Gabriel Held the Coals Until Zion Could Return

The Coals Needed Mercy

Ezekiel sees a man clothed in linen standing near the wheelwork above the cherubim. The command comes: take coals of fire from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city. It is a command for destruction, and the man in linen is the instrument.

But he asks for something before he reaches in. Give me the coals, he says, so I will not be burned. The cherub, whose fire is the original fire, the burning closest to the divine presence, responds with an act of mercy. Rabbi Yitzchak says the cherub cooled the coals before placing them in the angel's cupped hand. The fire that would consume Jerusalem was first held and cooled by the being closest to God's throne.

That cooling took six years. From the year of Ezekiel's vision to the year the Temple burned, six years passed while Gabriel held the coals and waited for something that did not come. The destruction was not impetuous. It was the end of a long patience. The coals were warm in the angel's hand through six years of continued transgression, continued false prophecy, continued refusal of the available turn. When the coals finally fell, they fell because nothing had changed in six years of waiting. Not because heaven had become angry. Because heaven had waited long enough.

Israel Running in Every Direction

After the fire, Israel runs. North, south, east, west: no direction leads anywhere except away from the place that is no longer there. They hear that Jerusalem sighs. They come to see. They come to comfort. There is no comforter.

The phrase is one of Lamentations' most repeated refrains. All her lovers have betrayed her. Her friends have become enemies. Among all her lovers there is no comforter. The comforter that Israel needs is not a person who will say the right consoling thing. It is a comforter in the older sense: one who can actually change the situation, who has the power to restore what was lost rather than only to acknowledge the loss.

The nations watched Israel's humiliation. Some mocked. None of them had what Israel actually needed. The comfort that can address exile is not available from any human source, which is why the refrain of no comforter becomes the central ache of the book. Israel's situation is one that only the party who withdrew can resolve. The waiting has to be directed at the one place it can do something.

The Punishment That Could Be Completed

Lamentations 4:22 says: your iniquity is completed, daughter of Zion; He will no longer exile you. The verse is astonishing. In the middle of the book of mourning, after all the images of fire and ruin and unburied bodies and running with no comforter, a verse appears that says the iniquity can be completed. The punishment has an end built into it.

The midrash does not explain how the verse can be believed from inside the rubble. It simply states it, the way the coolest verse states the hardest hope, without ornament. The daughter of Zion has a punishment. The punishment is not infinite. When it is complete, the exile ends.

That is the structure Gabriel's cooled coals were always pointing toward. The fire that fell was not an act of divine hatred. It was the instrument of a sentence with a term. Gabriel held the coals for six years waiting for the people to turn. The people did not turn. The coals fell. But the sentence was always finite. The verse in Lamentations announces what was true from before the fire was lit: the punishment would be completed.

What the Exile Was Waiting For

Israel in exile has no Temple, no sacrifice, no pilgrimage, no Levitical song, no daily offering to organize the hours. The institutional forms of divine presence have been removed. What remains is the cry.

They heard that I sigh. There is no comforter for me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble. The sigh is not nothing. It is what Israel has when everything else is gone. And it is heard, not by the comforters who are not there, but by the ear that was always the first audience for every prayer that was ever said in that city before the fire came.

The six years Gabriel held the coals were six years of divine attention directed at Israel's situation. The waiting was not absence. It was the sustained attention of a judge who has issued a sentence and is watching whether anything changes before the sentence is carried out. When Israel in exile sighs and there is no comforter, that sigh is heard by the same attention. The exile is not outside the range of the ear that heard Israel call from Egypt. It is the same call, from a different narrow place, directed at the same ear.

The iniquity will be completed. The exile will end. Gabriel cooled the coals before they fell, and the verse that promises completion was embedded in the book of mourning before the first stone was carried away.