332 JILL MIDDLEMAS notably expressed through an extended simile form: harmk twmd “the form like the general appearance of”. In the second prophetic vision, the divine figure is said to have “the form like the general appearance of fire” (va harmk twmd) (8,2), notably also using the extended simile form. The Septuagint translation of 8,2, with andros as of Hebrew vya “a male”, is often favored by interpreters here, yielding “the form like the general appearance of a man” instead of “fire”, but I have argued against this elsewhere and firmly believe that a strongly gendered im- age of the deity would not be consistent within the context of the Book of Ezekiel, with its resolutely aniconic, even iconoclastic stance, which is expressed not only through the use of debasing terms for other gods, but also through the rejection of male images for deity represen- tation elsewhere in the book (Ezek 16,17; 23,14) 48. A third, often overlooked, articulation of the divine image is found in a summary of the first prophetic vision where the divine form is likened to a rainbow. Here, the expected simile or rhetorical expression is found: “Like the general appearance of the rainbow (tvqh harmk) [...] It was the general appearance of the form of the glory of yahweh (harm awh ynda dwbk twmd)” (1,28). A modelling simile, in which the deity’s form (the tenor) is brought into relationship with another conceptual frame (the vehicle), appears in all three passages, but the description is not uniform. In ad- dition, an extended simile form (harmk twmd) is found in the two de- scriptions of the visions that Ezekiel sees, and in conjunction with the divine body that is said to be vaguely like that of a human being and vaguely like that of fire 49. The extended simile in which the more spe- cific term (twmd) precedes the more general term (harm) introduced by the comparative k effectively distances the deity’s form from an exact replica. Its use blurs the image of the deity, like an unfocused photo- graph. The images are also obscured within their contexts by the lower half of the image being described as flaming fire 50. The emphasis on 48 MIDDLEMAS, “Exclusively yHWH”, 316-320; and ID., “Transformation of the Image”, 127-136. 49 from a careful study of these terms, I ascertained that twmd captures a sense of exactness, but is immediately destabilized by the use of a more general term for appearance (harm). 50 Ezek 1,26-27: “[...] and seated above the likeness of a throne was some- thing that seemed like a human form (~da). upward from what appeared like the midsection I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all around; and downward from what looked like the midsection I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendor all around”. Ezek 8,2: