The Exile and the Prophet’s Wife

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In this chapter she talks about the Psychoanalytical Criticism, which is an approach to reading text that uses psychoanalytic technics. What this basically does is make an analysis of the emotional, mental and physiological behavior of the writer. In this way of approaching the text we can find a possible explanation of the particular behavior that Ezekiel shows throughout his book. This approach has said that the reason Ezekiel has this “peculiar imagery” is attributed to an emotionally and physically disturbed or a mentally ill individual which could have been the result of Ezekiel’s childhood issues (p.99).

I think Steibert did a really good job interpreting the book of Ezekiel; she gave different ways of approaching it that where very interesting and new and made The Exile and The Prophet’s Wife a really remarkable book. I really like the way she tells the story from the perspective of Ezekiel’s wife. It makes you see at the story in a much different way than just reading it straight from Ezekiel. As Christians, I believe we have a very superficial way of reading and approaching Scriptures. We always skip what we don’t like and what is difficult to comprehend, and we never get into passages or stories that are controversial to us; this is understandable, I think, because we don’t like to see the back side of the coin. That’s why I guess we use highlighters, just to highlight what we like. For me, it was really challenging to read these stories with different eyes. When I read the stories of Ezekiel’s wife I was struck by the sexist behavior of the men of that era, which made me think a lot about how I approach the Bible. I don’t know what to think about how authoritative the different texts of the Bible are, because it’s difficult for me to think of a God Who supported sexism or racism. So this text helps me to see and understand the Bible in a different way, that even though I still believe it is a text that God wanted us to have, it has our imperfect humanity in it. What do I mean by that? I think that the context of the ancient culture and the situation and life experience of each author and writer have different approaches to how to interpret the voice of God. That’s why my approach to the Bible may change, because the culture of those times is going to be seen in the theology of each text. That’s why we need background information whenever we read texts like this, because if not, it can lead us to very immoral ideologies.

Even though I agree with most of Steibert’s approach to the book of Ezekiel, she says something’s that I disagree with. When she is supporting the idea of Ezekiel’s mental illness, she is completely forgetting and putting aside what Christians believe about supernatural experiences. I don’t believe she is right by explaining Ezekiel’s behavior as a mental problem. In the New Testament we again see Jesus talking about the supernatural gifts that will be given to God’s children, so I don’t believe that just because we don’t understand something we should call it a lie, which is what Steiberts seems to be doing. We need to be careful with supernatural experiences? Yes, totally, but I don’t think we should be afraid of them or deny them; I believe we are humans, which means we will make mistakes, and we will interpret things in the wrong way, but that doesn’t make us liars.