Tradition ascribes various miracles to him, as, for
EZEKIEL
431
EZEKIEL, BOOK OF
instance, escaping from his enemies by walking dry- shod across the Chebar ; feeding the famished people with a miraculous di-aught of fishes, etc. Ho is said to have been murdered in Babylon by some Jewish prince (? 6 j'/you/xti'of tov Xaov, called in the Roman martyrology for vi Id. Apr, "judex populi," Carpzov. Jntrod. 1. c), whom he had convicted of idolatry ; and to have been buried in a double tomb (cTr/jXaloi/ c?£- ■kXovv), the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad, on the banks of the Euphrates (Epiphan. Dc Vit. et Mort. Prophet.^. The tomb, said to have been built by Jehoiachin, was shown a few days' journey from Bagdad (Menasse ben- Israel, De jResurrec. Mort. p. 2:5), and was called "the abode of elegance" (habitaculuni elegantiiij). A lamp was kept there continually burning, and the auto- graph copy of the prophecies was said to be there pre- served. This tomb is mentioned by Pietro de la Valle, and fully described in the Itinerary of K. Benjamin of Tudela (Hottinger, Thes. Phil. II, i, 3; Cippi Ilehraici, p. 82). His tomb is still pointed out in the vicinity of Babylon (Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 427), at a place called Keffil ; and Mr. Loftus is inclined to ac-
Kclfil und the Tomb of F.zukiel.
cept the tradition which assigns this as the resting- place of the prophet's remains {Chaldcna, p. 35). The spire is the frustum of an elongated cone, tapering to a blunted top by a succession of steps, and peculiarly ornamented (ib.). A curious conjecture (discredited by Clemens Alexandrinus {^Strom. i], but considered not impossible b}' Selden \_Stpitagm. de Diis Syr. ii, 120], Meyer, and others) identifies him with "Nazai-a- tus the Assjn'ian," the teacher of Pythagoras. We need hardly mention the ridiculous suppositions that he is identical with Zoroaster, or with the 'El'f/cn;Xoc o rCov \ovda'iKMV rpayio^liov Trou]r)'ic (Clem. Alexand. Strom, i ; Euseb. Prap. Evnng. ix, 28, 29), who wrote a play on the Exodus, called 'E^aywy// (Fabricius, Bibl. Gra'c. ii, 19). This Ezekiel lived B.C. 40 (Sixt. Sen. £ibL Sand, iv, 235), or later.
4. But, as Hiivernick remarks, " by the side of the scattered data of his external life, those of his internal life appear so much the richer." We have already noticed his stern and inflexible energy of will and character; and we also observe a devoted adherence to the rites and ceremonies of his national religion. Ezekiel is no cosmopolite, but displays everywhere the peculiar tendencies of a Hebrew educated under Le- vitical training. The priestly bias is alwaj'S visible, especially in chaps, viii-xi, xl-xlviii, and in iv, 13 sq. ; XX, 12 sq. ; xxii, 8, etc. It is strange of De Wette and Gesenius to attribute this to a " contracted spirit- uality," and of Ewald to see in it '"a one-sided concep- tion of antiquity which ho obtained merely from books and traditions," and " a depression of spirit (!) en- hanced by the long continuance of the banishment and bondage of the people" (Hiivernick's Jntrod.). It was surelj^ this very, intensity' of patriotic loj-alty to a sys- tem whose partial suspension he both predicted and survived, which cheered the exiles with the confidence of his hopes in the future, and tended to preserve their decaying nationality. Jlr. F. Newman is even more contemptuous than the German critics. "The writ-
ings of Ezekiel," he says (ffebr. 3fonarchy, p. 330, 2d ed.), "painfully show the growth of what is merely visionarj', and an increasing value of hard sacerdotal- ism;" and he speaks of the "heavy materialism" of Ezekiel's Temple, with its priests, sacrifices, etc., as " tedious and unedifying as Leviticus itself." His own remark that Ezekiel's predictions "so kept alive in the minds of the next generation a belief in certain re- turn from captivity, as to have tended exceedingly to- wards the result," is a sufficient refutation of such criticisms.
We may also note in Ezekiel the absorbing recog- nition of his high calling which enabled him cheerful- ly to endure anj^ deprivation or misery (except indeed ceremonialpollution, from which he shrinks with char- acteristic loathing, iv, 14), if thereby he may give any warning or lesson to his people (iv ; xxiv, 15, 16, etc.), whom he so ardently loved (ix, 8 ; xi, 13). On one occasion, and on one only, the feelings of the man burst, in one single expression, through the self-devo- tion ofthe prophet ; and while even then his obedience is unwavering, yet the inexpressible depth of submis- sive pathos in the brief words which tell how ii. one day " the desire of his eyes was taken from him" (xxiv, 15-18), shows what well-springs ofthe tender- est human emotion were concealed under his uncom- promising opposition to every form of sin. — Smith, s. V. See Friderici, Disputatio de Ezechiele (Lips. 1719) ; Verpoortcn, Ds scrtptis Ezechielis (in his Disserti'. p. 107) ; .jClexander, Ilist. Ecclesias. iii, 560 ; Kitto, Jour. Sac. Lit. i; WiWiAms, Characters ofO. T. p. 288.
EZEKIEL, Book of. This, both in the Hebrew and Alexandrian canons, is placed next to the writings of'Jeremiah.
I. Order of Contents. — The central point of Ezekiel's predictions is the destruction of Jerusalem. Previ- ously to this catastrophe his chief object is to call to repentance those who were living in careless security ; to warn them against indulging in blind confidence, that by the.help ofthe Egyptians (Ezek. xvii, 15-17 ; conip. Jer. xxxvii, 7) the Babjdonian yoke would be shaken off; and to assure them that the destruction of their city and Temple was inevitable and fast ap- proaching. After this event his principal care is to console the captives by promises of future deliverance and return to their own land, and to encourage them hy assurances of future blessings. His predictions against foreign nations stand between these two great divisions, and were for the most part uttered during the interval of suspense between the divine intimation that Nebuchadnezzar was besieging Jerusalem (chap, xxiv, 2) and the arrival of the news that he had taken it (ch. xxxiii, 21). The predictions are evidently ar- ranged on a plan corresponding with these the chief subjects of them, and the time of their utterance is so frequently noted that there is little difticulty in ascer- taining their chronological order. This order is fol- lowed throughout, except in the middle portion relat- ing to foreign nations, where it is in some instances departed from to secure greater unity of suViject (e. g. ch. xxix, 17). The want of exact chronological order in this portion of the book has led to various hypoth- eses respecting the manner in which the collection of the separate predictions was originally made. Jahn {Mrod. p. 356) supposes that the predictions against foreign nations were placed in their present position by some transcriber in the order in which they hap- pened to come into his hands, and that he through for- getfulness omitted chaps, xxxv, xxxviii, and xxxix, Eichhorn (Einkit. iii, 193) thinks it probable that tho predictions were written on several greater or smaller rolls, which were put together in their present form without sufficient regard to chronological accuracy'. Bertholdt (Einkit. iv, 1487, quoted by Havernick) sup- poses that the collector of the whole book found two smaller collections already in existence (chaps, xxv- xxxiL and xxxiii, 21-xxxix), and that he arranged