3. Unlike his predecessor in the prophetic office, who gives us the amplest details of his personal histo- ry, Ezekiel rarely alludes to the facts of his own life, and we have to complete the imperfect picture by the colors of late and dubious tradition. He was taken captive from a place called Sarera (tfc yj/c Sapjjpo, Is- idor. De Vit. et Ob. Sand. 39 ; Epiphan. De Vit. et Mori. Prophet, ix, ap. Carpzov) in the captivit}^ (or transmi- gration, as Jerome more accurately prefers to render r"5?, i, 2) of Jfhoiachin (not Johoiakim, as Josephus [^Ant. X, G, 3] states, probably by a slip of memory) with other distinguished exiles (2 Kings xxiv, 15) eleven years before the destruction of Jerusalem. B.C. 598. Josephus (/. c.) says that this removal happened when he was a boy, and although we cannot consider the assei-tion to be refuted by Hiivernick's argumer.t from the matured, vigorous, priestly character of his writings, and feel still less inclined to say that he had ^'nndoubtcd/y exercised for some considerable time the function of a priest, yet the statement is question- able, because it is improbable (as Hiivernick also points out) that Ezekiel long survived the twenty-seventh year of his exile (xxix, 17), so that, if Josephus be correct, he must have died very young. He was a member of a community of Jewish exiles who settled on the banks of the Chebar, a "river" or stream of Babylonia, which is sometimes taken to be the Kha- bour, but which the latest investigators suppose to be tlie Nahr Malcha, or royal canal of Nebuchadnezzar. See CuEB.vn. The actual name of the spot where he resided was Tel-Abib (3"'^X bp, Yulg. "acervus no- varum frugum,"' Sept. /.itrHopoc Kai 7npi)iX9ov (?). Syr. "the hill of grief"), a name which Jerome, as usual, allegorizes ; it is thought by Michaelis to be the same as Thallaba in D'Anville's map (Kosenmiiller, Bihl. Geoff, ii, 188). It Mas l)y this river "in the land of the Chaldreans" that God's message first reached him (i, 3); the Clialdee version, however, interpolates the words " in the land [of Israel : and again a second time he spake to him in the land] of the Chaldeans," because the Jews had a notion that the Shechinah could not overshadow a prophet out of the Holy Land. Hence 11. Jarchi thinks that chap, xvii was Ezekiel's first jirophecy, and was uttered before the captivity, a view which he supports by the Hebrew idiom tl^rt tlTI (A.V. "came expressly") in i, 3. B. Kimchi, how- ever, makes an exception to the rule in case the "proph- ecy was inspired in some pure- and quiet spot like a river's bank (comp. Psa. cxxxvii, 1). His call took place "in the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captiv-
ity," B.C. 594 (i, 2), "in the thirtieth j'car, in the fourth month." The latter expression is very uncei'- tain. Most commentators (see Poli Synopsis, in loc.) take it to mean the thirtieth year of his age (so Carp- zov, Appar. Crif. p. 201 ; Fairbairn, Did. s. v., and others), the recognised period for assuming full priest- ly functions (Numb, iv, 23, 80). Origen, following this assumption, makes the prophet a typo of Christ, to whom also "the heavens were opened" when he was baptized in Jordan. But, as Pradus argues, such a computation would be imusual, and would not be sufficiently important or -well known as a mark of gen- uineness, and would require some more definite addi- tion. Moreover, the statute referred to required an age of at least thirty /till years. The Chaldee para- phrase by Jonah ben-Uzziel has "thirty years after Hilkiah, the high-priest, had found the book of the law in the sanctuary, in the vestilnile under the porch, at midnight, after the setting; of the moon, in the days of Josiah, etc., in the month Tammuz, in the fifth day of the month" (comp. 2 Kings sxii), i. e. the eighteenth of Josiah, or B.C. 623. This view is adopted by Je- rome, Usher, Hiivernick, etc., and is, on the whole, the most probable, although it has been objected to its adoption that, had this been a recognised »ra, we should have found traces of it elsewhere, whereas even Ezekiel never refers to it again. But, whatever start- ing-point we adopt, this will still remain an isolated date in Ezekiel ; and the example of Jeremiah, who computes the j-ears of his prophetical ministrations from the reform in the days of Josiah (Jer. xxv, 3; comp. 2 Chron. xxiv, S), warrants the supposition that his contemporary and parallel would note his own call from a similar religious epoch, the renewal of the pass- over in the same reign (2 Kings xxiii, 23). There are similar and more forcilde oljjections to its being the. thirtieth year from the jubilee, as Hitzig supposes, following many of the early commentators. It has been proposed by Scaliger {Be Emcndatione Tem2wnim, Lugd" Bat. 1598, p. 374) that it was the thirtieth year frrm the new sera of Nabopolassar, father of Nebu- chadnezzar, who began to reign B.C. G25, an inter- pretation adopted by Eichhorn, Pradus, Eosonniiiller, Henderson, etc. The use of this Chaldee epoch is the more appropriate as the prophet wrote in Babylonia, and he gives a Jewish chronology in ver. 2. Compare the notes of time in Dan. ii, 1 ; vii, 1 ; Ezra vii, 7 ; Neh. ii, 1 ; V, 14. But this would make the date in question B.C. 59G instead of 594. Moreover, as Nabopolassar was long since dead, the reckoning would doubtless have been by the j^ears of the 7-eigninfj monarch, as in the other passages cited. The decision of the ques- tion is the less important, because in all other places Ezekiel dates from the year of Jehoiachin's captivity (xxix, 17 ; XXX, 20, et passim). It appears that the call of Ezekiel to the prophetic office was connected with the communication of Jeremiah's predictions to Babylon (Jer. Ii, 59), which took place in the earlier part of the same j-ear (Hiivernick, p. ix). We learn from an incidental allusion (xxiv, 18)— the only refer- ence which he makes to his personal historj- — that he was married, and had a house (viii, 1) in his place of exile, and lost his wife In' a sudden and unforeseen stroke. He lived in the highest consideration among his companions in exile, and their elders consulted him on all occasions (viii, 1; xi, 25; xiv, 1 ; xx, 1, etc.), because in his united office of priest and prophet he was a living witness to "them of the captivity" that God had not abandoned them (comp. Vitringa, Synag. Vet. p. 332). There seems to be little ground for The- odoret's supposition that he was a Nazarite. The last date he mentions is the twenty-seventh year of the captivity (xxix, 17), so that his mission extended over twenty-two years, during part of which period Daniel was probably living, and already fiimous (Ezek. xiv, 14; xxviii, 3).