•The MT gives u the <lBt« 'the ISth year' of Jchoiachln't captivity, i.f. &&4. But it is hardly credible that tlie trani- niiiwlon of the news should have been delayed so loinr as 18 months, and hence the reading '11th year'"found In th« Hyr. and some Heb. MSS is generally regarded a« oomot.
81C
EZEKIEL
EZEKIEL
at least a few adherents of Jer., who would natur- ally rally round E. as the representative of their master's teaching. It has even been surmised that it was through this channel that E. first became acquainted with the writings of Jer., which have left so deep a mark on his thinking. This is unlikely, because it is hardly credible that he should have recast the substance of his oral prophecies under the literary influence of another prophet ; and, moreover, he must have had abund- ant opportunity of knowing Jeremiah's teaching before hia own captivity. But it must be admitted that \vith regard to all that took place after the faU of the city we are left almost entirely in the dark. There is but one allusion in the book to the relations between the earlier exiles and the later (H"*-) ; and if it is at all coloured by the prophet's actual impressions after the event, it certainly does not encourage the notion that he found tne new-comers hopeful material to work upon. It was probably not very long after the commencement of the second phase of his work that E. prepared the first written edition of his prophecies (see below). There is an interval of about 13 years (584-572) from which no prophecy is dated. What his occupations were during this period is of course imknown, but there are some signs that chs. 1-39 had been edited practically in their present form before the composition of 40-48. This last section may reveal the direction in which the prophet's thoughts had been moving in those years ; and a still later oracle ('29"*-) sliows that he did not cease to be a close observer of public events.
While the character of E.'s ministry does not differ essentially from that of his predecessors, it presents some exceptional features of a very in- structive kind. The mere fact of his being an exile accounts for much that is peculiar in his method of working and his conception of his oflSce. To say that he was no prophet at all, but merely a pastor exercising the cure of souls amongst tliose who came under his personal influence, is an exaggeration, but it is the exaggeration of a truth. His insistence on the independence of the indi- vidual soul before God (18. 33'-"-), and his com- parison of himself to a watchman responsible for each person who perishes through not being warned of his danger (3""- 33"'-), suggest that the care of the individual must have occupied a larger place in his work than was the case with the pre- exilic prophets. At a time when the unity of the nation was broken up, and the new kingdom of God had to be born in the hearts of those who embraced the hope set before them by the prophets, it was inevitable that a religious teacher snould devote much of his attention to the conversion and spiritual direction of individuals. This, how- ever, is a side of E.'s activity which does not directly come to light in the book ; there are more subtle indications of the effect which his position as an exile had on his prophetic mission. It was by no means a matter of course, according to the ideas of the age, that prophecy could be trans- planted to a foreign soil, and in reality it could not 1ouri.sh there without losing some of its most characteristic functions. The older prophets had all more or less been religious politicians, in touch ^vith the pulsations of a vigorous popular life, and bringing the word of God to bear directly on those national problems which arose out of the relation between J" and the community of Israel. E.'s audience, on the other hand, was but a dis- membered limb of the body politic ; his political interests were remote and secondary, and the whole cast of his thinking betrays a sense of isolation from the main current of national life. This appears moat clearly in his habit of treating
the exiles as representatives of the larger Israel, \vith whose destinies he never ceased to concern himself. From the first he recomized that hia mission had a double aspect : on the one hand he was sent to ' them of the Captivity ' ; and on the other hand he was a pro])het to the whole house of Israel (cf. 3" with 2' 3<). Thus he had two audiences, one real and present and the other ideal ; and for the most part they are identified to such a degree that in addressing the exiles or their elders he fancies himself speaking to the idealized nation, whose members were then scattered far and wide over the world. It is an extension of the same tendency when he delivers imaginary discourses to those left in the land, or apostrophizes the mountains of Israel (6. 36), or exhibits the whole religious history of the people in elaborate allegories (16. 23), or even calls up from the past the vanished cities of Samaria and Sodom, and treats them as if they had a present existence, and a real interest in the unfolding of the divine purpose (le'"*- 23'*''-). It is obvious that oratory of this description comes very near being inde- pendent of an audience altogether ; and some perception of this fact is perhaps revealed by the too facile appreciation which it received from the immediate hearers. And although E. never abandoned the practice of public speaking, it ia undoubtedly the case that in his hands prophecy became far more of a literary occupation than it had hitherto been. A perusal of the book shows that it has been carefully planned with an eye to literary effect ; and if the prophet had simply worked out his conceptions in the solitude of his chamber, the result would hardly have differed mucli from what we actually find. More than any of his predecessors he lives in a world of abstract ideas, which are more vividly real to his imagina- tion than the circumstances of his everyday life ; though now and then an echo from the outer world breaks in to remind us that after all he was no mere recluse, but a man of large experience, keenly observant of the life of his time. Several things, indeed, go to show that his intellectual interests reached far beyond the Jewish world in which he lived. His long and accurate enumera- tion of the natural and industrial products of different countries (27), exhibits a knowledge of contemporary commerce which is surprising in a Heb. prophet. It is probable also that he had gained some new impressions from his sojourn amidst the monuments of a strange civilization in the Euphrates valley. The conception of the cherubim in chs. 1. 10 appears to borrow some of its features from the composite animal tiErures of Babjdonian art ; and in other parts of the book some striking phraseological coincidences have been thought to suggest a direct influence of the cuneiform inscriptions (Miiller, p. 56 fl'. 1.