Mullet

Scripture references: Numbers 11:5; Nehemiah 13:16; Ezekiel 47:9–10; Matthew 4:18–22; John 21:1–14

The fish of Egypt, Numbers 11:5, Israel in the wilderness remembers "the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing." The Nile and the Mediterranean coast of Egypt teemed with mullet, grey mullet were one of the most commercially significant fish of the ancient Mediterranean. The fish memory becomes Israel's complaint against the manna of YHWH.

The Tyrian fish trade, Nehemiah 13:16, When Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem and enforces Sabbath observance, he confronts merchants from Tyre who were bringing fish and all kinds of goods and selling them on the Sabbath. The fish trade of the ancient Near East, including mullet from the Mediterranean coast, operated on the Sabbath in violation of the covenant. Nehemiah throws out the merchants and commands the city gates to be shut at the approach of the Sabbath.

Ezekiel's vision of the restored waters, Ezekiel 47:9–10, In Ezekiel's temple vision, a river flows eastward from the threshold of the temple, growing deeper as it goes, until it reaches the Dead Sea. The river transforms the salt water: "And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From En-gedi to En-eglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea." The eschatological river transforms the Dead Sea, the most lifeless body of water on earth, into a sea teeming with fish of every kind, including the species of the Mediterranean (the Great Sea). The mullet's abundance in the Great Sea will fill the restored waters.

Fishing culture of the Gospels, Matthew 4:18–22; John 21, The fishing disciples of Galilee, Peter, Andrew, James, John, worked in a fishing economy that stretched from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediterranean coast. The fish they caught, the nets they mended, the boats they owned: all part of the same culture of fish provision that ran from Egypt through the wilderness to Galilee. The resurrected Christ eats fish by the shore of Galilee, the most ordinary meal of the most ordinary people becomes the communion of the resurrection.

The mullet belongs to the great category of Mediterranean fish that fed the biblical world, from the fish Israel mourned in Egypt to the fish that will fill Ezekiel's eschatological sea. The Sanctum holds the mullet as a witness to the biblical themes of provision, restoration, and the eschatological river that makes all waters teem with life.