Introduction

On the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel

Content, division, and origin of the book. The Prophet Ezekiel may be called the divinely-inspired interpreter of the Babylonian exile, its meaning and significance in the system of God’s providence over Israel. A priest by birth, carried away into captivity with Jehoiachin, the Prophet Ezekiel worked among rural settlements of Jewish captives, leaving Babylon to his great co-worker, the court prophet Daniel. The result of his more than twenty years of activity (Ezek 40:1 and Ezek 29:17 cf. with 12) was his large book. But unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, a captive, separated from his fellow countrymen scattered throughout Chaldea, probably simply wrote (rather than spoke) his prophecies for distribution among the people (Ezek 2:9): we see him only occasionally speaking directly to the people (Ezek 24:18) or to the elders (and even then those who came to him) (Ezek 8:1); moreover, before the people he performed symbolic acts; in general “his tongue was bound to his throat and he was mute” (Ezek 3:26), opening his mouth only in exceptional cases (Ezek 24:27) 1. For this reason he often cites passages from earlier writers in the book – a device more characteristic of a writer than an orator 2. But one cannot therefore agree with the rationalist interpreters of Ezekiel that he is rather a writer than a prophet: one can prophesy in writing as well; and thanks to this character of the prophetic gift, which might be called literary, the book of Ezekiel stands out advantageously from other prophetic books in its strict unity of content, consistency, and systematicity.

Through a series of prophetic speeches, visions, and symbolic acts, Ezekiel first, rebuking the impiety of Judah, predicts the fall of Jerusalem and the final captivity of the people; and after the destruction of the kingdom he foretells the ruin of the direct and indirect causes of this destruction, the old and contemporary enemies of Israel (the surrounding pagan nations), while comforting Israel with bright pictures of a great future – that is, the book naturally falls into two perfectly equal parts of 24 chapters each: a rebuking part and a comforting part, of which the second is almost equally divided into speeches against pagan nations (chs. XXV–XXXII), indirectly comforting for Israel, and predictions directly comforting for it (chs. XXXIII–XLVIII). As for the more specific division of the book, it is given by the prophet himself in the form of dates for his speeches. He dates his speeches by the years of the captivity of Jehoiachin, which was also his captivity, and the following years are named by him: 5th (Ezek 1:2), 6th (Ezek 8:1), 7th (Ezek 20:1), 9th (Ezek 24:1), 10th (Ezek 29:1), 11th (Ezek 26:1; Ezek 30:20; Ezek 31:1), 12th (Ezek 32:1; Ezek 33:21), 25th (Ezek 40:1), 27th (Ezek 29:17). Consequently, the individual prophecies are arranged in the book in chronological order, except Ezek 29:17-21, which was evidently inserted into the finished book. In light of this, it is most likely that the book arose gradually from separate passages written in the indicated years.

The distinctive features of the book of the Prophet Ezekiel are a) mysteriousness and an abundance of visions. The Prophet Ezekiel is rightfully considered the founder of Hebrew apocalyptic, whose emergence was aided by the then-dismal condition of Israel, which involuntarily directed all hopes toward the distant future, toward the end of times (the eschatology of chapters XXXVII–XLVIII). From this the book of the Prophet Ezekiel is filled with visions, each more magnificent than the last, which impart to it extraordinary elevation of content (the divine revelation resorts to visions when the mystery communicated to a human being does not fit into words and concepts). Saint Jerome calls the book of the Prophet Ezekiel an ocean and labyrinth of God’s mysteries (on Ezek. XLVII). Among the Hebrews it was forbidden for those not yet thirty years old to read the first and last chapters of this book (Mishnah, Schabb. I, 13b.). But with such elevation of the book’s content, the Christology of the Prophet Ezekiel is not abundant and yields significantly to that of Isaiah. This is because Ezekiel in his prophetic contemplations concerns himself with only two moments in the history of Israel so separated in time yet clearly akin in essence: the epoch of the Babylonian captivity and the epoch of the final restoration of Israel at the end of times; the long intermediate period during which Israel lost the glory of God (the Shekinah) that dwelt in the temple on the cherubim, and was thereby lowered to the condition of an ordinary nation, seems as if not to exist for this great Hebrew’s view, although in this period occurred an event so important for all mankind – the appearance of the Messiah. For this reason, regarding the time of the first coming of the Messiah, Who became joy rather for the nations than for Israel which rejected Him, the Prophet Ezekiel could not speak much; his thought is directed more toward the time near the second coming, when all Israel will be saved.

A characteristic feature of the book of Ezekiel is further b) its priestly character. Everywhere shines through the touching love of the author for the temple, its worship and rites (see especially chs. VIII and XL–XLIV), zeal for the law and ceremonial purity (Ezek 4:14). c) The mark of Babylonian origin. The cherubim of ch. I in many ways resemble Assyro-Babylonian winged bulls and lions. Chs. XL and following with their so artistically detailed architectural details vividly transport us into the atmosphere of the great buildings of Nebuchadnezzar. In dependence on life in Babylon, which was then the center of world commerce, where upper and lower Asia, Persia and India met, stands also the fact that no prophet describes peoples and countries as Ezekiel does (Schröder, Lange Bibelwerk, Der Prophet Jeesekiel 1873, § 7).

The style of the Prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel often strikes the reader with brilliant and vivid images, having no equal in this respect. It is hard to imagine anything more shattering than his vision of a field filled with bones “very dry,” anything more majestic than the description of the glory of God in ch. I, anything more vivid than his picture of the port of Tyre (ch. XXVII). The attack of Gog (chs. XXIII–XXXIX), the blasphemous worship of idols in the temple and God’s wrathful vengeance for it (chs. VIII–XI) – scenes that do not fade from memory (Trochon, La Sainte Bible, Les prophetes – Ezechiel 1684, 9). Gregory the Theologian called Ezekiel the most wonderful and sublime of the prophets. Schiller (according to Richter) read Ezekiel with the greatest pleasure and wished to learn Hebrew so as to read him in the original. Grotius compared him with Homer, and Herder called him the Hebrew Shakespeare.

Nevertheless in places the language of the Prophet Ezekiel “is obscure, rough, drawn-out; expressions prove insufficient for his impetuous thought” (Trochon, ib). Already Saint Jerome finds in the style of the Prophet Ezekiel very little elegance, but without vulgarity (Letter to Paul). Smend, Bertholet (Das Buch Jesekiel 1897) and others point out the following deficiencies in Ezekiel’s style. He is a writer who loves to elaborate, and these elaborations sometimes interfere with plasticity and force. A multitude of stereotyped phrases (such as, for instance, “I, the Lord, have spoken,” “you shall know that I am the Lord”) which should sound especially solemn, weary the reader. Songs and allegories, in which Isaiah was such a master, in Ezekiel are somewhat artificial (chs. VII, XXI, XIX); of songs he only succeeds with mournful ones; in allegories the subject and image gradually become confused, it is not carried through to the end; images turn in different directions (Ezek 11:3; Ezek 20; Ezek 15); often he turns to the same images (cf. chs. XVII, XIX, and XXXI; XVI and XXIII). Reflection in Ezekiel predominates over intuition; he is too rational and balanced a nature to be a poet; moreover his attachment to the established, objective magnitudes of the cult accords little with poetry. – Since divine inspiration does not change the natural gifts of a person but only directs them toward serving revelation, recognition of Ezekiel as fully possessing such stylistic deficiencies would not harm faith in his divine inspiration. But, it seems, the newest critics of the prophet make demands of him that are utterly unattainable for his epoch. Furthermore, as Bertholet says, in recent times more and more people recognize that Ezekiel was wrongly blamed for much that should be attributed to corruption of the text.

The language of the Prophet Ezekiel presents many phenomena that clearly belong to a later period. Smend has two pages taken up with a list of Ezekiel’s phrases that bear the mark of a later time. Specifically his language proves to be strongly permeated with Aramaisms (Selle, De aramaismis libri Ez. 1890). The prophet’s language does not resist the intrusion of the people’s degenerating dialect. Numerous anomalies and grammatical deviations reveal the decline and near death of the Hebrew language and remind us that the prophet lived in a foreign land (Trochon 10). At the same time the prophet’s language testifies to the great originality of his mind through a large quantity of words and expressions not found elsewhere (hapax legomena).

The authenticity of the book of the Prophet Ezekiel is not disputed even by those rationalists whose critical knife has left no living place in the Bible. Ewald says: “the slightest glance at the book of Ezekiel is enough to convince one that everything in it proceeds from the hand of Ezekiel.” With him agrees De Wette: “that Ezekiel, who customarily speaks of himself in the first person, wrote everything himself, this admits of no doubt” (Trochon 7). Single objections against the authenticity of the book were made long ago. Such, for example, was that expressed in 1799 in the Revue biblique by an English anonymous writer against chs. XXV–XXXII, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVIII, and XXXIX. Of recent objections against the authenticity of the book (e.g., by Geiger, Wetstein, Vernes) the more significant are those of Zunz (Gottedienstliche Vortrage der Juden 1892, 165–170), who refers the book to the Persian epoch between 440 and 400 B.C., and Seynarke (Geschichte des Volkes Israel II 1884, 1–20), who refers it to the Syrian epoch – 164 B.C. Both these suppositions called forth serious refutation in rationalist scholarship itself (Kuenen, Hist. – crit. Einl. II, § 64). It is curious that in the sacred canon the book of Ezekiel was accepted by the Jewish synagogue not without hesitation, the reason for which was chiefly the disagreement with the Pentateuch of the rites of the future ideal temple of chs. XL–XLVIII: “if not for Hananiah ben Hezekiah (a rabbi contemporary with Gamaliel, the teacher of the Apostle Paul), the book of Ezekiel would have been considered apocrypha; but what did he do? They brought him three hundred measures of oil and he sat and explained it” (that is, he spent so many days over explaining it that he burned three hundred measures of oil, Chagiga 13a; cf. Menahot 45a. Schab. 13b.). But according to Baba Batra (14b) “the book of Ezekiel together with the 12 prophets, Daniel, and Esther was written by the men of the great synagogue (Ezra and others)” (that is, of course they were included in the canon). – Much difficulty is presented for biblical criticism by the testimony of Josephus Flavius (Ant. of the Jews 10:5, 1) that Ezekiel wrote two books. Perhaps Josephus counts the two parts of the book as independent: a book about the destruction of Jerusalem and a book about its restoration. With less probability do they explain Josephus thus – that chs. XXV–XXXII or XL–XLVIII were a separate book.

The text of the book of the Prophet Ezekiel is classified together with the text of 1 and 2 Kings among the most corrupted in the Old Testament. Although the discrepancies between the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Septuagint translation in the book of Ezekiel are not as frequent as in the Psalter, yet wherever they are present they are quite substantial; often in the two texts quite different senses are given (see Ezek 1:7; Ezek 10:14; Ezek 21:3-4 and especially Ezek 40 – Ezek 44), so that the interpreter must choose between two readings. Since Hitzig (Der Plophet. Ezechiel erkiart. 1847) Western biblical scholars of all persuasions consider the text of the Septuagint in the book of Ezekiel more correct than the Masoretic. Cornill says that while he was reading the book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew text, this prophet made a heavy impression on him and he could not engage with him; but when he began to read him in the Greek text, “the mist that enveloped the meaning of the book began to clear and an astonished eye beheld a text of singular rare beauty and magnificence with powerfully-attractive originality” (Das Buch d. Pr. Ez. 1886, 3). Giving a smoother text in comparison with the Hebrew, the Septuagint translation in the book of Ezekiel is distinguished moreover by extraordinary precision, much greater than in other books, by which it can be a reliable corrective to the Masoretic text.

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Notes

From the private life of the prophet we learn from his book only that he had a wife, who was great comfort to him, but whom he lost about 4 years after his call to prophecy (Ezek 24:16. Cf 1) The traditions, however, recorded by Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus, Dorotheus of Tyre, Isidore, and others communicate consequently the details of the prophet’s life: his homeland was Sarira (a place not mentioned in the Bible); in youth he was a servant of Jeremiah (Gregory the Theologian, Discourse 47), and in Chaldea – a teacher of Pythagoras (Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis I, 304, which refutes the opinion expressed in his time that the Assyrian Nazaratus, teacher of Pythagoras, was also the teacher of Ezekiel); he was killed by a prince of his people for rebuking this prince for devotion to idolatry and was buried in the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad on the bank of the Euphrates near Baghdad.

The Prophet Ezekiel is particularly dependent on Jeremiah (in Smend’s commentary Der proph. Ezechiel; 1880, a whole page was taken up with a bare numerical list of places revealing this dependence; others are ready to recognize Ezekiel as the same kind of disciple of Jeremiah as Baruch was). Ezekiel is also dependent on Hosea (e.g., Ezek 14:23 and Hos 6:9), Isaiah (Ezek 31:6 and Isa 22:24), Amos (Ezek 6:6; Ezek 30:18), and in part Gen 49 (Ezek 19:2; Ezek 21:32). But especially many points of contact are found in Ezekiel with Lev 17 – Lev 26 and especially Lev 25, for which reason rationalists (Graf, Kaiser, and others) consider the author of this section of the Pentateuch (the so-called “Priestly Code”) to be Ezekiel, or if not him, then someone from his circle (Stade, Geschichte Isr. II, 67).