Seven Days In An Astonished Trance

Here's something I read in the Bible that's extremely interesting: The prophet Ezekiel had the whole vision of God's glory, then in 3:15 it says, "I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Abib near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days - overwhelmed" (NIV). The last part of the verse in the KJV is this, "I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days."

I wonder what it'd be like to be in what amounts to an astonished trance for seven days. You've seen something no one else has seen. You get to a place and others are there and you simply sit there for a whole week in a daze. 1) It'd probably be quite nice, except, 2) These days they'd call the ambulance and you'd wake up in the hospital with an IV drip. That wouldn't be so nice.

This is a great little passage, I'm thinking meant to drive home the intensity of his experience and call. It's like a "no self" experience, which I don't know much about, but I have a book somewhere with that title.

There's another passage in the Bible I can think of sort of like this but not quite. It's where the friends of Job appear in the story, Job 2:13, "So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great" (KJV). I really don't think I could sit on the ground seven days and seven nights. It might be like one of those car contests where they let you take your hands off it five minutes every hour for bathroom breaks. But I doubt it. Again, it's speaking of the intensity of the situation, how bad it is in that case.

A few years ago I gave standing orders that if it ever seemed like I was dead not to take me to the hospital. Ha ha, but you can't honestly expect people to actually follow that. You would either be hooked to the IV or embalmed.