1 Herodotus, i. 103‐106.
2 If the “thirtieth year” of ch. i. 1 could refer to the prophet’s age at the time of his call, his birth would fall in the very year in which the Law Book was found. Although that interpretation is extremely improbable, he can hardly have been much more, or less, than thirty years old at the time.
3 The opinion, once prevalent, that it was the Chaboras in Northern Mesopotamia, where colonies of Northern Israelites had been settled a century and a half before, has nothing to justify it, and is now universally abandoned.
4 This, however, is not certain. Although Jeremiah’s property and residence were in Anathoth, his official connection may have been with the Temple in Jerusalem.
5 The passage xxxiii. 14‐26 is wanting in the LXX., and may possibly be a later insertion. Even if genuine it would hardly alter the general estimate of the prophet’s teaching expressed above.
6 Jer. xv. 4; 2 Kings xxiii. 26.
7 In the superscription of the book (ch. i. 1‐3) a double date is given for this occurrence. In ver. 1 it is said to have taken place “in the thirtieth year”; but this expression has never been satisfactorily explained. The principal suggestions are: (1) that it is the year of Ezekiel’s life; (2) that the reckoning is from the year of Josiah’s reformation; and (3) that it is according to some Babylonian era. But none of these has much probability, unless, with Klostermann, we go further and assume that the explanation was given in an earlier part of the prophet’s autobiography now lost—a view which is supported by no evidence and is contrary to all analogy. Cornill proposes to omit ver. 1 entirely, chiefly on the ground that the use of the first person before the writer’s name has been mentioned is unnatural. That the superscription does not read smoothly as it stands has been felt by many critics; but the rejection of the verse is perhaps a too facile solution.
8 Not “amber,” but a natural alloy of silver and gold, highly esteemed in antiquity.
9 Cf. Exod. xxiv. 10: “like the very heavens for pureness.”
10 Duhm on Isa. xxx. 27.
11 _Bêth mĕri_, or simply _mĕrî_, occurring about fifteen times in the first half of the book, but only once after ch. xxiv.
12 Klostermann.
13 In ch. iii. 12 read “As the glory of Jehovah arose from its place” instead of “Blessed be the glory,” etc. (ברום for ברוך).
14 A somewhat similar episode seems to have occurred in the life of Isaiah. See the commentaries on Isa. viii. 16‐18.
15 These verses (ch. iii. 22‐27) furnish one of the chief supports of Klostermann’s peculiar theory of Ezekiel’s condition during the first period of his career. Taking the word “dumb” in its literal sense, he considers that the prophet was afflicted with the malady known as _alalia_, that this was intermittent down to the date of ch. xxiv., and then became chronic till the fugitive arrived from Jerusalem (ch. xxxiii. 21), when it finally disappeared. This is connected with the remarkable series of symbolic actions related in ch. iv., which are regarded as exhibiting all the symptoms of catalepsy and hemiplegia. These facts, together with the prophet’s liability to ecstatic visions, justify, in Klostermann’s view, the hypothesis that for seven years Ezekiel laboured under serious nervous disorders. The partiality shown by a few writers to this view probably springs from a desire to maintain the literal accuracy of the prophet’s descriptions. But in that aspect the theory breaks down. Even Klostermann admits that the binding with ropes had no existence save in Ezekiel’s imagination. But if we are obliged to take into account what _seemed_ to the prophet, it is better to explain the whole phenomena on the same principle. There can be no good grounds for taking the dumbness as real and the ropes as imaginary. Besides, it is surely a questionable expedient to vindicate a prophet’s literalism at the expense of his sanity. In the hands of Klostermann and Orelli the hypothesis assumes a stupendous miracle; but it is obvious that a critic of another school might readily “wear his rue with a difference,” and treat the whole of Ezekiel’s prophetic experiences as hallucinations of a deranged intellect.