The Other Side...The Walking Dead: An Ode to King Ezekiel and His Beloved Shiva..yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down

Love him or hate him, King Ezekiel has changed the alchemy of The Walking Dead. He first made his debut in Season 7, sitting on a throne on an abandoned stage, flanked by his beloved friend and trusted sidekick Shiva.Today’s passage illustrates that God is working for the ultimate good of His people even in tragedy (Rom. 8:28). Sometimes, achieving those ultimate goods means suffering in the short term, but one day we will see that the suffering was worth it. The loss of Ezekiel’s wife meant some could look back after Jerusalem’s fall and see that the Lord in whose name the prophet spoke had been right all along. That would lead to them to trust Him for salvation, the greatest good for any human being. A tiger. Ezekiel the son of Buzi was of the priestly tribe, and from the land of Serîdâ3. The chief of the Jews who was in the land of the Chaldeans slew him, because he rebuked him for worshipping idols. He was buried in the grave of Arphaxar, the son of Shem, the son of Noah. Although Negan had been touted as the season’s game changer, the real value-add from the beginning was King Ezekiel. He introduced a new philosophy and humor to the show—a fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude toward the zombie apocalypse that welcomed his followers to essentially pretend they were LARPing rather than surviving the end of humanity. Of the titles that are used for Jesus in the New Testament, Son of Man is our Lord’s favorite designation for Himself. It appears on His lips more often than any other title, including Lord and Christ. Biblical scholars have long considered the significance of this in light of the Old Testament. We will see in the next few weeks that the main reason Jesus used this title was to identify Himself as the one to whom the Father would deliver an everlasting kingdom, namely, the cosmic ruler revealed in Daniel 7:13–14. However, that may not be the sole reason He preferred that title. Note that the Lord often addresses the prophet Ezekiel as “son of man.” In fact, God uses the title for him in today’s passage. Ezekiel was a prophet and a “son of man,” so it could be that Jesus also used Son of Man to reveal His prophetic office. After all, the incarnate Word of God preached God’s Word to His disciples just as Ezekiel preached God’s Word to his generation. On Sunday night, however, viewers finally saw the limits within which that philosophy can thrive—thanks to the brutal slaughter of not only Ezekiel’s entire assault unit, but also his beloved tiger. And it was the best episode this season has seen yet.Those whom the Lord calls to ministry often must give up things that they would ordinarily hold dear. Jesus was called to lay down His life and suffer the divine curse on sin (Gal. 3:10–14). Ezekiel suffered the loss of his wife. God came to the prophet and told him his wife was going to die but that he should not engage in any of the customary mourning practices, which would have involved wearing sackcloth, lying on the ground, throwing ashes on one’s head, and so on. Instead, he was to don a turban, that is, wear the garments of celebration (Ezek. 24:15–18). This was a great loss indeed to the prophet, for the Lord refers to her as the delight of Ezekiel’s eyes. To not mourn for her would be a great sacrifice for him and cause great pain to his heart in addition to her death. Some of this season’s installments have felt scattered, even difficult to keep up with. It’s not always been entirely clear, during these first glimpses of war, precisely who is doing what, and to what strategic end. Sunday’s episode, however, maintained a clear focus: the degradation of Ezekiel’s confidence.Such a death seems to be a drastic, almost “desperate” step for the Lord to take to get His point across. Of course, in reality, God never finds Himself in a desperate situation. But from a human perspective, the covenant community’s refusal to believe that the Lord would let Jerusalem fall was a desperate situation, and desperate times required desperate measures. The death of Ezekiel’s wife prefigured the loss of the temple, which was “the delight of [the Jews’] eyes.” God strove to make His intent clear so that the people would have no excuse. Despite the hardship in the loss of Ezekiel’s wife and temple, however, all would be for the good of Israel (vv. 19–27). Through the trouble, the people would come to know that He is the Lord.It began with a flashback to the king preparing for battle, examining himself in the mirror. Then, suddenly, it cut to the slaughter of all of his loyal soldiers—payoff from last week’s cliffhanger, in which the foot soldiers discovered, a moment too late, that they were within range of some serious ballistic weapons. As Ezekiel crawls out from under the carnage of his own friends and followers—some of makeup and prosthetics wizard Greg Nicotero’s best work to date—it’s hard not to feel his horror. As his followers turn into zombies, the message crystallizes even clearer: this was his error. He is not an infallible monarch. He’s just, as the episode title puts it, “Some Guy.”Ezekiel and the Wheels of Fire The book of Ezekiel begins conveniently with a huge thunderstorm, and we know one thing that signifies: mushrooms. In the heart ofthe "fire" of the storm Eackiel saw what appeared to be four animals with vaguely human features. Each creature had four four wings, straight legs and hoofed feet. Each one had the faces ofa man, a lian, a bull, and an eagle. Each had wings that tumed upwards and wings that covered its body, Fire- brands and flaming torches seemed to pass between the animals, on the ground beside each animal was a glittering wheel, each one looking like the other, and each one seeming to have another wheel within it. When Ezekiel looked at them they seemed enormous, and their rims had eyes all the way around. The moving wheels made a noise. Over the head of each animal was what looked like an arched vault. Above the vaults was a throne on which was seated a being apparently made of fire. A voice came from the midst of the fire and spoke to Etelkiel. It said, "Open your mouth and eat what I am about to give you," With these words a hand appeared and unrolled a scroll on which was written, "lamentations, wailings, moanings." The voice continued: "Son of man, eat what is given to you; eat this scroll, then go and speak to the house of Israel." Ezekiel opened his mouth and was handed the scroll to eat. The voice said, "Son of man, feed and be satisfied by the scroll I am giving you." Ezekiel ate the scroll, and it tasted as sweet as honey. Soon he felt himselflifted up by the spirit. Behind him he heard the boisterous shouting of heavenly throngs, "Blessed be the glory of Yah- weh in his dwelling place." The spirit took him, and his heart overflowed with bitterness and anger, and the hand of Yahweh lay heavy on him. Finally he came to Tel Abib, where stayed for seven days "like a man stunned." Another thunderstorm, another prophet. There seems to be a pattern developing, As a result of the storm Ezekiel saw some strange creatures. What could they have been? They reminded him of various animals, they looked a little human, but most of all, the episode asks, wasn’t everyone just someone before the apocalypse? As Ezekiel urges Carol to acknowledge in a flashback, she was not born a badass—she made herself one when the situation demanded it. He did that as well—starting with when he jumped into the tiger’s cage to help her when she was injured. So it’s no surprise that, when presented with the option to either pursue the ballistic weapons before they make their way back to the Sanctuary, or to save Ezekiel, Carol chooses the latter. The two have built up a rapport from the very beginning, when he revealed his ruse to her. Over time, that honesty grew to trust, even understanding, between the two.they looked like angels, like the "burning ones" ofIsaiah's vision. They even had the same sort of wings," some covering their bodies and some extended as in flight, and the same fly agaric correspondences apply. Additionally, these burning ones had straight legs, an odd thing to mention unless it is meant to imply that the legs are only straight; that is, they don't bend at all. Straight as the stalk of afly agaric. The angels also had hoofed feet, which is one way to describe the club "foot" of the fly agaric, more like a hoof than a foot (see plate 4) Between the creatures were burning torches and firebrands, more distinct fly agaric imagery: fire on top ofa stick or pole. On the ground were glittering wheels with "eyes all around the rims." A fly agaric is certainly a wheel; the "eyes" all around the rim are the veil remnants (plate 26). These wheels also had wheels within them. Seen from the top, the cap of the mushroom is a solid wheel. Seen from beneath, another wheel, within the first and with "spokes," reveals itself There is even an "axle" at the hub (plate 27) Another significant point mentioned by Ezekiel is that the rims "seemed enormous" when he looked at them, which indicates he may have been experiencing the macrovision described earlier. In that condition a mushroom user is able to see things in extreme close up, as though the objects themselves had grown to huge proportions. It is a known side effect of fly agaric intoxication. Still, as Carol and Jerry—the only two surviving members of Ezekiel’s party—try to help him back to safety, he begins to doubt his own worth. He urges them to leave him behind. They refuse. At one point, faced with an onslaught of walkers, the king moves to sacrifice himself—just before his beloved sidekick appears, as she always does, at just the right moment to save the day. And just as she did in the comics, Shiva winds up dying in the process of saving her master. It’s a tragic cycle: Ezekiel saved Shiva, and finally it was Shiva who saved Ezekiel. It’s worth noting that Khary Payton has sold his character from the beginning—not just with charisma, but also with a consistent sense of urgency boiling beneath the cartoonish surface. Ezekiel and Negan are two sides of the same coin: both slightly too ridiculous to be believed, built up on-screen solely through the charisma of their actors. I’d argue that Payton’s gambit has worked a lot better for the show than Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s, which might be why Negan has been nearly absent from our screens so far this season.To Ezekiel, the wheels were moving and making a noise, and there was also the noise of storms and the sound ofwings in the fiery air. A fly agarie legend of the Anishinaubeg, the native people of the Great Lakes region in North America, describes the characters' first sight of the mushroom: "They saw a beautiful meadow in which grew many tall nd white mushrooms-handsome wajashlnundeg they were-turning and revolving, buzzing and murmuring, singing a strange song of happiness under a brilliant To stop the mushrooms from tuming, the feather of a "thunderbird" into the stalk below the cap, indicating that the author was aware ofthe corres of feathers to gills the mushroom is the thunderbird. Ezekiel's angels also had feathered wings, and in both stories the feathers are associated with thunder. A voice emerged out of the sounds Ezekiel was hearing and told him he must go preach to the sraelites, a scenario nearly identical to the experiences of Moses and Elijah. The voice then told him not once but four times to eat the proffered scroll, and the author mentions the eating of the scroll two additional times. Perhaps we are supposed to come away with the impression that something is actually being eaten here.when the scroll unrolled three words could be seen ("lamentations, wailings, moanings"), all of which can apply to fly agaric sickness; this is how Ezekiel felt after he ate the scroll. Dried can be rolled and unrolled like a scroll, and sometimes appear to have writing on them. Ezekiel felt as if he was rising bodily in the air after he ate the scroll In profound fly agaric intoxication the same sensation is experienced. The body feels amazingly light, as though one had been inflated with helium. There is a definite perception ofwaves of energy rising through the body unobstructed, moving from bottom to top in a oontinuous flow. lt is the same blissful feeling that can be experienced in dream-flying. It appears that Ezekiel's "flight" wasn't quite as blissful, though; he experienced some of the physical discomfort for which the fly agaric is infamous. His description makes it sound like motion sickness. Yah- weh's hand lay heavy on Ezekiel during his trip, and though unpleasant it was nonetheless profound.
Like those characters, this episode brings plenty that seems beyond belief. Could Carol really have murdered all of those Saviors in one fell swoop by hiding in the ceiling? Could Rick really have survived that car crash after chasing down the Saviors with the ballistic weapons? And why didn’t Jerry, Carol, and Ezekiel think to simply grab a dead walker and coat themselves with its blood—a trick that could have helped a lot of characters out of many dicey situations throughout the series? The magic of Ezekiel is that he turns the entire apocalypse into a game—so logic has often been incidental. But now, as he gravely makes his way back into the kingdom with only two people by his side, it appears the game is up.
With all of those men and Shiva gone, he’ll likely change for good. What remains to be seen is how—and whether or not that change will beat the fascinating characteristics out of him like, say, a barbed-wire baseball bat.

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/walking-dead-recap-s...

Taken on: October 18, 2023

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