Biblical Hebrew Forum

["George Athas" <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

Paul Zellmer wrote:

> George, there is at least one more option.  This account was obviously
> written after the vision.  Could it not be that the events of the valley
> were so vivid in his mind that he wrote as if it were known already to
> the reader?  Admittedly, this is only a guess, a possibility.

Yes, certainly. "The valley" could refer to "the valley in my vision".

>
> Why is it that you think it might refer to the Biqa' Valley?

Because of the name.

> I would
> have thought somewhere further south, where the remains of Israelites
> might be expected.

Jonathan also wrote:

> I would understand habbiq'ah as "a certain valley", not a specific GN.
> What's important in this prophecy is not the venue but the powerfful images
> evoked about national resurrection.

I would disagree on the significance of the venue here. If it was not 
important for some
reason, then it would not have been mentioned (eg, the location of Ahaz in 
Isa 7:3 is
quite important).

Looking now at Ezek 3:22, Ezekiel is told to go out into _habbiq`ah_ when he 
was with the
exiles in [Babylonian] Tel Aviv on the Kebar River (3:15). It must be this 
valley which
Ezekiel 37 refers to. This makes much more sense as the place where the 
resurrection of
the House of Israel occurs (37:11) -- the place in which they are "dead" 
exiles. Babylon
is their "grave" (37:12) from which Yahweh will resurrect them and restore 
them to the
land of Israel. I had just wondered if the reference had been to the Lebanese 
Biqa` what
significance it could possibly have had. Since _habbiq`ah_ appears to be in 
Babylon,
problem solved!


Best regards,
George Athas
 Dept of Semitic Studies,
 University of Sydney
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