Ezekiel: A Commentary

By Walther Eichrodt

This volume brings to life the ministry and message of one of the most neglected of the major Old Testament prophets, and illuminates one of the most fascinating chapters on the history of Israel. Besides giving a verse-by-verse commentary of the Book of Ezekiel, Walher Eichrodt fully discusses its origin and composition and all the knotty problems of the prophet's own activity.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Jun 20, 2003
• ISBN: 9781611645965

Walther Eichrodt

Walther Eichrodt is the author of several books on the Old Testament, including three volumes in the Old Testament Library series.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE PROPHET EZEKIEL AND HIS BOOK

THE PROPHET IN THE HISTORY OF HIS TIMES

STATEMENTS IN THE BOOK of Ezekiel which we may regard as reliable (1.1–3 and 29.17) place the prophet’s period of activity between 594 and 571 BC. He received his call to be a prophet when he was a young man, probably at the age of thirty (cf. below the commentary on 1.1–3, pp. 51f.). So his youth fell in the period of the reformer king Josiah (639–609), and was greatly influenced by the great political and cultic reformation undertaken by that king in the year 621. Josiah had aimed at strengthening his people and state, worn out as the result of vassalship to Assyria, with the forces of a purified faith in Yahweh, so as to be able to lead them to a better future. Considering the sympathy such a man as Jeremiah showed towards this undertaking, we may safely assume that it must have found even more decided supporters among the temple priesthood. At that time the young priest, the son of Busi, a member of the priesthood in the Jerusalem temple, newly arrived at adulthood, must have been profoundly impressed by the religious aspects of the reform, as he saw the temple being cleansed of the heathen filth that had settled in it, and the original forms and laws of Yahweh worship being put into force. This must have aroused his enthusiasm at the thought of the greatness of the task that this would lay upon the shoulders of the temple priesthood. The renewal of the covenant between Israel and her God, sworn to by king and people in a solemn act of state, must have seemed to bring back the ideal period of David, and bold extensions of the boundaries of the kingdom in the north seemed likely also to revive the nation as a political force.

This only seemed to intensify the disillusionment when the young monarch’s life came to an untimely end, as, trying to defend his country’s newly won independence against Pharaoh Neco, he met his death at Megiddo. This disappointed the hopes occasioned by his work, and wrested the reins from the hands of the triumphant champions of the reform. Jehoahaz, the younger son of Josiah, was raised to the throne by the free citizens of Judah, who passed over his elder brother Eliakim, probably because it was thought that he could be better depended upon to carry on his father’s policy. But he was thrown into prison (II Kings 23.33f.; Jer. 22.10) by Neco, who, being overlord of Syria, regarded such decisions as infringements of his prerogative.

Eliakim, who seemed a more suitable instrument for Neco’s purposes, was selected to be king, and his name changed to Jehoiakim as a token of his subjection to the great king. From the political point of view he proved in practice to be a docile vassal of the Pharaoh, ruthlessly extracting from his subjects the large tribute that had to be paid to Egypt, and giving free rein to his despotic inclinations by employing forced labour in erecting his palaces (II Kings 23.35; Jer. 22.13ff.). In the religious sphere, he returned to the syncretism of Manasseh, which had barely been suppressed. True, he did not make any state enactment to repeal the covenant pledged by his father; the strict prohibitions against the worship of foreign gods still stood on paper, but in actual practice the way was left open for heathen cults to spring up in such a way that Jeremiah could speak of a conspiracy against Yahweh, which turned its back on the nation’s true Lord while cloaking itself in the mantle of legal fidelity to the covenant (Jer. 11.9ff.). His brutal suppression of any criticism of his decisions by prophets, resulting in the execution of the prophet Uriah and the proscription of Jeremiah, gave a particularly revealing example of how opposed the aims of his reign were to those of his father. The adroitness with which he switched over from vassalage to Egypt to being a satellite of Babylon, once Nebuchadrezzar had driven Neco back into Egypt and put an end to his few years of apparent successes, left Jehoiakim’s position on the throne undisturbed and seemed to justify his policy.

This violent change in Judah’s whole condition must necessarily have seemed to those faithful to Yahweh to be a breach of faith and a departure from their beliefs. Such flagrant defiance of the covenant God must have presented the temple priesthood in particular with very serious problems of conscience. The cleavage which must have divided them and have been deepened further by the passionate way in which the prophets reacted against the tyrant, must have borne heavily upon one like Ezekiel. The tension between the opposing demands of religion and politics will have grown to breaking-point, and his mind must have felt more and more the weightiness of the problem of the serious decision that he must himself make. This will have been further intensified by the warm sympathy with which he followed Jeremiah’s struggle and the way in which, as his own preaching shows in more than one passage, the message of Jeremiah appealed to the deepest feelings of his heart.

The prophet’s struggle against the oppressor was soon justified by events. When Jehoiakim repudiated his position as a vassal of Babylon in 602 (II Kings 24.1), he returned once more to the old political manoeuvre practised by the Syrian states, according to which they seized the first opportunity to throw off such a galling yoke, and tried to have their own way by playing off the rival powers of the Euphrates and the Nile against each other. Nebuchadrezzar reacted slowly, launching a sort of guerilla war against him with the assistance of Edom, Moab and Ammon, Jehoiakim’s chief competitors in Palestine, which may have done no more than strengthen the king of Judah’s confidence in his ability to overcome his opponents. But in about 598 a more serious Babylonian attack took place. A Babylonian army appeared before Jerusalem and began to besiege it. At that critical moment, Jehoiakim was swept away, either by the sword of his enemy or else by the sickness with which Jeremiah (Jer. 22.18f.) had threatened him. His son Jehoiachin, only just eighteen years old, had to suffer punishment for his father’s guilt. The hopeless position of his capital led him to the right conclusion and so he yielded up the walls to the besiegers after a reign of only three months, in order to deliver his subjects from all the horrors that would have followed its storming. This seems to explain why Nebuchadrezzar treated the city with forbearance. The palace and temple were indeed plundered, and the king and royal family led off into captivity in Babylon, and along with them large numbers of the upper and artisan classes of the country. At that time, young Ezekiel was one of those who underwent the bitter fate of deportation, which prevented him from taking up his priestly office, and annihilated all natural hopes. But Jerusalem was not destroyed, nor did Judah become a Babylonian province. It continued to subsist as an independent state with a king of its own from the house of David, Mattaniah, an uncle of Jehoiachin’s, whose name was changed to Zedekiah as a sign of his position of vassalage. At that time, of course, the southern part of the land may have been taken away from Judah and handed over to Edom (Jer. 13.18f.). Ezekiel must have regarded this as comparatively generous treatment, seeing that it allowed the country to survive (Ezek. 17.5f.). The treatment of those led into captivity also seemed to be more like a temporary measure, since they were not settled in a province of the empire to add a new stratum to the population, but were put in Babylonia itself for the purpose of restoring the economy of strips of land that had gone out of cultivation. They were allowed to order their own affairs by means of elders chosen by themselves, and were not prevented from holding firmly to the worship of their own God, although this could only take shape in a very limited way under the new conditions (cf. below, p. 53). So they did not have to face a sudden break in the whole of the pattern of their life or give up everything to which they had previously been accustomed, but were able to preserve a certain degree of continuity, making it easier to bear the yoke of exile. We see here, therefore, no strict imprisonment or permanent confinement under continuous hardships at the hands of brutal jailors, as scholars were earlier inclined to assume, under the influence of certain passages in Lamentations and Deutero–Isaiah (Lam. 3.34; Isa.47.6). Jeremiah could counter the refusal of the exiles to make the best of their lot with a summons to build houses, plant gardens and found new families (Jer. 29.5f.). Nevertheless, the exiles found that their status was that of serfs to the state without right of appeal. It depended entirely on the caprice of circumstance, on the situation of the time, on the increasing needs of the government, and the more or less hostile attitude of officials. Sometimes the pressure exercised upon them remained tolerable; sometimes it turned into downright oppression and ill treatment. It need not therefore surprise us that conditions were not uniformly the same everywhere and all the time, but that captivity in a foreign land displayed its more painful and oppressive side, as well as its more endurable aspects.

It remained significant that the king and his family were given lodgings in a wing of the royal palace in Babylon, and were allowed to provide for their own household arrangements, and that, as Babylonian records inform us, supplies of food were issued to them by the state. Everything seemed to indicate that neither those at home nor those in exile need regard the state of affairs as final, but could count on these being purely temporary measures, soon to be followed by a return home. It is obvious that this brought about an unsettled excited state throughout the whole nation, and reduced them to a condition of fanatical unteachability.

In face of this optimistic view of the situation, supported as it was by promises from nationalistic prophets of victory, it was completely hopeless to appeal to people to adopt a different view. All that Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, could do was to be obedient to the task committed to him and proclaim that Yahweh had decided otherwise, putting up with the enmity and spiteful contempt which this aroused among his fellow countrymen, while at the same time what he observed of matters at home drove him to condemn those in power and their followers with increasing sharpness. He saw the future take on ever darker colours. Complete independence of popular opinion, such as could be won only after severe inward struggles, was the prerequisite for any power to provide genuine help, when the day of reckoning would dawn.

Even if Nebuchadrezzar had been still intending to reserve to himself the final decision as to the fate of Judah, his experiences with Zedekiah, the puppet king he had placed on the throne, led him to different decisions, which sealed the fate of that unfortunate nation. It seems that the Jerusalemites were unwilling to accept any improvement in their conditions from the hands of a heathen overlord, and further, that the return of Jehoiachin and the former governing class associated with him would be anything but welcome to the supporters of Zedekiah. Blinded by wishful thinking, they preferred to have a rapprochement with Egypt and Tyre, and then to take up arms in order to win independence. As early as 594, secret negotiations took place for an anti-Babylonian pact between the small states of Palestine, but as yet they did not dare to take any really decisive steps, a hesitancy towards which the strong opposition put up by Jeremiah may have contributed (cf. Jer. 27). Zedekiah, who was not entirely insensitive to the word of the prophet, and who evidently had some personal misgivings over the daring game his counsellors were playing, was unfortunately not a man capable of carrying through any strong policy of his own. His wavering character was powerless in face of the pressure brought upon him by the party of independence, which brought him step by step closer to the despairing fight for freedom, until he had gone so far as to make it impossible to turn back.

So in 589, an open breach took place with the Babylonian overlord, which was partly induced by the hope of considerable assistance from Egypt (Ezek. 17.15). Ezekiel condemned such breaking of the oath of allegiance by a vassal with rigid severity. The fight to the death on which his native land now began led his prophecy to take the shape of a biting proclamation of judgment, which might tear the bandage from the eyes of his countrymen and bring them to a true knowledge of their God. But he could also see Judah’s heathen allies under divine retribution, and he could proclaim their subjection to the mighty one who alone ruled the world. It was he who had selected Nebuchadrezzar to carry out his plans; the people of the world were his and he asserted his lordship in face of all opposition. The prophet therefore saw the destiny of Jerusalem reaching its fulfilment under two different aspects. Yet deeply as he suffered as he watched the final accomplishment of the ruin of his native country, he was not filled with bitter despair. The storming and destruction of the capital city of Judah in the year 587, the burning down of the temple, the ruthless execution of Zedekiah and his family (II Kings 25.7) and of the responsible political leaders, the carrying off of the population (II Kings 25.8ff.) into exile did make him suffer severely because of his love for his people and country; yet at the same time he saw the break-up of the hard core of resistance by his people to his message, and the resultant possibility of leading them out of the hopeless despair they felt at having been so misled, towards a new hope.

It also served his turn that the outward circumstances of the exiles did not undergo any change for the worse, even after their numbers had been swelled by the survivors of the catastrophe. Nothing was done to change the regime for a severer one; the comparative freedom of movement in the prisoners’ colony and its self-government by its own elders was maintained, so that the gatherings for worship with prayer and singing, priestly instruction and prophetic word went on more or less as before, making it possible for the remnants of the ruined nation to preserve its spiritual identity. The prophet must have recognized the fixing of these forms of common prayer as the special task that was to occupy the remaining years of his life. The disciples, too, who gathered around him, the group which collected, copied out and edited his writings, facilitated the development of a fixed tradition which would supply a protective outward shape for the life that still pulsated here. The fact that their old native land had not been occupied by settlers of foreign blood, but still remained in the hands of its own inhabitants, reduced in numbers though they were, made the country still seem home, even for the exiles. The appointment of a man of Judah, Gedaliah, a member of the family of Shaphan, as governor to administrate the little province, was only a passing gleam of light to summon up hopes for new possibilities of development for the land. His assassination by a prince of the Davidic dynasty who had escaped to Ammon, and who must have acted partly out of jealousy, partly out of savage hatred towards everything associated with Babylon, soon nipped this new growth in the bud. Whether in spite of this bloodthirsty deed any further effort was made to provide Judah with an administration of its own in order to bring the land back under cultivation by planned resettlement (cf. Ezek. 33.24), or whether from then on it sank into being a part of the province of Samaria, we do not know.

Quite apart from this, Nebuchadrezzar’s attention was given to the unruly states of Syria for many more years: soon after the fall of Jerusalem he set off on another punitive expedition against the second of the main centres of resistance to his hegemony, and endeavoured to force the hitherto impregnable island fortress of Tyre to make an unconditional surrender (cf. ch. 26). But after a thirteen-year-long siege, from 586/5 to 573/2, he found himself forced to consent to a compromise. This was a very disappointing outcome for a struggle conducted with such extreme ferocity, and the last dated prophecy by Ezekiel in 29.17–21 deals with it. Calmly and deliberately it acknowledges that the prophet’s threat that the city would be completely annihilated has not taken effect, and replies to it only the more proudly, affirming the unlimited control exercised by his God over the powers of the world, and that this control cannot be thwarted by any transitory success for its opponents. He knows that God’s hands are capable of bringing his plans for the world to their goal, and that he need not recant any part of his message.

OTHER VIEWS OF THE PLACE AND TIME OF THE PROPHET’S MINISTRY

This picture of the historical situation suggested by the dates given in the book and by various statements by the author has in fact been questioned by many scholars, at any rate in the last few decades. They find themselves compelled to take a totally different view of the time and place of Ezekiel’s work, based upon a fresh analysis of the book. Their point of departure consists in the offence taken at the fact that large portions of the prophet’s preaching are explicitly aimed at Jerusalem and its inhabitants, and do not enter into the conditions of the exiles, which do not seem to be taken into consideration until the promises of salvation which begin after 587. Therefore, instead of a ‘prophet without people’ in Babylon, addressing himself at long range to his fellow countrymen in Jerusalem, it seemed to them more appropriate to posit a bearer of the prophetic message working in Palestine, whose posthumous writings were only subsequently given an exilic stamp by his disciples.¹ However, the difficulty of explaining large sections of the prophetic book on the basis of this exilic revision brings out only too clearly how very one-sided this theory is. It was hoped to overcome this problem by postulating that the prophet worked not only in Palestine but also in Babylonia, and this made it possible to make the heavily overloaded prophetic discourses, with all their repetitions and postscripts (as, for example, in ch. 8–11), intelligible by relating them to different places and conditions. In Germany it was above all Bertholet who worked out the possibilities of this in an instructive and attractive way in his commentary (1936). According to his view, Ezekiel worked in Jerusalem until the fall of the city, then, after a short stay in an unknown place in Palestine, he emigrated to Babylonia, where he subsequently received a second call and developed a second period of prophetic activity. Of course, the lack of any appropriate tradition makes it possible for the theories held to vary very considerably, as can be seen from the writings of the numerous supporters of this hypothesis. Some of them posit that Ezekiel, having been deported to Babylon and having worked there, returned to Jerusalem once more as the result of a divine call. They then make him return to Babylon again, either at the beginning of the siege or during the pause when the siege was lifted or only after the destruction of the city. Beside this we have a theory that Ezekiel had to break off his first period of activity in Jerusalem because of the strength of the hostility to him there; Yahweh willed to deliver his prophet from it by giving him a command in the fifth year (1.2), after the first deportation, to flee to Babylonia and settle among the golah (captivity) there.²

This unsatisfactory fluctuation in the theories is no mere matter of chance; it is the necessary result of all the difficulties encountered by any attempt to work out such a fundamental theory on the basis of a text which states the exact opposite. Whenever they do not fit in with the theory, the established pieces of information about dates and geographical locations must now be accepted, and again dismissed as doubtful, without any reliable methodological basis for the conclusions. There is also a readiness to take those elements of the tradition that are difficult to accommodate to this interpretation, and either make them mean something else or else try to eliminate them by critical methods. Doubt is thus cast on large portions of the book such as the oracles to the nations, creating a very suspicious element of uncertainty. The alleged double character of the accounts, which are supposed to be made up of two strands which have to be disentangled, is solved much more satisfactorily by a penetrating interpretation of the text which demonstrates the firm and significant interweaving of the different parts, as in the vision of the call, the unity of which is so often challenged. Here, of course, the later history of the text must be carefully taken into account, so as to follow accurately the way in which the original tradition has been refashioned to a considerable extent by the disciples of the prophet, who are also transmitters of his message, not only by the addition of numerous glosses but also by the insertion of sections which serve to bring out its full implications and also to explain its meaning. In this subsequent rehandling we can distinguish two lines of thought, one prophetic and the other priestly. The first can be traced in the pronouncements of judgment, addresses to the nations and promises of salvation. The second attains most prominence in the sections connected with the temple, e.g. ch. 10; 40–48. In this situation, form- and traditio-historical criticism may be able to give us new insights into the way in which the preaching of Ezekiel was conditioned by contemporary history.

Thanks to this, many individual difficulties are satisfactorily explained, but at the same time all the inner weakness of the basic theory of the ‘prophet without a people’ begins to emerge. For it is so obvious as to be a certainty that Ezekiel was first and foremost a prophet for the exiles, and that his influence upon the homeland was entirely secondary. It is a fact rightly emphasized that his proclamations of judgment are aimed exclusively against Jerusalem. But this does not mean that he gave no thought to the needs of the exiles; on the contrary, it means that he was showing a radical realization of the burning problem presented by the existence of that portion of the nation. It was precisely the destiny in store for Jerusalem with its temple and its inhabitants which constituted the cardinal problem for the exiles, a problem which had decisive significance for their attitude towards their own destiny and relegated to the background the hardships immediately connected with their deportation. It was Jerusalem that constituted the guarantee of the continued existence of the nation, and its preservation or non-preservation would decide whether what was happening to the exiles themselves would prove to be a transitory visitation or whether it would have to be regarded as a mortal blow at their very roots. So attempts were made to maintain their close ties with the homeland and to keep in touch with events there by means of messages which passed to and fro, in the way of which Jer. 29.25ff. gives testimony. When, therefore, Ezekiel spoke of the destiny of Jerusalem, he could be sure of finding his exilic audience full of attention and of tense expectation. By the strong ‘no!’ with which he met their feverish hopes, he also led them at the same time towards responsibility for the attitude they took up towards the God who was exercising judgment; for they, too, belong to the ‘house of rebelliousness’ and are as much ‘Israel’ as the other members of the nation who are still in the homeland, and the same word of God goes out to them bringing judgment or blessing. Israel continues to form a single spiritual whole, whether it exists in Palestine or in Babylonia, and to count up the number of passages applying the honorific title of ‘the nation’ to the exiles or to the Jerusalemites and then try to deduce from the difference in the number that one or the other portion of the people is more important, is just as senseless, and has as little relation to the material facts, as to speak of a ‘prophet without a people’.

The same holds true in regard to the thesis of a thoroughgoing transformation of the original writing of the prophet by a redactor who took the alleged testimonies to a double sphere of activity for Ezekiel and wove them together so as to claim them to be testimonies of his working among the exiles. Such a thesis is loaded with difficulties. For the suppression of his preaching in the holy land, so as to transpose it into the unclean land of exile, a process which would leave aside a considerable number of the testimonies which really do come from there, is such an extraordinary thing that it is very difficult to make it credible that by this means one would have claimed a continuous succession of Yahweh prophecies for the exiles from 598, the first year of the exile. The fifth year of the exile at any rate remained unaltered as that of the time when Ezekiel began to prophesy.

In view of the insuperable difficulties with which the prophetic book confronts any attempt to interpret it from the assumption that Ezekiel had a double sphere of activity, we find that there has been an attempt at a still more radical solution. This has been stated by C. C. Torrey, following some precursors who remained unnoticed, at frequent intervals since 1925, and has been received by many with acclamation. Torrey has found a large number of adherents to his theory, which tries to account for this prophetic book by explaining it as pseudepigraphic. According to him, the kernel of the book originated about 230, and contained prophetic discourses which were set by the author in the seventh century, and disguised as prophecies of the abominations of Manasseh and of the punishment which they met. Soon after, it was worked over, ascribed to the prophet Ezekiel, and furnished with appropriate dates. This theory presents so many points of attack that attempts to revive it have taken several different forms. One ascribes a part of the book to a prophet called Ezekiel who first appeared at the end of the fifth century, but was furnished by a redactor with a great number of additions, dating the appearance of the prophet one hundred and fifty years earlier. Another theory is that the many points of contact of the book with post-exilic texts, especially those belonging to Priestly literature, are due to an author of the period of Ezra and Nehemiah, whose autobiographical work was worked over and enriched at the time of Alexander the Great. In both of these versions the origin of the book takes on a fortuitous and capricious character. So another attempted solution tries to specify a strong motive for an author in the question of the messianic future which had been obscured in his time by a great uncertainty. This redactor belongs to the Judahites deported to the Black Sea in the fourth century, and gave the book the cryptic character beloved of apocalyptic by means of references to earlier dates and events, with the inevitable result that both the figure of the writer and the historical circumstances remain in a very uncertain light. All these widely divergent theories serve to illustrate the danger of throwing away what this book testifies to in regard to itself, because it only leads to fleeting speculations which, in spite of all their cleverness, cannot arouse any confidence in their results.

THE FORM TAKEN BY THE PROPHET’S MESSAGE

Exegetical work during the last few decades has a different story to tell. It displays increasing certainty in penetrating to the original text and understanding its context out of the beginning of the exile. The numerous questions and deliberations about the traditional wording of the book have not been overlooked, but have been worked out afresh from new perspectives. The way in which the present text has been distorted by numerous glosses and additions, the widely varying peculiarities of each of which must always be kept in view, has been the subject of increasingly thorough research, which has succeeded above all in laying down a basis by which to explain the prose portions of the text. The assistance received in this from the ancient versions, especially the Greek, is always of value here, as in other parts of the Bible, but especially important in the case of Ezekiel, because of the neglected state of its text. Thus, for example, the evidence of the Septuagint shows that the additional epithet Adonai, ‘almighty Lord’, which we find added to the divine name Yahweh in the traditional Hebrew text, is a subsequent addition, not found in the original Hebrew. The divine name Kyrios of the LXX should not be regarded as a translation of Adonai, as was formerly assumed; it was originally the rendering of Yahweh, and exercised a strong influence on those who transmitted the Hebrew text at the time when their reluctance to pronounce aloud the holy name of God was making them look out for a suitable substitute. This makes it necessary to restore the divine name in its original isolation everywhere in the translation, except where, in the vocative, it is accompanied by the honorific addition ‘my Lord’. Thus in this, as in numerous other instances, the terser Septuagint text guides us to an older recension of the Hebrew text, more reliable than the Massoretic text. We ought not, however, to overvalue the capacities for guidance of these older testimonies to the text; internal criticism is always required in addition for recognizing supplements to the text. In this work, Fohrer has made important contributions.¹

It is here that traditio-historical research has become important, since it has demonstrated a relationship between the prose passages of Ezekiel and the priestly style of sacral law, as with old prophetic literature, and has thus opened up new possibilities of understanding, without doing anything to interfere with the highly characteristic peculiarity which marks the prophetic text. The well-justified objections raised by Hölscher to the prose parts of the text in his widely recognized work² may therefore be given all the value they deserve, and the acuteness of his arguments receive due recognition, though at the same time his one-sided limitation of the prophetic message to the poetical passages, which is as far from providing a genuine solution of the difficulties as Duhm’s similar attempts in Jeremiah, is not acceptable. Whether, like Fohrer, one can go still further and attain the original form of the prose-addresses by introducing a metrical system of short verses with only two or three stressed syllables, arranged together in a series of strophes of similar construction, remains a very doubtful point, in view of the difficulty of establishing any fixed rules determining the existence of such verses or the way they fit together. This leaves far too much room for elements that are purely subjective. In the commentary, therefore, we shall speak of sections as poetical only where the well-known longer verses occur, especially the qinah, the elegiac form, and where the form can be stressed in print.

The text achieved by critical research must undoubtedly be regarded as being in the main that committed to writing by Ezekiel himself. The accounts of the prophet’s speeches and actions are almost entirely in the first person singular, leaving no room for doubt that the prophet himself saw to their being written down either before or after delivering them orally. Many sections, such as, for example, the longer poems in the oracles to the nations, may have existed solely in written form from the beginning. The writer’s characteristics are inimitable and quickly recognized: in the visions we are clearly shown the intensity with which the prophet entered into the visionary events. The beginning of the vision transports him directly into an event not of his own making, as the spirit or hand of Yahweh overpowers him. He is summoned to play an active part in the event which is now initiated, and has to co-operate, whether in action or in suffering. The conclusion of the vision leaves behind strong influences upon his spiritual and bodily make up. This distinguishes him sharply from his predecessors, especially Jeremiah, but the formulation of his vision exercises a wider influence on Zechariah and Daniel. One cannot maintain that there is any close mutual correspondence between all the visions. There is indeed a mutual correspondence between the two temple visions in ch. 8 and 11 and the revelation of the new temple in ch. 40ff., where we see the sanctuary fall in judgment and then created anew. But the vision in which the prophet receives his call has a function all of its own. At most, it can be regarded as presenting the prerequisite for divine action in judgment, by portraying the sovereign majesty of the lord of the universe. Chapter 37 stands all by itself; the date prefixed to all the other visions is lacking. We do, however, have to consider the possibility that the text has been damaged at a later date (cf. the commentary below, pp. 298ff.).

Just as the accounts of the visions have a fixed introduction consisting in the stereotyped formula telling how the hand of Yahweh came upon the prophet, so the accounts of his receiving the word are marked by a phrase showing how the word of God came to the messenger who was to deliver it. This form of phrase departs from the simple one employed in earlier days: ‘Yahweh spoke to me’ (Isa. 7.3; 8.1) and also from the formula employed by Jeremiah: ‘And the word of Yahweh came to me.’ The object is evidently to assert the objectivity of the word of God given to the prophet, and to affirm that it is a manifestation which forms an integral part of the historical event (described by Zimmerli as ‘word-event’), thus certifying the authenticity of what the prophet proclaims and the source from which it is derived in face of all the unbelief and insinuations expressed by his audience.

Associated with this as a regular rule is the title ‘Ben-adam’, son of man, by which the prophet is addressed instead of by his proper name. Such a regular use of the term is quite unique, and imparts a special stamp to Ezekiel’s prophecy. That this form of address indicates the weakness and lowliness of the creature over against the world-filling glory of the God of Israel is taken for granted by all interpreters. The prophet is thus continually reminded how he is dependent on a gift of special spiritual power, in order to fulfil the task to which God has called him in his prophetic activity. The condescension by which God bows down to one born of the dust and makes him worthy to serve as his messenger accentuates the wonder of the approach of his grace in the midst of judgment. He alone directs his words by specifically naming the person to whom they are addressed, and supports the accuracy of his proclamation by pieces of information and declarations of what his hearers and opponents are actually thinking, their hearts being transparent to him. At the same time he gives the prophet warning of the trials in store for him, and assures him that he will overcome them (12.21–28; 33–33). His appearance on the scene thus takes place within the framework of this direct divine guidance, and it also prescribes the form that his speech is to take, whether that of a sentence of judgment, a poem or a picture.

The consciousness of this continuous guidance, based on the experience of his vocation (3.1ff.), gives a stamp to the carefully chosen words with which each section is introduced. But that does not prevent the development of an astonishingly rich variety of forms in the traditional methods of proclamation which he takes over and develops independently. So when the prophetic word tells of the future in some announcement of judgment and grace, it is enriched and made to fit the situation by a broader statement of its causes and a stronger consideration of the subjective results of divine intervention. In this way it can sometimes swell to considerable dimensions, especially in moving forward to a general reckoning; as in ch. 13 and 20, where we are impressed by the skilful architecture of the construction, or in ch. 16 and 23, where he seeks to compass the history of Israel in the form of a parable. A point of particular importance is the frequency of references to the objective of God’s action, which is to confer a new knowledge of himself. Generally it takes the stereotyped form ‘And they shall know that I am Yahweh’, but it can also appear in all sorts of variations. We find this statement already in the Mosaic tradition, particularly in the Priestly writing, but it is also prominent in the older narrative writings, and it is used again in Deuteronomy. It states that the object is the recognition of the all-prevailing almighty power and the exclusive rights of the divine Lord, but also points to obedience to his will, and is a feature which is also prominent in earlier prophecy (I Kings 20.13, 26). It bases the knowledge of God upon God’s saving acts, like his bringing Israel out of Egypt and some of the individual wonders, as also on God’s execution of his sentences of judgment upon his enemies, and thus always carries it back to its source in some historical action by Yahweh, by means of which he wills to make himself known. But because Ezekiel’s preaching always keeps in view this object of God’s action, to prove his own existence to a humanity estranged from him, he creates a hitherto unknown type of speech which we may with Zimmerli call a ‘word of proof’, in order to bring out its special nature.

The word of warning, on the other hand, is very noticeably less prominent, as is perfectly in accordance with the general tendency of the prophet’s proclamation, which cannot expect any results from mere human action. On the other hand, another form of the word dealing with the future undergoes considerable development. This is the death lament, or elegy, which comes to the fore in ch. 19 and in the oracles to the nations, where it extends into poems of considerable length. These poems are full of the magic of a unique form of imagery, and in the mighty motion of the world they make our eyes look and see the providence of God, hidden in the background, and yet exercising its control in a decisive fashion. The prophet also tries by means of the enigmatic saying to catch the attention of his audience and guide them, not to a rational solution of the paradoxical situation he has shown them, but to the inward connection between guilt and punishment, or the impossibility of escaping the coming judgment (15.2–5; 17.2–10; 20.46–49). In his hand the hymn also becomes an instrument played by a master, so as to impress unforgettably upon his audience the awful depth of suffering under judgment (23.32—34) or the furious rage of battle (21.8–17), the madness of which breaks out in the surging passion of the sword dance.

As well as applying and developing further the usual forms of speech, Ezekiel takes up the didactic statement, already used by Jeremiah on a few occasions, and thus introduces a hitherto unknown method of preaching into the prophetic message. Here he makes use of the forms of speech belonging to sacral law, well known from their use in the priestly law, in order to take up certain themes the importance of which he has realized from discussions with his audience, and state them at full length. The very act of taking over such material has exposed him to the severest condemnation, since it has led many to regard him as a priest-prophet who descends to juridical formality and triviality, one who backslides from pure prophetic cognition into priestly and legalistic pietism. But if we are more accurate in our examination, we shall come to a very different verdict. Admittedly, when it borrows the terminology of priestly law the message moves forward ponderously, weighted down by all the repetitions by which the lawyer tries to give full technical expression to the excellence of his advice. But on the other hand, a theme stated in this legal form can develop every one of its aspects, and lead on with logical precision to a verdict which is hard to refute, and whose weighty formulations state the irrevocability of the divine will, which allows no possibility of appeal, so that human pretexts and excuses are useless. One may also add that when Ezekiel shows this preference for the style of sacral law, he totally refuses to let himself be carried back into priestly legalism. On the contrary, he makes a masterly use of a means thus available to him, in order to unfold a prophetic message of great independence, one which in our opinion is very sharply opposed to the general tendency of the priestly tradition, but which is at the same time capable of subjecting even the prophet on his side to the norm of God’s will as expressed in the covenant, impressing upon him how great his responsibility is. Thus, for example, the answer given to the idolatrous elders (14.1–11) seeks the support of the law of the sanctuary in order to work out a statement of the punishment which holds for all members of the people of the covenant and is possessed of absolute validity; yet it also leaves room for an appeal to repentance, and places the prophet who says what is pleasing to the idolaters under the same threat of judgment as them. In conclusion, taking over a central thought from Deuteronomy, it is pointed out how the final objective of salvation may be hidden by God’s severity, but is still guaranteed by his faithfulness (cf. below, p. 186). A similar movement occurs in the answer to the question whether the children of godly parents are to receive exceptional treatment in the divine judgment (14.12–20), as first a scholastic disputation makes a list of the different cases, and then the prospect of special treatment for Jerusalem is posited in opposition to the conclusion just established, and it is shown that this really serves to corroborate the guiding principle, silencing all revolt against God’s judgment. However, this type of style reaches its most effective development in the forcible piece of instruction on the subject of divine retribution in ch. 18. In spite of being shaped as a scholastic disputation with definitions and lists of typical cases, it develops no new theory about the solution of that agonizing problem; instead, an astounding offer of salvation is made, transmitted cultic forms of speech are fused and reapplied, and the community of exiles, upset and perplexed by the blows of judgment, is given new ground to stand on and shown the possibility of entering into the fellowship of a new covenant. In significant association with it in 33.10–20, a further appeal is made to the exiles to carry their inward conversion to a complete decision by turning towards the goal promised by God. Here the juridical style is relaxed even more than in ch. 18, by repeated allusions to words directly spoken by Yahweh himself.

Thus in these and other similar passages, the genre of sacral law is put to serve the prophet in his task and thus made to enrich the possibilities of his preaching. To this we may add the numerous symbolic actions (ch. 4f.; 12.1–11, 17–20; 24.3–5, 15–17; 37.15–17), and we see opening out a wide variety of forms of preaching, which testify not only to the width of the prophet’s mental horizon but also to the unwearying efforts he made to utilize every method of proclamation available to him.

THE FORMATION OF THE PROPHETIC BOOK

In view of what has been said so far, it would not be surprising if Ezekiel had collected his writings and arranged them in order to make them into a book. This is first of all indicated by the exact dates scattered all through the book, and marking certain sections. They seem by nature to point to a series of notes set down in chronological order. Seeing that we find a set of memoirs composed by the prophet himself in the case of Isaiah, Jeremiah and, in a later day, Zechariah, the same assumption is equally probable in the case of Ezekiel. However, the dates given by him are arranged in a curious fashion: for example, in ch. 26–32, which contain the oracles to foreign nations, there are as many as in the rest of the book, that is to say, seven. These prophecies embrace a period longer than the two years of the siege of Jerusalem, so most of them are dated and thus set apart from the rest to form an integral whole. The position of this collection within the whole book, however, suggests that it was not originally connected with its present context. It was not possible to put it in its present place without making a ruthless break in the connection between 24.26f. and 33.21f., which tell first of the announcement and then of the fulfilment of the promise made specially to Ezekiel, and which cannot have been separated from each other by more than six months. In addition to that, the date given in 33.21 is more than a year earlier than that of the latest of the oracles to the nations. These circumstances compel us to conclude that the book was already complete in itself before this insertion was made by some other hand. That makes inevitable the assumption that the dates in the book of Ezekiel are divided between two independent collections, one of which was a collection of proclamations of judgment against foreign nations, the coincidences of which with important stages in the siege and conquest of Jerusalem must have been so important to the prophet that he recorded them on the day when he delivered them. Along with that, the prophet must have composed a second collection giving particulars of what he preached about Jerusalem and Judah, in order to bear witness to his activities when in exile.

The dates given extend over a period of more than twenty years, from the prophet’s call to the close of his activity, but on each occasion they apply only to the section to which they are immediately attached. So they are evidently meant to mark occurrences which are to be regarded as forming the milestones along that lengthy road. In fact, that will be found to be true of most of them. For example, in 1.1–3.15 we are told of the calling and commissioning which lies at the basis of the prophet’s life; in 3.16a; 4 and 5 we are informed of how he begins his activities by performing symbolic actions and explaining what they mean, after which ch. 8–11 describe two temple visions, which were of decisive importance to his prophetic effectiveness. Chapter 20 tells of a perilous plan to build a temple in Babylon and of the strong objection he expresses to such a course; ch. 24 deals with the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem; 33.21f. with the arrival of a fugitive from the captured city and the prophet’s deliverance from his state of paralysis. Finally, ch. 4off. give visions of the new temple. It is impossible to doubt that what is described in this way forms a complex of events which develop in an important way along a definite line, and that its components are mutually applied to each other. Thus the vision of the call, revealing the Lord of the universe in his sovereignty over against and apart from Israel and his own temple, forms a point of departure for the revelation of God’s action in judgment and grace, the most important manifestations of which can be read out of what happens to the temple. While the symbolic actions in ch. 4f. point to the approaching judgment upon the holy city, ch. 8f. show the temple being profaned and thus given up to destruction, and then ch. 20 forbids all human attempts at self-help, as seen in the effort to set up a place of worship in an unclean land. Only in the place which has been chosen once and for all is it possible to have a new temple, and we see that beginning to happen in ch. 40ff., through a miraculous act performed by Yahweh.

The question now arises whether the contents of this prophetic autobiography should be limited to the passages directly associated with dates. This, however, seems doubtful. One cannot say that the connection that has been demonstrated, which is provided by four or five of the dates given, requires any such limitation. Neither the parabolic action at the beginning of the siege (24.3ff.), nor the freeing of Ezekiel from his state of paralysis (33.21f.) have any direct connection with the fate of the temple. Undoubtedly they mark important dates in the progress of the actualization of the prophet’s prediction. But is this not true also of the vision in 37.1ff., the importance of which has already been emphasized by the solemnity of the introduction, in which there are some signs of the original presence of a date? If it is said to be an important point that dates are used solely to introduce events, but never speeches, then we have to ask why the symbolic actions in 12.1ff. and 37.15ff. should not have been part of the memoirs. They may be described as counterparts with special connections with each other (the first describes the fall of the last king, the second gives a vivid picture of the rise of the new David). In the same way, the deliberate contrast between the curse and the blessing upon the mountains of Israel in ch. 6 and 36.1–15 is immediately obvious, and may be regarded as one of the clamps holding together the different parts of the memoirs. Also, the dramatic reply given to the idolatrous elders by Yahweh in 14.1–11 clearly goes beyond the speeches which ‘transcend space and time’ (Eissfeldt). If one reflects a little on the important part played in the prophet’s memoirs by such passages either left undated or deprived of a date through some chance, it is hardly possible to deny that also such deeply moving events as the sudden death of the prophet’s wife (24.15–27) or his installation into the new office of spiritual director in ch. 33 could have found a place in this first collection of matters of importance to Ezekiel’s work. The principle of the reference to the temple or the account of events, by which a certain guide line for the content of Ezekiel’s consecutive description could be obtained, cannot therefore be applied in formal exclusiveness; room must be left for other considerations, so that the prophet’s narrative may be allowed to display a richer variety in its material. Besides, at many points the final decision, at any rate, may be left to individual judgment.

We may, however, take it as established that, as their purpose demanded, the memoirs were characterized by a very definite line of events and descriptions which became a standard for the structure and development of the prophet’s activity. This gives a reason for excluding from the first memoir, with reasonable certainty, controversies over principles, didactic accounts, diffuse parables and summary proclamations of judgment, as, for example, ch. 13 with its basic and all-embracing denunciation of false prophets, ch. 18 and 33.10–20 with their carefully constructed discussion, ch. 16 and 23 with their allegories embracing the whole history of Israel, the threats in ch. 21f. with their exhaustive catalogues of sins, and the enigmatic words in ch. 15; 17; 21. At the same time, it is impossible to make an exhaustive selection, since too few points of view of general application are available for such a purpose. As a result, room is left for differences of opinion over many points.

There are, in any case, good reasons for asserting that a considerable number of passages which go back to Ezekiel himself were not included in the collections of his speeches which he himself left behind. They may have been transmitted independently for a long time, but their value was realized when the two prophetic passages were combined into one so as to provide a place for all extant records where they might be preserved from dispersion. That this redactional work cannot be ascribed to Ezekiel himself is already clear from the inorganic way in which the oracles to the nations have been inserted, so as to interrupt the series of proclamations of judgment against Israel. As we read we become aware of how this led to revolutionary displacements and to new interweavings of what were originally independent addresses; striking examples of this are the way in which 3.24–26 and 4.4–8 have been moved from their original position in ch. 24 in order to connect them with the beginning of the prophet’s activity (see below, pp. 76f.; 83ff.), the transposition of 33.7–9 in the form of 3.16b–21 with the same object (cf. below, p. 75), the way in which ch. 10 and 11.14–21 have been worked into ch. 8–11 and the resultant insertion of 1.15–21 in the vision at the call, which has also led to an alteration of the wording in vv. 8b and 9 and other minor additions. We may also recall the extensive additions to ch. 16 and 23, and in general the other elaborations made with a prophetic or priestly bias which are dealt with in detail in the commentary. This process has also led to the working in of large sections not belonging to the original prophetic tradition, and which are most important and extensive in the addresses to the nations in ch. 38f., and in ch. 40–48, the last main division of the book. We see therefore that this prophetic book as we now have it is the result of a complicated process of remodelling, elaborating and supplementing. It is only natural to expect that under the circumstances many problems must be left unsolved, such as the reason for the separation of ch. 17 from ch. 19 by the insertion of ch. 18. But throughout the whole book the unique and characteristic style of the parts composed by Ezekiel is so strong and dominant that it has not undergone any material change through the work of redaction, extensive though that has been, and it still continues to be the decisive factor which determines the whole.

The book was given its final shape by being arranged in three large sections: the pronouncements of judgment upon Israel in ch. 1–24, the prophecies concerning foreign nations in ch. 25–32, and the portrayals of the time of salvation in ch. 33–48, a structure also found in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and visible on a smaller scale in other prophetic books. By this means we can see the prophet’s mighty forward march from judgment to salvation, and the arrangement also reflects the way in which the community understood the movement of the history of salvation as displayed in his word.

THE PERSON AND MESSAGE OF EZEKIEL

I

Two spheres intersect in the person of Ezekiel, the life of the priest and that of the prophet, so his life is filled with strain and tension between the tradition he inherited and the demands of his call to be a prophet. As a member of the Zion priesthood, he grew up amid the proud traditions of a priesthood where a unique conception of history was combined with a conception of God of a deeply spiritual character full of inner greatness and other-worldly sublimity. So for him, fidelity to the commandment of the law and preservation of the priestly ideal of purity were as much a matter of course as the spiritual discipline and self-control which, aware of the closeness of the holy presence of God in the temple, subjected every inward movement to strict control and held back all expressions of passion or self-will. The exercise of pronouncing and interpreting the law had trained him to express his ideas with extreme precision of thought and terminology, and had also taught him to present his views in an architectonic construction and to give full consideration to all their various aspects. In expressing his thoughts he likes to make use of the scholastic lecture, enumerating each different case and the conclusions resulting from it, which gives his manner of speech the slow repetitious flow of the pedagogue and educationalist, but also the carefully chosen terms and weighty formulations of attained results. This intellectualist training had been combined with the acquiring of great learning, which shows an acquaintance not only with the past history of his own nation, its literature and the problems of its government and political development, but also such understanding of the life of the neighbouring nations as made it possible for him to criticize both their religious beliefs and their political activities. He thus came to be familiar with the realm of the mythical; he even seems to have taken pleasure in the bizarre images and learnt to apply them with a sure touch. The breadth of his mental horizon is especially noticeable in the addresses to the nations. This gives a great spaciousness and serene acceptance of the factual both in his life and in his preaching, and prevents him from any stiff doctrinaire systematizing of his opinion by narrow-minded categorical statements.

This rationally consistent cultivation of intellect and volition is blended with strength of emotion, usually repressed, but which can surge up and grow passionate in a way which shows how lasting an influence his environment exercised upon his psychology. This receptive side of his nature fertilizes his poetic gift and gives us, in addition to his prose speeches, a wealth of short enigmatic and allegorical poems, long-drawn-out parables and stirring death laments, so excellent that little can be found in the Old Testament to rival them. There is no sign in them of the cool matter-of-fact manner of the legal expert; these poetic creations follow their own laws and tower up into images and metaphors that are often daring, yet always enthralling, or burst out in some unmeasured explosion of indignation and emotion, which is at once painfully offended and extremely irritated by ugly and disgusting manifestations of the wild lawlessness of unfettered sensual instinct. In the proclamation of judgment this often leads to trenchant irony and bitter mockery of a nation which, despite all warnings, still maintains its short-sighted complacency.