66 Albert L.A. Hogeterp through the text of this second column line by line and comment on its characteristics as sequel to the first column. Line 1 supposedly continues from a piece of text of column 1 now lost with the words “land and they will know that I am the Lord”. This statement could be paralleled by Ezekiel 37,12-13 which mention the return to the land of Israel and the phrase “and you shall know that I am the Lord” (RSV), hwhy ynaAyk µt[dyw. The difference with the biblical text is the turn from the second person plural, in which divine speech directly addresses the people of Israel, to the third person plural which addresses the people indirectly through the prophet as intermediary. Lines 1-2, starting after a blank space, introduce divine speech as follows: “and he said to me: consider, son of man, the land of Israel”. The way the protagonist Ezekiel is addressed, as ‘son of man’, is derived from biblical usage in the book of Ezekiel, and the designation ‘land of Israel’, larçy tmda, is identical to that used in MT Ezek 37,12. In the Masoretic Text, this expression is part of a vision of return to the land. In Pseudo-Ezekielb frg. 1 col. 2, the expression could be read as anticipation on the sequel of divine speech in lines 3-6 that also come to speak about return. The reaction of Ezekiel in the second part of line 2, ‘and I said, I have seen, Lord, and but look, it is a desolated place’, could correspond to biblical references to a desolate land in Ezek 36,33-36 together with its envisioned rebuilding. In line 3 a second part of Ezekiel’s reaction is the question addressing the Lord, ‘when will you assemble them?’. The expectation of the gathering of the people in spite of a situation of barrenness voices a contrast that is also at issue in the vision of Ezek 37,1-14. The vision of gathering and return of the people transcends the exasperation in the words of Ezek 37,11: “behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are clean cut off” (31). The vision of gathering of the people, on which Pseudo-Ezekiel’s prophetic protagonist anticipates at the beginning of line 3, expresses itself with the same verb, ≈bq, as Ezek 36,24 and 37,21 do. Ezek 36,24 already envisions the restoration of Israel through the following divine speech: “For I will take you from the nations, and gather you (µkta ytxbqw) from all the countries, and bring you into your own land” (RSV). The verbal form µxbqt in line 3 of this column in Pseudo-Ezekielb corresponds even more closely to the text of Ezek 37,21, which likewise addresses the people with the third person plural (µta ytxbqw). Lines 3-6 comprise the following divine speech in response to the question about gathering of the people: “And the Lord said: a son of Belial will mean to oppress my people, but I will not allow him and of his leader(ship) (32) there will not be (anyone), nor will any offspring remain of the —————— Ezekiel’ Fragments [4Q383-391] from Cave Four”, 107) argues that 4Q386 1 ii “has no close connection to any biblical passage”, adding about the ‘different types of biblical interpretation’ in 4Q386 1 i-iii: “Had these columns been found physically separate from one another and been classified according to Dimant’s criteria for subdivisions, most likely they would have been placed in distinct categories”. (31) Translation from the Jerusalem Bible. (32) DIMANT, DJD 30, 64 proposes to read wrçm as a defective orthography of wraçm in this line, but this leaves unexplained the evidence of otherwise plene orthography of the verb raçy in the same line and possibly of the noun in line 6 (µr[a]ç). Cf. García Martínez – Tigchelaar (Study Edition. 2, 777) who translate wrçm as ‘his dominion’.