when there was no peace," and "caused the people to trust in their lies" ( oh. xiii. 16, 19). It was to meet and, if possible, to dissipate these baseless hallucinations that Jeremiah's letter was despatched by the hands of Zede- kiah's ambassadors, counselling the exiles to settle down quietly in their new country, seek the peace of the city and empire to which they had been carried, and serve the King of Babylon, since not until seventy years rolled by would Jehovah cause them to return to their own land (Jer. xxix. 5-14); and although perhaps both parties in the Golah, the pious and irreligious, had they been left to themselves, might not have felt indisposed to acquiesce in the course recommended by the prophet-the one, prompted by that habit of obedience and submission to the Divine will which was not in them entirely extinguished, ancl the other, by the comparatively comfortable environment in which they found themselves, materially, socially, politically, and religiously (or rather, irreligiously), in the rich, powerful, pleasure- loving and idol-serving empire of Babylon-yet, as a matter of fact, they were not left to themselves, but were injuriously acted on by the false prophets in their midst, one of whom, Shemaiah the N ehelamite, actually went the length of sending back a reply to J eremiah's communication, suggesting that the Priest Zephaniah should arrest and confine the prophet as a madman (Jer. xxix. 24-29); and so the dream kept on haunting them that the Cap- tivity would not be long. It is even possible that Jeremiah's prophecy of Babylon's ultimate overthrow (Jar. 1.1 ), which Seraiah had been commis- aioned to read in Babylon (Jar. li. 59-64), may have contributed to keep alive the delusion that after all the "orthodox" prophets had been right, and Jeremiah, the" renegade" and" heretic," in the wrong, and that before long the dreary period of exile would terminate; and when, as the years went by, Zedekiah seemed to be firmly established on his throne, and tidings came from the old country of the stout resistance Tyre was offering to the forces of Nebuchadnezzar, as well as of the projected alliance of Tyre and Ammon with Judah against the common oppressor, it was scarcely surprising that this delusion should gather strength, and that a large part of Ezekiel's fulminations should be directed against it. It was manifestly in close connection with J eremiah's letter to the exiles, and in support of the policy it advised, that Ezekiel, in the fifth year of Zedekiah, stepped forth as a prophet of Jehovah.
3. The Mission of the Prophet. The special task assigned to the prophet, rather than spontaneously under- taken by him, was in general to act as a watchman unto the house of Israel ( eh. iii. 17 ; xxxiii. 7), by giving warning to the wicked man of the 1 Cheyne(' Jeremiah: his Life and Times,' p.168), following Ewald ('The Prophets of the
Old Testament,' iv. 232), who treads in the wake of Colin nnd Gramberg, assigns this wholo prophecy to e. writel' who flourished ne111' the end of the exile, if not lnter; but Hitzig's argument llppears unanswerable, that iu language and style it betrays the hand of Jeremiah, while" chronological data o~nfirm this result"(' Der Prophet Jeromio,' pp. 390, 391) X INTRODUCTION 'l'O
danger of persevering in his wickedness, and to the righteous man of the peril involved in turning aside from his righteousness. More particularly the prophet's duty should be fourfold-to beat down and dispel for ever the foolish hopes that bad been excited in the minds of his fellow-exiles as to a speedy deliverance from the yoke of Babylon, by proclaiming the absolutely certain and positively near approach of Jerusalem's overthrow; to bring to light and expose the invetera1'e apostasy and incurable corruption of Judah's capital, and, indeed, of the whole theocratic people, as the all-sufficient justification both of the judgments that had already overtaken them, and of those that were still impending; to awaken in them individually a feeling of sincere repentance, and so to call out from the ruins of the old a new Israel that might inherit all the promises which had bean given to the old; and when this was done, to comfort the sorrowing community of pious hearts with a prospect of restoration after the term of seventy years should have been fulfilled. In all these respects the mission of Ezekiel was distinct from the parts which had been assigned to his renowned predecessors, Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as from that devolved on his illustrious con- temporary, Daniel. Whereas Daniel served as a prophet of Jehovah to the mighty world-empire in which he was a high and trusted official, Ezekiel exercised the same function towards the exiles from Judah who were planted in the heart of that heathen land; and whereas Isaiah had been summoned to begin his official labours at the time when the final overthrow of Israel was first clearly made known (Isa. x. 1-6; xxxix. 6, 7), and Jeremiah saw the outbreak of that awful visitation which the son of Amoz had foretold, to Ezekiel fell the task of "personally introducing the rebellious house of Israel into its thonsand years of trial in the waste of the heathen" (Baumgarten, in Herzog's 'Real-Encyclopii.die,' art. "Ezechiel "). Or, to express the life-problem of Ezekiel more shortly, it was his business to interpret for Israel in exile the stern logic of her past history, and to lead her forth" through repentance unto salvation" (Cornill, 'Der Prophet Ezechiel,' p. 22). The first of the above-named parts of the prophet's calling he discharged, :first by performing a variety of symbolic actions and rehearsing others he had witnessed, in which were represented the siege of Jerusalem (eh. iv. 1-8; xxiv. 1-14), the miseries to be endured by its inhabitants (eh. iv. 9-17; v. 1-11; ix. 7-11; xii. 17-20), the burning of the city (eh. x. J, 2) from which (eh. xi. 23) as already from its temple the glory of Jehovah had departed ( eh. x. 18), ending in the exile and captivity of Zedekiah and his subjects (eh. xii. 1-13); next, by delivering a number of parabolic or allegorical addresses, in which were depicted Jerusalem's rejection (eh.xv.) and Zedekiah's deportation to Babylon ( eh. xvii. 20); and finally, by exhorting them in poetical compositions ( eh. xix. 1-14; xxi. 8-17) and spirited narrations ( eh. xxi. 18-27), in which the same melan- choly events, the approach of Nebuchadnezzar and the desolation of Jerusa- lem, were foretold. The second he fulfilled by reporting to the elders who THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. xi