Internalized Foreignness and Judahite Identity (Re)Construction in Ezekiel 16

Abstract

In this article, I examine the depiction of Jerusalem as YHWH’s Canaanite wife in Ezek 16, focusing on how the chapter constructs foreignness as a central category in its portrayal of Jerusalem’s story. By identifying Jerusalem as a Canaanite, the text draws on anti-Canaanite rhetoric also attested in Leviticus, linking themes of ancestry, shame, and downfall. I trace how the stigmatization of certain kinds of sexuality, uncleanness, and expulsion, which are associated with the Canaanites in Leviticus, are redeployed in relation to Jerusalem, blurring the boundary between Israel and the foreign “other.” Foreignness is interpreted as a central locus for negotiating questions of identity, belonging, and culpability in Ezek 16. This exploration of Jerusalem as foreign ultimately illuminates how Ezek 16 articulates covenantal expectations, communal differentiation, and the instability of Judahite self-understanding in an exilic context.