The reflective turn in The Wanderer, when the speaker’s thoughts revert inward to the condition of his own mind (ll. 58–60), initiates a series of gnomic statements on the behavioural qualities that a ‘wita’ (‘wise one’, l. 65b) must possess: patience, temperance, caution, strength and moderation (ll. 65–72). This ‘sceal … sceal’ catalogue in turn opens a further passage on the eschatological understanding that a ‘gleaw hæle’ (‘wise warrior’) must possess (lines 73–87):Footnote 1

Ongietan sceal gleaw hæle    hu gæstlic bið,

þonne ealre þisse worulde wela    weste stondeð,

swa nu missenlice    geond þisne middangeard

winde biwaune    weallas stondaþ,

hrime bihrorene,    hryðge þa ederas.

Woriað þa winsalo,    waldend licgað

dreame bidrorene,    duguþ eal gecrong,

wlonc bi wealle.    Sume wig fornom,

ferede in forðwege,    sumne fugel oþbær

ofer heanne holm,    sumne se hara wulf

deaðe gedælde,    sumne dreorighleor

in eorðscræfe    eorl gehydde.

Yþde swa þisne eardgeard    ælda scyppend

oþþæt burgwara    breahtma lease

eald enta geweorc    idlu stodon.

The wise man must understand how terrible it will be when all the wealth of this world stands waste, just as now here and there throughout this middle-earth walls stand blown upon by wind, covered with frost, the buildings snow-swept. The wine-halls collapse, lords lie bereft of joy, the band of trusted warriors all fell, proud by the wall. Some battle took away, bore on the way forth; a bird carried off a certain one over the deep sea; one the grey wolf dealt out in death; a sad-faced man concealed one in an earth-cave. So the creator of men destroyed this world, until, without the sound of inhabitants the old work of giants stood empty.

The section forms a small thematic envelope, in which the motif of excidio urbis (‘destruction of the city’) appears in in ll. 75–80 (itself walled-in by OE ‘weallas’, l. 76b / ‘wealle’, l. 80a) and again in ll. 86–7. Each time the motif is introduced by a statement on the devastation of the world more generally, and the two occurrences surround an appositive account of the deaths of ‘duguþ’ (‘band of trusted warriors’, l. 79b). This passage has been examined both for its traditional heroic poetic diction, notably the appearance of the ‘beasts of battle’ (for example, Klinck, 1992, pp. 122–123; Bright, 1898; and see also Hardin-Brown, 1978), and for its echoing of homiletic and eschatological Christian literature (including Klinck, 1992, pp. 121–3; Cross 1958–59, pp. 75–100). The ruined-city motif has been extensively explored both as a feature of Old English elegiac verse, and a Christian image in early medieval English literature more broadly, with the formulaic ‘entna geweorc’ (‘work of giants’) linked to Old Testament scripture, Roman history and Germanic tradition.Footnote 2

What has not been noted is the close correspondence between the different parts of this passage and sections from the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a Hebrew prophet of the early sixth century BCE, who went into exile with the Judeans following the sacking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.Footnote 3 Ezekiel’s prophecies exemplify the authoritative voice of the ‘sage’ recently identified by John D. Niles (2019, pp. 111–112) as ‘a thread that runs through the [Exeter] Anthology, lending the contents of that book a special value in the monastic context’.Footnote 4 Although God sends Ezekiel to prophesy to the exiled Judeans, he is a man apart, chosen to minister to ‘a provoking house’ (Ezekiel 2.5) and set up as ‘a watchman to the house of Israel’ (3.17). The figure of a man ‘snottor on mode’, sat ‘sundor æt rune’ (‘wise in mind’; ‘apart in counsel’, l.111) at the close of The Wanderer, who looks to the ‘fæstnung’ (‘stability’ / ‘surety’, l. 115b) of God, captures this biblical personhood.Footnote 5 Indeed, although Ezekiel’s prophecies are laden with invective and vengeance against both Israel and its enemies, the book concludes with visions of ‘the restoration of Israel’ (Long, 2009, p. 112).Footnote 6

There are two main passages in Ezekiel which correspond with the lines from The Wanderer quoted above. In Chap. 33 verse 27, the Word of God instructs the prophet:

haec dices ad eos sic dicit Dominus Deus vivo ego quia qui in ruinosis habitant gladio cadent et qui in agro est bestiis tradetur ad devorandum qui autem in praesidiis et in speluncis sunt peste morientur.

Say thou thus to them: Thus saith the Lord God: As I live, they that dwell in the ruinous places, shall fall by the sword: and he that is in the field, shall be given to the beasts to be devoured: and they that are in holds, and caves, shall die of the pestilence.

Death will come to the Israelites in three ways, across three kinds of topography: in battle (to those who dwell in ruins), eaten by animals (to those in the fields), or through sickness (to those hidden away in caves and strongholds). This division corresponds with that of the ‘Sum … sumne’ catalogue of Wanderer ll. 80b–84, with its listing of battle (‘wig’) and carrion beasts (‘fugel’; ‘se hara wulf’) as (potentially overlapping) modes of death. The ‘eorðscræfe’ (‘earth-cave’) of l. 84a, and its litotic image of the buried corpse being hidden (‘gehydde’), are paralleled by the caves of Ezekiel 33 (‘speluncis’) and those seeking refuge within them.Footnote 7 The death of men ‘wlonc bi wealle’ (‘proud by the wall’, l. 80a)—a wall now frosted over and blasted by winds—corresponds with the ‘ruinosis’ (ruined places, wastes) of the verse from Ezekiel. A fuller image of carrion-beasts, typically called ‘beasts of battle’ by modern critics and discussed in the context of traditional Germanic diction when they appear in Old English verse,Footnote 8 can be found in Ezekiel 39.4: ‘feris avibus omnique volatili et bestiis terrae dedi te devorandum’ (‘I have given thee to the wild beasts, to the birds, and to every fowl, and to the beasts of the earth to be devoured’); and again in the same chapter, verse 17:

dic omni volucri et universis avibus cunctisque bestiis agri convenite properate concurrite undique ad victimam meam quam ego immolo vobis victimam grandem super montes Israhel ut comedatis carnes et bibatis sanguinem.

say to every fowl, and to all the birds, and to all the beasts of the field: Assemble yourselves, make haste, come together from every side to my victim, which I slay for you, a great victim upon the mountains of Israel: to eat flesh, and drink bloodFootnote 9

God proceeds to promise these beasts a feast of both men and sacred animals, flesh, fat and blood (39.17–19). In a particularly haunting image of this desecration of both human society and the animals it venerates, he declares, ‘et saturabimini super mensam meam de equo et de equite forti et de universis viris bellatoribus ait Dominus Deus’ (‘and you shall be filled at my table with horses, and mighty horsemen, and all the men of war, saith the Lord God’, 39.20). The ubi sunt passage of The Wanderer (ll. 92–96) closely follows on from the section outlined above, and opens with a lament aligned with a warrior culture which may be more pan-cultural than previously assumed: ‘Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?’ (l. 92).Footnote 10 In the destructive prophecy of Ezekiel, both horse and man have been consumed as a ritual feast by the avenging powers of death.

The correspondences between lines 73–87 of The Wanderer and the book of Ezekiel continue in the topos of ruined walls destroyed by wintry storms (Ezekiel 13.10–16):

Eo quod deceperint populum meum dicentes pax et non est pax et ipse aedificabat parietem illi autem liniebant eum luto absque paleis dic ad eos qui liniunt absque temperatura quod casurus sit erit enim imber inundans et dabo lapides praegrandes desuper inruentes et ventum procellae dissipantem siquidem ecce cecidit paries numquid non dicetur vobis ubi est litura quam levistis propterea haec dicit Dominus Deus et erumpere faciam spiritum tempestatum in indignatione mea et imber inundans in furore meo erit et lapides grandes in ira in consummationem et destruam parietem quem levistis absque temperamento et adaequabo eum terrae et revelabitur fundamentum eius et cadet et consumetur in medio eius et scietis quia ego sum Dominus et conplebo indignationem meam in parietem et in his qui linunt eum absque temperamento dicamque vobis non est paries et non sunt qui linunt eum.

[Because they have deceived my people, saying: Peace, and there is no peace: and the people built up a wall, and they daubed it with dirt without straw. Say to them that daub without tempering, that it shall fall: for there shall be an overflowing shower, and I will cause great hailstones to fall violently from above, and a stormy wind to throw it down. Behold, when the wall is fallen: shall it not be said to you: Where is the daubing wherewith you have daubed it? Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Lo, I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in my indignation, and there shall be an overflowing shower in my anger: and great hailstones in my wrath to consume. And I will break down the wall that you have daubed with untempered mortar: and I will make it even with the ground, and the foundation thereof shall be laid bare: and it shall fall, and shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and you shall know that I am the Lord. And I will accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that daub it without tempering the mortar, and I will say to you: The wall is no more, and they that daub it are no more.]

Doubleday (1967, p. 70) reads the collocation of pride and ruin in the line ‘wlonc bi wealle’ (‘proud by the wall’, Wanderer, l. 80) as providing a moral rationale for the destruction of the settlement. In Ezekiel, it is both the pride of the people, figured as wall-builders who have not tempered their wall, and the deception of false prophets that incurs the destructive wrath of the creator. He sends a storm of wind, rain and hail to break down this wall, and this is paralleled both in the winds and cold weather that subsume the settlement in Wanderer lines 76–7, cited above, as well as the cold, wet forces of weather that the anhaga endures throughout the poem.Footnote 11 The physical destruction described in Ezekiel is historically realised in the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple by Nebuchadnezzar.Footnote 12 Green (1975, p. 511) reads in the destruction of the anhaga’s hall ‘a symbol of cosmic destruction or de-creation’, which he compares with this same biblical destruction of Solomon’s temple. Crucially, the destruction meted out in Ezekiel 13 is not primarily an eschatological image or symbol of worldly transience, lenses of Scriptural interpretation through which excidio urbis is frequently read in Old English verse (see especially Fell, 1991). Rather, this destruction is a punishment and sign of the immediacy of God’s power to a people who have neglected his laws: ‘et scietis quia ego sum Dominus’ (‘and you shall know that I am the Lord’) (on immediacy in Ezekiel, see for example Yip, 2021, p. 9; Ganzel, 2020, p. ix; Olley, 2009, pp. 236–289).

I would argue that the passages cited here from the Book of Ezekiel provide a close analogue and potential source for lines 73–87 of The Wanderer. This suggestion is in line with progress in biblical readings of the poem in scholarship over the past forty or so years, with scholars identifying a range of such correspondences: P. J. Frankis has written on the connections between Isaiah and Jeremiah and the poem (1973, pp. 253–269); Green on Baruch (1975); Bernard J. Muir on Lamentations and Baruch (1994, pp. 503–505); Paul de Lacy on Ecclesiastes (1998); M. J. Toswell on the Lament Psalms (2014, pp. 354–358); and Francis Leneghan on Isaiah (2016, pp. 134–135).Footnote 13 Nevertheless, as Leneghan (2016, p. 123) notes, there remains a scholarly tendency to position this text ‘closer in spirit to the heroic culture of the Germanic warband than the monastic cloister’.Footnote 14 A relationship between The Wanderer and the Book of Ezekiel has deeper implications for a reading of this text than simply lexical echo; in fact the scriptural connection offers up new contexts for reading the Old English poem and its approaches to mercy, judgement and individual mentality. This in part arises from the existence of a lively tradition of commentary and homily on Ezekiel in the early church, which made its way into the libraries of early medieval England. Most notably, Gregory the Great’s Homiliae in Hiezechielem [CPL 1710; CCSL 142] survives in whole in ten manuscripts owned or written in England before 1100 (two of the mid- to late-eighth century, and eight of the second half of the eleventh century or later) and in part in two further manuscripts (both of the mid-eighth to ninth centuries).Footnote 15

Gregory’s homilies handle Chaps. 1, 2, 3 and 39 of Ezekiel, so the passages of greatest relevance to The Wanderer are not explicitly covered. However, his first homily on the temporality of prophecy has implications for the much-discussed, shifting timeframes at work in the Old English poem.Footnote 16 He writes: ‘Prophetiae tempora tria sunt, scilicet praeteritum, praesens et futurum’ (‘there are three tenses of prophecy, to wit: past, present and future’, 1.1).Footnote 17 Recognising that the idea of prophecy past and present may cause consternation in the reader who associates prophecy with the foretelling of things to come, he explains that ‘prophetiae spiritus non praedicit quod futurum est, sed ostendit quod est […] est quod recte prophetia dicitur, non quia praedicit ventura, sed quia prodit occulta’ (‘the spirit of prophecy does not make known that which is to be, but discloses what is […] that is rightly called prophecy, not because it makes known fortune/what is to come, but because it reveals what is hidden’, 1.1). Gregory provides an example of prophecy ‘praesens’ from 1 Corinthians 14.24–25:

si autem omnes prophetent intret autem quis infidelis vel idiota convincitur ab omnibus diiudicatur ab omnibus occulta cordis eius manifesta fiunt et ita cadens in faciem adorabit Deum pronuntians quod vere Deus in vobis est.

But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or an unlearned person, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all. The secrets of his heart are made manifest; and so, falling down on his face, he will adore God, affirming that God is among you indeed.

There is a gnomic quality to this verse from 1 Corinthians, which describes the state of a man’s heart under particular conditions. The hiddenness of the heart is key to Gregory’s interpretation of prophecy ‘praesens’, and he presents the revelation of these concealed thoughts as prophetically equivalent to the foretelling of future events: ‘Ventura etenim res occultatur in futuro tempore, praesens autem cogitatio absconditur in latenti corde’ (‘For the thing to come is hidden in future time, but present thought is shrouded in the unknown heart’, 1.1). The speaker of The Wanderer, despite protestations of noble propriety, seeks to make his innermost cares known throughout the narrative; but as Malcolm Godden has shown, there is ‘an astonishing dislocation between the self and the mind’ in the text, which sees the anhaga pondering the reasons for his own mental state.Footnote 18 Godden draws attention to the lines immediately preceding the passage that resonates with Ezekiel:

Beorn sceal gebidan,    þonne he beot spriceð,

oþþæt collenferð    cunne gearwe

hwider hreþra gehygd    hweorfan wille. (ll. 70–2)

[A man must wait, when he makes a boast, until that brave-spirited one knows sufficiently which way the intention of the heart will turn]

This separation of self and mind speaks to a necessary internal process of uncovering one’s own unknown intentions. The gnomic list, in its statements of what will or must be (‘sceal’) in the heart of man, and its ultimate emphasis on revealing the heart and expanding one’s understanding, is prophetic according to the Gregorian interpretation. The anhaga’s observation of his own heart and mind speaks to a desire for the revelatory processes of prophecy, the unshrouding of the self that will come about ‘when all the wealth of this world stands waste’.

This aspect of Gregory’s approach to prophecy can be compared with the shifting timeframe of the passage cited above which I have suggested may be influenced by Ezekiel.Footnote 19 Both presence and futurity is expressed through ‘sceal’ and ‘bið’ in lines 73–4:Footnote 20 the wise man must now come to understand how terrible—in both emotional and spiritual sensesFootnote 21—the devastation of the world will be. The ‘swa nu’ of line 75a returns from this foretelling of inner understanding into the topography of the present, in which the devastation is already enacted ‘missenlice / geond þisne middangeard’. From line 80b to the end of the passage, the destruction of both man and middle-earth is an event that has already occurred (‘fornom’; ‘oþbær’; ‘gedælde’; ‘gehydde’; ‘yþde’; ‘stodon’). Far from foretelling the inevitable and total ending of the earth, the passage creates a confluence of past, present and future in which the wrath and judgement of God is an immediate and ongoing context. Judgement, like fate, is unfolding around the anhaga.Footnote 22 Some context for this urgency may be found in Ezekiel 12.26–28:

et factus est sermo Domini ad me dicens fili hominis ecce domus Israhel dicentium visio quam hic videt in dies multos et in tempora longa iste prophetat propterea dic ad eos haec dicit Dominus Deus non prolongabitur ultra omnis sermo meus verbum quod locutus fuero conplebitur dicit Dominus Deus.

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, behold the house of Israel, they that say: The vision that this man seeth, is for many days to come: and this man prophesieth of times afar off. Therefore say to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Not one word of mine shall be prolonged any more: the word that I shall speak shall be accomplished, saith the Lord God.

The inability of the Israelites to accept the prophet’s visions as ‘praesens’, and their desire to read them as ‘ventura’, probably plays into Ezekiel’s theme of false prophecy and deceptive leadership, but it speaks also to the tragedy of human fear. The shifting time-frames of The Wanderer, and their eschatological and revelatory significance, are discussed by Green (1975, see esp. p. 504) in his comparison of this poem with the works of apocalyptic writers who ‘feel that the future is the present; their present time is the last time’. This merging of tenses in apocalyptic writing is exhibited in the person of the anhaga, who is ‘trapped in the present, trying to peer into the future for what is essentially a recovery of the past’ (Green, 1975, p. 506). Allusion to the Book of Ezekiel would have held clear eschatological implications, for although the destruction prophesied is an immediate threat for present sins, the reliance of the biblical Book of Revelation upon Ezekiel is well-documented (see Robinson, 2019; Buitenwerf, 2007, p. 165; Luo, 1999). The confluence of present, earned punishment and the inevitable destruction of the end of time finds a place in early medieval English apocalyptic homilies. In the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, Bishop Wulfstan presents the many sufferings of the English as the consequences of their own sin:

Forþam hit is on us eallum swutol and gesene þæt we ær þysan oftor bræcan þonne we bettan, and þy is þysse þeode fela onsæge. Ne dohte hit nu lange inne ne ute, ac wæs here and hunger, bryne and blodgyte, on gewelhwylcan ende oft and gelome. (Text from Bethurum, 1957, p. 269)

[For it is clear and evident in us all that we have hitherto more often marred than we have amended, and therefore many things have befallen this nation. For a long time now, nothing has prospered either at home or abroad, but there has been plunder and famine, burning and bloodshed in nearly every region time and again.] (Translation from Liuzza, 2013, p. 288).

In Blickling Homily X, the causality of things is reversed, for it is the impending end of time that seems to drive both human woe and human sin:

Magon we þonne nu geseon ond oncnawan ond swiþe gearelice ongeotan þæt þisses middangeardes ende swiþe neah is, ond manige frecnessa æteowde one manna wohdæda ond wonessa swiþe gemonigfealdode.

May we then now see and know and very readily understand that the end of this world is very nigh; and many calamities have appeared and men’s crimes and woes are greatly multiplied (Text and translation from Morris, 1880, pp. 106–107).

The presence of the prophet Ezekiel amongst the Israelites, and the tribulations they suffer, are in the eyes of Gregory, signs of ‘divina misericordia’ (divine mercy), serving both to punish the bodies and raise up the souls of the exiles (1.18). Mercy, of course, is a framing concern in The Wanderer—the first thing that we learn is how the anhaga always either awaits it, or else experiences it (l. 1, ‘Oft anhaga are gebideð’); the last thing that we learn is that all will be ‘wel’ for one who seeks it from God (ll. 114b–115).Footnote 23 In agreement with Gregory’s view in the first homily on Ezekiel, mercy is indeed experienced by the Israelites in the benefit to their souls, even as they await it in the form of Christ and the restoration of their nation.

The erstwhile trend of seeing The Wanderer as an essentially pagan text interpolated with Christian material has long given way to various Christian modes of reading the poem. Nevertheless, scholarship frequently posits a ‘blend’ of Christian thought and Germanic diction, whether in the spirit of bringing a Christian poem into early English discourse, or as a reflection of the anhaga’s movement from worldly, pagan-inflected ignorance to spiritual, Christian wisdom (see, for example: Bjork, 1998; Mullen, 1974). However, the motifs of the ruined hall, of the beasts of battle and the deaths of warriors by the wall and their correspondence with traditional Germanic diction does not represent blending, interpolation or acculturation between separate traditions, but a meeting with parallel biblical diction. These images testify—and by implication, have always testified, even in some distant pagan forerunner—that ‘I Am the Lord’.