked up in Ezekiel, which like other books in the Hebrew Prophetic Literature, contains oracles in a genre defined in etic terms as the OANs. The term “nations” is a current modern term; its Hebrew substitute can be gôyîm. Such ethnic groups were often referred to as “‘am ‘people’ or gôy ‘nation’” (Rainey 2019, pp. 106–9). Ezekiel’s OANs uniquely re-contextualize ethnonyms and toponyms and provide a kind of mental map with interlocking circles of gôyîm around Jerusalem. The first circle comprises regions adjacent to Judah, Ammon, and Moab to the east, going south to Edom, and then west and north to the Philistinian settlements (Table 1). To this end, after detailed oracles about the sins of the Israelites (Ezekiel 1–24), Ezekiel’s first OANs address four peoples neighbouring Judah: the Ammonites (25:1–7), the Moabites (25:8–11), the Edomites (25:12–14), and the Philistines (25:15–17). Initially, the oracle addresses the Běnê ‘Ammôn (“sons of Ammon”) (25:1–7):3

¹ And the word of YHWH came to me, saying, ² “Son of man, set your face against Běnê ‘Ammôn and prophesy against them, ³ and say to Běnê ‘Ammôn, ‘Hear the word of Lord YHWH! This is what Lord YHWH says: “Because you said, ‘Aha!’ against My sanctuary when it was profaned, and against the land of Israel when it was made desolate, and against the house of Judah when they went into exile, ⁴ therefore, behold, I am going to give you to the “sons of the east” (bny qdm) as a possession, and they will set up their encampments among you and make their dwellings among you; they will eat your fruit and drink your milk. ⁵ I will make Rabbah a pasture for camels, and the sons of Ammon a resting place for flocks. Then you will know that I am YHWH.” ⁶ For this is what Lord YHWH says: “Because you have clapped your hands and stamped your feet, and have rejoiced with all the malice in your soul against the land of Israel, ⁷ therefore, behold, I have reached out with My hand against you and I will give you as plunder to the nations. And I will cut you off from the peoples and eliminate you from the lands. I will exterminate you. So you will know that I am YHWH”.

The gentilic used in Ezekiel’s oracle against the Ammonites is specifically translated as “sons of Ammon”, Běnê ‘Ammôn (25:2). This corresponds to an Ammonite geographical name, written consonantally as bn ‘mn, such as on the Tell Siran inscription (Thompson and Zayadine 1973, p. 9), and at least once rendered ba-an am-ma-na in a certain Marduk-remanni’s cuneiform letter from the time of Sargon II, referring to emissaries from different Levantine lands, including Ammon (SAA 1 110 r. 7 in Parpola 1987, p. 92).4 This reflects the multi-tribal characteristics of Ammon, with a core area in the Amman plateau in Jordan (Tyson 2014, pp. 10–11). Rabbah, Ammon’s main city according to Ezekiel 25:5, assumes it to be Rabbat Ammon, now the modern site of Amman (Tyson 2014, p. 108). The compound Běnê ‘Ammôn is attested commonly in the Bible. It is further reflected in Genesis as the eponymous ancestor Běnê-‘Ammôn (Genesis 19:38) (Block 1984, p. 211). Běnê ‘Ammôn takes a more geographical sense in Ezekiel 25:1–7, resulting in some inconsistency in its grammatical gender in certain verses of the above-quoted passage, which in verse 10 lists it with Moab and the “sons of the east”, bny qdm (Block 1984, pp. 205–6). The bny qdm probably refers to the Babylonians who invaded a wider region that also covered Ammon, Moab, and Edom. Nebuchadnezzar II subjugated the Ammon kingdom, east of the River Jordan, first around 604 BCE and with a firmer hold in circa 582 BCE, when provincial rule was imposed in the Levant (Lipschits 2004, pp. 39–40; Tyson 2014, p. 11). Ezekiel’s oracles against Ammon, Moab, and Edom end with their subjugation to Nebuchadnezzar II, at least by circa 582 BCE (Greenberg 1997, p. 527). The qdm “eastern” direction stands out because Ezekiel usually associates Nebuchadnezzar II with the “north” (e.g., Ezekiel 26:7). The eastern direction here is especially pronounced. The cryptic term bny qdm is puzzling. Ezekiel is elsewhere explicit with Nebuchadnezzar II’s invasions. A cryptic term for the Babylonian appears possible but at the same time perhaps superfluous. This prompts alternatives, such as the idea that perhaps bny qdm refers to incoming Syro-Arabian nomads (Greenberg 1997, p. 518). In any case, it is clear that the “eastern” qdm direction is not coincidental. It is meant to orient the reader and audience. Moab and Edom are also included as targets of occupation by the same people described as the bny qdm, confirming the eastern orientation of Ammon and Moab situated east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 25:8–14):

⁸ ‘Lord YHWH says this: “Because Moab and Seir say, ‘Behold, the house of Judah is like all the nations’, ⁹ therefore, behold, I am going to deprive the flank of Moab of its cities, of its cities which are on its frontiers, the glory of the land, Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon, and Kiriathaim; ¹⁰ and I will give it as a possession along with the sons of Ammon to the “sons of the east” (bny qdm), so that the sons of Ammon will not be remembered among the nations. ¹¹ So I will execute judgments on Moab, and they will know that I am YHWH”.

Following up on Ezekiel’s inclusion of the bny qdm to imbue an eastern orientation for both Běnê ‘Ammôn and Moab, the pairing “Moab and Seir” adds Edom to the lands occupied by the bny qdm. The next oracle, therefore, addresses Moab with Mount Seir.5 Edom is frequently referred to as Mount Seir, and is considered a region given by YHWH to the Edomites and their ancestor Esau in the earlier tradition (Genesis 32:3; Deuteronomy 2:4–5). Moab has its own eponymous ancestor as one of Lot’s daughters’ sons (Genesis 19:37). One recalls that the Ammonites and the Moabites were classified in the Deuteronomistic tradition as peoples excluded from “YHWH’s congregation” (qěhal YHWH) because they did not bring food and water for the Israelites crossing the desert after leaving Egypt, and also sent a prophet Balaam to curse the latter (Deuteronomy 23:4–7). By biblical tradition, the Israelites were to avoid attacking them (Genesis 19:30–38; Deuteronomy 2:19, 37; Rainey 2019, pp. 153–54). The choice to mention together the Ammonites and the Moabites in Ezekiel (e.g., Ezekiel 25:10–11) is partly influenced by Deuteronomy. Ezekiel’s pairing of Moab and Mount Seir may assume the shared frontier in the central Transjordan region between Moab and Edom (on this frontier, see Tebes 2022, pp. 639–40). The ensuing oracle against Edom completes the southern portion of Jerusalem’s closest encirclement by the gôyîm, and complements the already discussed eastern orientation with a southern one with its mentions of Teman and Dedan (Ezekiel 25: 12–14):

¹² Lord YHWH says this: “Because Edom has acted against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and has incurred great guilt, and avenged themselves upon them,” ¹³ therefore this is what Lord YHWH says: “I will also reach out with My hand against Edom and eliminate human and animal life from it. And I will turn it into ruins; from Teman even to Dedan they will fall by the sword. ¹⁴ And I will inflict My vengeance on Edom by the hand of My people Israel. Therefore, they will act in Edom in accordance with My anger and My wrath; so they will know My vengeance”, declares Lord YHWH.

The oracle against Edom includes within its realm the regions “from Teman to Dedan”. Genesis mentions the eponymous ancestors Teman (Genesis 36:11,15) and Dedan (Genesis 10:7). YHWH’s judgement in Ezekiel accords with a pre-existing biblical tradition of divine judgment on these lands (Teman in Amos 1:12, Obadiah 1:9; Habakkuk 3:3). Teman could be a region near the Gulf of Aqabah (Haak 1992, p. 83). Dedan was in central-west Arabia’s Hijaz region around the valley of al-ʿUlā, with trade activity attested there at least since the 7th century BCE (Salles 1996, p. 571). The southern orientation of the oracle against Edom is also confirmed in Ezekiel 20:46 because it initiates an oracle against the Negev region, with the explicit statement that this is to the “south”. The Negev region came under Edomite rule at a time after Nebuchadnezzar II sacked Jerusalem and exiled the Judahite elite in 587–586 BC. The connected oracle against the Philistines refers to the “coast of the sea” (ḥôf hayyām) (Ezekiel 25: 15–17):

¹⁵ ‘This is what Lord YHWH says: “Because the Philistines have acted in revenge, and have taken vengeance with malice in their souls to destroy with everlasting hostility”, ¹⁶ therefore this is what Lord YHWH says: “Behold, I am going to reach out with My hand against the Philistines and eliminate the Kherethites; and I will destroy the remnant of the seacoast. ¹⁷ I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes; and they will know that I am YHWH, when I inflict My vengeance on them”.

Ezekiel prefers the ethnonym Pělištî, and the intention seems to be to try to include the several settlements across the Syria–Palestine coast. Joshua 13:3 assumes five cities for them: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza. The association of “the coast of the sea” with the Philistines completes Jerusalem’s encirclement after Ammon, Moab and Edom, following the coast from the southwest to the north. The Philistines inhabited the coast to the north of Judah. All the oracles in Ezekiel’s first gôyîm circle refer to settlements or ethnonyms connected with Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia. Overall, these oracles interweave geographical names with a particular order.

Table 1. OANs and the first circle of gôyîm.

	Bene-Ammon (25:1–7)	Moab (25:8–11)	Edom (25:12–14)	The Philistines (25:15–17)
Main region in prophetic address	25:1–2	25:8	25:12	25:15
Past sin	25:3	25:8	25:12	25:15
Punishment with ethnonym/toponym indicating direction	25:4	25:10	25:12	25:16
	East (qdm)	East (qdm)	South (Teman, Dedan, cf. Ezekiel 20:46)	West, North (Coast of the Sea)
	Occupation of the bny qdm			ditto?
Punishment with toponym(s) in the main region	25:5	25:9	25:13	25:16
Past sin	25:6	25:8	25:12	25:15
Punishment	25:7	25:11	25:14	25:17

Table 1. OANs and the first circle of gôyîm.

	Bene-Ammon (25:1–7)	Moab (25:8–11)	Edom (25:12–14)	The Philistines (25:15–17)
Main region in prophetic address	25:1–2	25:8	25:12	25:15
Past sin	25:3	25:8	25:12	25:15
Punishment with ethnonym/toponym indicating direction	25:4	25:10	25:12	25:16
	East (qdm)	East (qdm)	South (Teman, Dedan, cf. Ezekiel 20:46)	West, North (Coast of the Sea)
	Occupation of the bny qdm			ditto?
Punishment with toponym(s) in the main region	25:5	25:9	25:13	25:16
Past sin	25:6	25:8	25:12	25:15
Punishment	25:7	25:11	25:14	25:17

Ezekiel’s oracles started with gentilics used as toponyms in their address. This was followed by statements about a given people’s past sin and coming punishment. The punishments can contain additional ethnonyms or toponyms. These help identify cardinal directions that moved in a circular way in the directions east–south–west–north, starting with the eastern direction with Ammon, carrying on with Moab and the bny qdm, then southeast and south with the bny qdm and Edom, terminating with the coast and the Philistines going southwest, west, and north. The punishments also provided additional toponyms to accompany the region’s name provided in the prophetic address. The regions had specific toponyms and assumed historical events, such as the Babylonian invasion with the bny qdm. These unique ways of marking geographical names with directions and historical events can be compared with Ezekiel’s ancient Near Eastern background. One recalls the Babylonian association of land names with the cardinal directions, accompanied with a Babylonian mental map. This also recalls the BWP and the relative positioning of selected toponyms. In the case of Ezekiel, the toponyms are selected on account of Nebuchadnezzar II’s invasion of Syria–Palestine and its adjacent regions. Similar to the BWP, a concentric circle is provided as inferred from the verbal tropes in Ezekiel. These verbal tropes comprise a Hebrew mental map within an ancient Near Eastern intertextuality. The sense of directions can be expressed by land names. Assyrian and Babylonian divination had several systems of associating various archaic land names with the four main directions. Depending on the system, Akkad could be north or south, Subartu and Gutium were north or east, Elam south or east, and Amurru mostly west (Rochberg-Halton 1988, p. 53). A related system was used to divide the quadrants of the full moon. The upper part was dubbed Amurru and represented the north. Elam represented the left (east), Akkad the right (west), and Subartu or Gutium the lower (south) sector (Rochberg-Halton 1988, p. 53). Ezekiel referred to Ammon, Moab, Edom and Philistia together with the cardinal directions with which they were associated in the OANs, as discussed above. Jerusalem was the epicentre of Ezekiel’s mental map, and this in turn differs from the example of the BWP. The BWP’s composer may have had Sargon II in mind, or Assyria or Babylonia, or even Bīt Yakin, although the epicentre could be marked separately, and its full implications left unstated. Ezekiel applied this differently. Jerusalem remained central for Ezekiel, and the oracles against the foreign peoples used directions to generate an inner concentric circle around this city of interest. Jerusalem becomes the focal point of Ezekiel’s mental map. Perhaps part of the answer lies in a proposition once made by Walther Zimmerli that the Temple, the House of Judah, and the “Land of Israel” form a concentric circle in Ezekiel (Zimmerli 1983, pp. 563–65). It is these three toponyms about the Judahites that are also mentioned in the oracle against Ammon (Ezekiel 25:3–5; Lee 2016, p. 64).

4. The Second Gôyîm Circle

Ezekiel’s second circle of gôyîm begins with oracles against Tyre (Ezekiel 26:1–28:19). This would be further up the seacoast, continuing from the oracle against the Philistines on the seacoast. Further up the seacoast is Sidon, against which an oracle follows (Ezekiel 28:20–26). The oracles against Egypt (Ezekiel 29–32) start from the opposite end, the south—another part of the circle. Jerusalem’s and Judah’s sins and future hope are reprised with mentions of Edom (Ezekiel 35:15; 36:5). This continues along the southern direction as the OANs proceed. One recalls that Edom and Mount Seir were also mentioned in the first circle of gôyîm (Ezekiel 25:8–10). Here is a brief overlap between the first and second circles until the second one proceeds east to Magog (

Table 2. OANs and the second circle of gôyîm.

	Tyre (26–28)	Sidon (28:20–23)	Egypt (29–32)	Edom (35:15, 36:5)	Magog (38–39)
Main region in prophetic address	26:2,3; 27:2; 28:2	28:21	28:2,3 (includes the canals); 29:9, 10, etc.	35:15, 36:5	38:2,3; 39:1
Past sin	26:2; 27:3–26; 28:2–7	28:22	Not stated	35:15, 36:5	38:14–18
Punishment with ethnonym/toponym indicating direction	26:3; 27:3 (the sea)	Cf. 32:30	29:9, 10	35:15, 36:5	38:4–6
	West (“Sea”)	West, North (cf. “princes of the north”; Ezekiel 32:30)	South	South	North, East
	Nebuchadnezzar II’s campaigns
Punishment with toponym(s) in the main region	26:3–21 (wider trade network)	28:22–23 (only Sidon)	29:10; 30:4–6, 9, 13–18;	n/a	39:6–21
Past sin, with toponym(s)	27:3–26	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Punishment	27:27–36; 28:8–19	28:23	28:4–7; 29:11–12, etc.	n/a	38:7–23; 39:2–29

). Such an overlap is not found in the BWP, and this is another different feature in Ezekiel. However, the BWP does assume contact between its separate circles in a different way. As pointed out by (Delnero 2018, Figure 1), the itinerary assumed in the BWP crosses the “mountain” into the “Great Wall” region. This is establishing a point of contact between two circles via these adjoining regions, albeit by crossing the sea. Edom in Ezekiel 35:15 and 36:5 is thematically connected with the ensuing oracle against “the mountains of Israel” (Ezekiel 36–37; cf. Lee 2016, pp. 198–207). This oracle also connects with the oracle against Gog of Magog (Ezekiel 38–39). The Gog oracle completes this final and largest gôyîm circle by ending in the north and east. The final Temple Vision concludes Ezekiel with its focus on the New Temple (Ezekiel 40–48). This would also confirm that the New Temple is the focal point in Ezekiel’s mental map.

The oracles against Tyre address Tyre as a city (Ezekiel 26:2, 3; 27:3), or with the title of its ruler, nagid (a type of ruler) or melek (king) (28: 2, 12). The Tyrian king is exalted to the status of a cherub in MT Ezekiel 28:12–15 (Lee 2021, p. 15). Multiple regions are mentioned as trading partners of Tyre (Ezekiel 27). Some of them are overseas. The first region mentioned is Bashan (27:5). This is followed by Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, Elishah, Sidon, Arvad, or Gebal in the Levant (27:5–9). The toponyms move mainly east with the mention of Tyre’s mercenaries from Persia, Lydia, Put, and Arvad. Trade partners are again mentioned, mostly from the eastern Mediterranean, including Tarshish (Tarsus or Tartessos), Javan (Greece and Ionia), Tubal (Tabal in central Anatolia; d’Alfonso 2012), Meshech (Phrygia), Beth-Togarmah (Tegarama, south-central Anatolia; Yamada 2006), Dedan, Aram, “Judah and the land of Israel”, Minnith (in Ammon), Damascus, Helbon (near Damascus), Uzal (in Yemen), Arabia, Kedar, Sheba, Raamah, Haran, Canneh, Eden, Assur, and Chilmad (27: 12–25). More genuine place names are placed here compared to Ezekiel’s other OANs. These regions mostly correspond to either the Babylonian world map’s distant regions known with the term nagû, or areas within Mesopotamia.

The shorter oracle against Sidon follows the Tyre oracles (Ezekiel 28: 20–26). The only explicit toponym associated with the Sidonians in this oracle is their own city, mentioned alongside the people of Israel. The Sidon oracle’s brevity limits the inclusion of additional toponyms and motifs. The destruction as divine punishment corresponds to Nebuchadnezzar II’s invasion of the Levant. In terms of the mental map, Ezekiel’s oracle against Sidon complements the oracles against Tyre as it moves further up the “seacoast” mentioned in the oracle against Philistia. In Ezekiel’s gôyîm circle of Tyre, Sidon to the north via the “coast of the sea” next proceeds south to Egypt. The historical background is based on Egypt’s Saite period and Dynasty 26. This dynasty tried to control the Levant against the Babylonians, with key events including the Battle of Carchemish under Necho in 605 BCE and Nebuchadnezzar II’s campaign against Egypt during Amasis circa 568 BCE (Freedy and Redford 1970, p. 483; Wiseman 1985, pp. 39–41; Ephʿal 2003, pp. 179–81). In the first oracle, the Pharaoh is described as “king of Egypt, the great serpent that lies in the midst of his rivers (běṯōûḵ yě’ōrāw)” (29:3). The inclusion of Egypt’s agricultural canal system alongside the Nile compares with the inclusion of the canal (batiqu) in the BWP. The context touches upon Egypt’s confidence in its prosperity. The same canals are again mentioned as “rivers” with the Egyptian kingdom’s cities from the northeast to its southern frontier, Migdol and Syene, along with Egypt’s southern frontier Kush (Ezekiel 29: 9–12):

⁹ The land of Egypt will become a desolation and place of ruins. Then they will know that I am YHWH. “Because you said, ‘The Nile is mine, and I have made it’, ¹⁰ therefore, behold, I am against you and against your “rivers”, and I will make the land of Egypt an utter waste and desolation, from Migdol to Syene and as far as the border of Kush.

Ezekiel further includes genuine Egyptian city names, namely Noph (Memphis), Pathros, Zoan, No, Aven, Pibeseth, and finally Tehaphnehes (Ezekiel 30:13–18). The oracle also mentions countries independent of Egypt but that traded with or supplied mercenaries, namely Kush (30:4, also 30:9), as well as all polities and peoples in forms of positive relations (e.g., trade) with them, listed as Kush, Put (Libya), Lud (Lydia), “all the Arab”, and Lubim (Libya) (Ezekiel 30:5). These may refer to foreign mercenaries from across the eastern Mediterranean (Greenberg 1997, p. 621). One of the oracles against Egypt has a significant digression about the kingdoms of the past, whose armies are now in Sheol, in the afterlife (Ezekiel 32). The death of Egypt’s armies (32:17–18) is followed by the mention of other defeated kingdoms in the past and the deceased of Assyria (32:22–23), Elam (32:24–25), Tubal and Meshech (32:26–27), Edom (32:29), and “princes of the north” and the Sidonians (32:30), coming back to Egypt (32:31–32) (Ezekiel 32:17–32). Similar to the use of land names for the cardinal directions in Babylonian divination, the lands mentioned here provided the four directions to express the global nature of the fall of kingdoms. The precise directions are less clear here because the kingdoms are listed in reference to Egypt, which means the directions could be based with Egypt as the focal point. If so, this would be a circle above Egypt, starting with Assyria in the west, moving east to Elam, then south to Edom, and completing the circle with the north, represented by Tubal and Meshech, which correspond to lands in Anatolia (d’Alfonso 2012, p. 184; Milgrom and Block 2012, p. 10), while the northern direction is confirmed with the following mention of the “princes of the north”. The Sidonians in the same context are part of the same northern context (Zimmerli 1983, p. 177). This confirms the earlier transition from Sidon to Egypt mentioned above; thus, the reader or audience comes back to Egypt after the digression in Ezekiel 32. Ezekiel’s second circle of gôyîm is completed with the eastern and northern directions with the oracle against the mysterious Gog of Magog (Ezekiel 38–39). The elements that constitute the mental map for Ezekiel’s second gôyîm circle can be summarized as follows.

One aspect of Ezekiel’s OANs is that the rulers of the regions are not mentioned by their personal names. Ezekiel leaves unnamed the rulers of Egypt and Tyre. The generic Pharaoh title agrees with the Exodus tradition, which also does not name the Pharaoh. As mentioned above, personal names were also omitted in favor of the terms nagid (a type of ruler) and melek (king) of Tyre. The intended historical episodes concern several rulers of Egypt (e.g., Necho, Amasis), and in the case of Tyre, there is also a king exalted to the status of a cherub in MT Ezekiel (discussed in Lee 2021). The divine punishment also concerned some of the rulers or figures intended. The way this is done recalls a very common generic terminology used in Babylonian divination, combining lugal, “king, ruler”, with a given geographical name; one example can be provided. One omen from the astrological series Enūma Anu Enlil (EAE) mentions three regions as follows: [If an eclipse begins in the south and the west wind blows: diš an-mi ina im-i sar-ma im-mar-tu du ḫul]-tim nim-ma-ki u Gu-ti-i lugal mar-tu-ki be “[If an eclipse begins in the south and the west wind below: Des]truction of Elam and Guti; the king of Amurru will die”. (EAE 15 § 6 line 4 in Rochberg-Halton 1988, p. 74). The three regions affected are Elam, Guti, and Amurru, and the expected event befell upon the unnamed ruler of Amurru.

The remaining unnamed ruler with ancestral territorial associations is provided the land of Magog. Gog is probably a literary name. Several attempts have been made to understand the text-critical and historical background of the Gog oracle (Klein 2008; Tooman 2011; Lee 2017; Adalı 2023; all with further references). The essential directions intended with Gog of Magog are the east and the north. The oracle’s prophetic address associates the figure of Gog with the “land of Magog” (ereṣ ham-Magôg) (Ezekiel 38:2; cf. 39:6) and the lands Meshech and Tubal (38:2; 39:1). Magog is listed among the sons of Japheth, regarded as the eponymous ancestors for the Medes (western Iran), Ionians (Javan), Tubal and Meshech (Anatolians), and Tiras (its associations are unknown) in Genesis 10:2. This means Magog is associated with directions of either east (cf. Medes) or north (Tubal and Meshech mentioned above). The oracle proceeds with Gog’s vassals and allies, which seeks to provide this figure with an empire that stretches across the second circle of the gôyîm. The core northern and eastern direction of Gog is followed by a new range of directions with the mention of allies and mercenaries from Persia, Kush, Put, Gomer, and Beth Togarmah (Ezekiel 38: 5–6). This is meant to cover the four directions (Milgrom and Block 2012, p. 11). “Persia” seems to be a smaller kingdom. It may be a vassal of the Medes during the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. This was a time before Cyrus II turned Persia into an empire. This provides the eastern direction of Gog’s influence. Kush (south of Egypt) and Put (in Libya) seem to be included to provide the southern and western orientations. The oracles against Tyre and Egypt also mentioned these lands as trading partners or allies, including Persia mentioned in a Tyre oracle (Ezekiel 27:10). Here they serve to emphasize that Gog will surround the Israelites from all directions. The remaining northern direction is now provided with the mention of Gomer and Beth Togarmah. Gomer refers to the Cimmerians in Anatolia (Ivantchik 1993, p. 146). Beth Togarmah refers to Tegarama, again in Anatolia, around the Elbistan plain (Yamada 2006). This parallels the northern direction provided earlier with Meshech and Tubal. Sheba, Dedan, and Tarshish are mentioned to ornament the prophetic narrative (Ezekiel 38:13). This augments its dramatic effect by including distant regions similar to the BWP’s nagû. A city Hamonah is also mentioned as a literary topos, as part of the narrated divine punishment (Ezekiel 39:16; Odell 1994). The prophetic narrative assumes that Hamonah is placed within the land Magog (Ezekiel 39: 6). It can, thus, be a city in terms of Ezekiel’s mental map. The destruction of Gog symbolizes the end of the nations around the New Temple, the subject of a detailed oracle narrative in Ezekiel 40–48 (Ganzel 2021). This may emphasize that the focal point in Ezekiel’s mental map is the New Temple and its sinlessness. Ezekiel’s OANs are strongly connected with Ezekiel’s theology of the sins of the Israelites and the Judahites. Ezekiel communicates that these sins led to the Exile (Lee 2016). The sins in question are attributed the Judahites and the Israelites (Ezekiel 33–34). YHWH promises resurrection and the end of sin (36–37). The OANs are seen within the same framework. They refer to past sins and their punishments. Ezekiel’s omission of Babylon itself from the OANs points to this Babylonian setting in Exile, and the dependency on authorities in Mesopotamia.

The mental map in Ezekiel assumes firstly a smaller first circle and then a wider second circle. The land names mentioned assume some form of shared—and partly concrete, although not empirical in the modern sense of emphasizing hard science methods—geographical knowledge that the lands in the second circle are situated farther away to Judah, with only Edom providing the overlapping region for both circles. Any mental map will have multiple sources, and it would not be possible to speculate on them here. Knowledge from neighboring communities, transmitted texts, and lore, as well as various sources of information, were combined within Ezekiel’s Babylonian context and intertextuality. The second circle starts at Tyre. This may owe to its vast trading network also mentioned in Ezekiel (26:3–21). Egypt is a major power during the Exile. Gog of Magog represented the world empire, and falls within a similar category. The second circle covered a significant portion of the known world in the four directions.

5. Conclusions

The present study set out to explore how Ezekiel’s mental map compares with the BWP. The latter is an iteration of Babylonian traditions of a mental map. By iteration, I mean that the BWP uniquely and creatively used elements of the Babylonian mental map. As a notion, a mental map is closely connected with both the language and verbal tropes of a given text, as well as its wider context. The Book of Ezekiel has a wider Babylonian context discussed on multiple occasions, and as discussed above in the introduction of the present study. This fact allows for the comparisons made here—comparisons that otherwise may be explained away as too general. In fact, the Book of Ezekiel should be understood within a wider ancient Near Eastern intertextuality. This helps recognise that Ezekiel has re-contextualized biblical terminology for several gentilics and geographical names in an oracular content. This provided an iteration of a Hebrew mental map in the Book of Ezekiel, with similarities to the Babylonian mental map tradition. The BWP was an iteration of the Babylonian mental map tradition from around the late eight century. It was also copied into around 600 BCE, as mentioned above. This also coincides roughly with the period of the Exile, with which the Book of Ezekiel is intimately connected.

As discussed above, the BWP assumes a circular motion and movement around its core in the mental map of the known world. It does not contain visuals; instead, the Book of Ezekiel similarly uses concentric circles around a core. Unique to Ezekiel, the core is the New Temple of Ezekiel 40–48. Ezekiel initially starts out with the concentric circle around the Old Temple, which fell to sin in Ezekiel’s theology. The house of Judah and the land of Israel are the subject of renewal in Ezekiel 37. The circle of foreign peoples, i.e., the gôyîm, assumed in Ezekiel’s OANs would surround this core area, although similar to the BWP, this does not mean that one given city, however important, was the epicentre of the mental map. The gôyîm circles surrounded the core area of the New Temple. The closest and first circle comprised Judah’s neighbours. The circle motion begins in the east with Ammon and Moab, moves south to Edom, then up the seacoast to the west, and finally north with the Philistinian cities. The outer circle pick up from the seacoast, starting with Tyre and Sidon in the west and north. The circle motion then goes south with Egypt and Edom, and finally east and north with Magog.

The neutral centre of the Babylonian mental map, as exemplified in the BWP, is alternated by Ezekiel, whereby YHWH’s divine supremacy replaces more mundane notions in the wider Mesopotamian mental map. Ezekiel not only replicated but also instrumentalized the Babylonian tradition for unique theological purposes. Ezekiel’s theological focus led to the primacy of the New Temple. The Babylonians were instruments of YHWH to punish the sins of Judah (Smelik 2014). Ezekiel’s OANs omit any direct oracle against Babylon, in contrast for example to the Book of Jeremiah. A brief discussion of this contrast also helps further understand Ezekiel’s independent encounter with its Babylonian context. In its canonical MT form, Jeremiah places its oracles against Egypt and Babylon at the beginning and the end, whereas its Greek LXX translation (supported by two Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts, 4Q71 and 4Q72a) starts with Elam. Furthermore, the MT and LXX versions provide different orders for Jeremiah’s OANs (these discrepancies are discussed in Peels 2022). Peels finds compelling the idea that Jeremiah’s theology promising divine punishment for Egypt and Babylon led to the particular ordering in the canonical version, with Egypt and Babylon placed respectively at the start and end points of the book (Peels 2022, pp. 61–62). The two different orders of Jeremiah’s OANs are as follows: Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar/Hazor, Elam, and Babylon in the MT, as well as Elam, Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Edom, Ammon, Kedar or Hazor, Damascus, and Moab in LXX (Peels 2022, p. 61). The position of Elam in the LXX may owe to the collapse of the Persian Empire, with “Elam” referring to this polity (Peels 2022, pp. 71–73). The entire question of the order in Jeremiah’s OANs remains a difficult question better addressed more comprehensively in a future study. However, it is interesting that the MT order of the OANs also presents two circles of foreign lands, although in ways that differ from Ezekiel’s circular framing. Jeremiah’s framing in the MT version starts in the south with Egypt, goes north, and then goes south to Moab, proceeding along the south with adjoining Ammon and then the southernmost Edom, coming close to Egypt, which was the first land. Jeremiah’s second circle begins with Damascus, goes south to Kedar or Hazor, then proceeds east to Elam, ending the circle by going to Elam’s northwest to Babylon. It would appear that Jeremiah contains an adaptation separate from Ezekiel with regard to its encounters expressed in the mental map, as well as in the ancient Near Eastern context. The LXX version disrupts the circular framing and betrays a renewed focus on Elam as the Achaemenid Empire. This supports Peels’s argument that Jeremiah’s LXX version may reflect Hellenistic period views of a by-gone Persian Empire (Peels 2022, pp. 72–73). It is clear that Jeremiah’s ordering of the OANs had a different purpose to that of Ezekiel. Jeremiah focused on the punishment of the foreign powers, especially Egypt and Babylon, whereas Ezekiel’s focus was on Jerusalem, starting with its historical sins and ending with its sinless new state as New Jerusalem.

This present effort to understand Ezekiel’s mental map has been a case study of ancient Near Eastern intertextuality. As such, it offers a research pathway towards an analysis framework that may be referred to as “cultural hybridity”. It may be proposed that the Book of Ezekiel is best interpreted when considering its encounters with several cultures in its ancient Near Eastern setting. Such an approach can replace a research agenda that would look for one-way influences from Babylon to the Bible. The biblical tradition was, thus, part of the Near East, and its unique ways and theological outlooks were shaped by—and also interacted independently with—its multiple Near Eastern contexts, some of which presented encounters with Assyrio-Babylonian themes and concepts. Future studies must investigate the application of a similar analytical framework to other texts produced, such as Isaiah 40–55 or Jewish apocalyptic literature, in order to discern broader thematic patterns. Additional avenues for exploration might involve comparative analyses of Ezekiel’s cognitive framework, alongside Persian or Greek cartographic traditions, which also influenced the Jewish milieu in the post-exilic period.