And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
"The heart of stone" and "the heart of flesh" - how would you describe this figurative language?
They were confused. They are shooting from the hips. All those little bits are the word of God. Jokes, contradictions, anything that makes little sense to one person. Otherwise that person would have control over the word of God. Enjoy the jokes and anything else. Realize that in trying to make sense, you are trying to be God. Diarrhealectical materialism on your part? Communism fell. It'll never come back.Originally Posted by Anders
A "heart of stone" is an unfeeling, or emotionally unreceptive heart. Part of this refers to the animosity that Ezekiel speaks about between the Jews in Jerusalem and those in exile in Babylon. When he promises a return of the scattered Jews to Israel and a purification of the corrupted priests in Jerusalem, he says the two bodies of Jewish people will be made one, and then their "spiritual" heart as a people will be healed, so to speak.
The "heart of flesh" is used as an antonym to the stony heart, to emphasize a return of feeling and spiritual goodness.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
And then came Esdras to organize the pieces and conform the book and the institutions. Humorous!
What I'm after is the technicalities of it. I would call the heart of stone a metaphor and the heart of flesh a metalepsis. Do you think that is correct?
A heart of stone is a metaphor, but a heart of flesh is simply describing a thing as it is. The rhetorical technique here is the symbolic meaning of a heart of flesh in opposition to the metaphor of a heart of stone.
Edit: In both cases they are metaphors for the spiritual essence of people though, so it is debatable that they could be metonymy or metalepsis. The metaphors here are working on more than one level.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 09-11-2012 at 01:47 PM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Yes, they are indeed working on more than one level! I agree that a heart of flesh can be seen as a metaphor too - actually, that was my first take on it. But when I have come to regard it as a metalepsis, it is because I believe the starting point for the second metaphor is the heart of stone, whereby a heart of flesh becomes a metaphor for a metaphor - which I take to add up to a metalepsis.
Tropes about swear words or related to swearing.
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