The Presence and Absence of Marduk and YHWH

ABSTRACT In the inscription of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon (680-669 BCE), the Babylonian god Marduk voluntarily left his city Babylon because of his fury at the iniquities of his people. It is Marduk’s fury that caused the devastation of Babylon. In fact, Esarhaddon’s father, Sennacherib destroyed Babylon and usurped the statue of Marduk to his capital Assur in 689 BCE. After the death of Sennacherib, his youngest son Esarhaddon not only planned to rebuild the temple of Babylon, Esagila, but also to return Marduk to Babylon. His rebuilding project suggests that Marduk changed his mind and decided to return Babylon. This sequence resembles Ezekiel’s theological structure of the divine presence and absence. Although previous studies of the Esarhaddon inscription shed light on the understanding of the theological background of Ezekiel’s literary structure, they overlooked the fact that Ezekiel uses hidden transcripts, the concept which James C. Scott introduced, to resist the Babylonian Empire.