Ezekiel

Ezekiel (meaning 'God will strengthen,' or 'strength of God'), one of the Hebrew prophets, was the son of the priest Buzi, and along with Jehoiachin, king of Judah, was carried captive, when still a young man, to Mesopotamia, by order of Nebuchadnezzar, about 599 B.C. He was a member of the Jewish community which settled on the banks of the river Chebar, and first appeared as a prophet about the year 594, after the remarkable vision described in his opening chapters. His prophetic career extended over a period of twenty-two years. The date of his death is not recorded.—The Book of Ezekiel consists of three great parts, dating respectively from before, during, and after the siege of Jerusalem: the first (chapters i.-xxiv.), composed before the final conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, announces the complete overthrow of the kingdom of Judah, on account of its increasing unfaithfulness to God, and especially its perjury in forming an alliance with Egypt after accepting vassalage under Babylon; the second (chapters xxv.-xxxii.) threatens the seven surrounding nations, which were exulting maliciously over the ruin of Judah, with divine punishment; and the third (chapters xxxiii.-xlvi.) prophesies the future deliverance of the Hebrew nation, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the vision of the temple and its measurement, a symbol of the restored theocracy. This last portion contains certain predictions, usually interpreted as directly Messianic, the future deliverer being conceived under the form of 'David, the Good Shepherd' (xxxiv. 23; xxxvii. 24), who shall reign gloriously over Israel. The book is full of magnificent but artificial symbolism, and of allegories difficult to understand; whence St Jerome calls it 'a labyrinth of the mysteries of God,' and the Jews themselves placed it among 'the Treasures'—not to be read before the age of thirty. Some passages, as the first and second chapters, reveal a vivid and sublime imagination. The authorship of the book has not been seriously assailed, although the Talmud asserts that it was written by the Great Synagogue, of which Ezekiel was not a member; and Zunz dated it about the year 400 B.C. Keil and Kuenen make Ezekiel both its author and editor; Ewald detects obvious traces of later elaboration, and suggests that the collection and combination of the various prophecies into a book may not have been the prophet's own doing. Graf believed Ezekiel also the author of part of Leviticus (chaps. xviii.–xxiii., xxv., xxvi.), and has been followed by many supporters. 'Ezekiel,' according to Wellhausen, 'is the connecting link between the prophets and the Law. He claims to be a prophet, and starts from prophetic ideas; but they are not his own ideas—they are those of his predecessors, which he turns into dogmas. He is by nature a priest, and his peculiar merit is that he inclosed the soul of prophecy in the body of a community which was not political, but founded on the temple and the cultus. . . . Thus arose that artificial product, the sacred constitution of Judaism.' The text of Ezekiel is far from being in a perfect condition. It is partly corrupted by glosses, has partly been retouched by later hands, and may often be amended by the Septuagint version. A splendid example of Hebrew scholarship is the Hebrew text reconstructed from the Septuagint by Dr Carl Heinrich Cornill (Leip. 1886). See Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten (1875); and the commentaries by Hävernick (1843), Hitzig (1847; 2d ed. by Smend, 1880), Fairbairn (1851), Kliefoth (1864 et seq.), Hengstenberg (2 vols. 1867 et seq.), Keil (1868; 2d ed. 1882), Schröder (1873); and Ewald, Die Propheten des Alten Bundes (2d ed. 1868).