Contents, city (586 b.c). The interval is filled
in by prophecies against foreign nations not arranged in strict chronological order (xxv.-xxxii.). Each main part opens with utterances upon the importance and responsibility of Ezekiel's office. The contents vary in a characteristic manner. As long as Jerusalem was standing, the announcement of coming judgment predominated; what had been God's kingdom was to fall utterly; when that had come to pass, the work of reconstruction was to begin. " While in the first half Ezekiel buried the material hope of Israel, which rested on the continued existence of Jerusalem and the Temple, in the second he rebuilt in spirit land and people, city and temple " (Klostermann). Pronouncement of judgment on the worldnations formed the transition to the establishment of the theocracy in Israel; the episode belongs therefore to the second part.
The literary peculiarities of Ezekiel's book are connected with his position as an exile during its composition. He differed from the earlier prophets, even from his older contemporary Jeremiah, by being removed from the actual theater of history, thus being denied an immediate influence in the
developments of his time, and this
2. Literary affected the form of his oral and writ-
Peculiari- ten speech. His prophecies were no
ties. casual addresses to fit passing events,
but were worked out in quiet meditation and prepared with literary art, for which he had an evident liking. Not that the short, striking, oracular utterance is wholly wanting; but Ezekiel more often discusses his subject at leisure and his deliverance develops deliberately before his prophetic eye (compare the detailed description of his first vision — chap. i. — with the brief sketch of the similar vision in Isa. vi.). He is not satisfied with
Ezekiel
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
a few characteristic strokes, but rather aims at a perfect picture which affects the spectator less by its immediate power and warmth than by its grandeur and harmonious finish. The frequency of the visions attests also his inclination toward quiet meditation. That he could not come into immediate contact with the concrete objects may, furthermore, have helped to cause the figurative descriptions which are peculiar to him. His contemporaries complained of his figurative speech (xx. 49), and the enigmatic character of his writing has always tried the patience of Jewish as well as Christian interpreters, while it has yielded the richer material to mysticism. Figurative utterance is found in Ezekiel in various forms — now as simple metaphor, now approaching the parable (xv.; xxii. 18 sqq.), now as true allegory (xvii.). He delights especially in pereonifying nations and countries or in representing them under the image of animal or plant. Thus he portrays Judah (Jerusalem) and Samaria as prostitutes (xvi., xxiii. 1 sqq.); the house of David as a lion's den (xix. 1 sqq.), or a vine (xix. 10 sqq.; cf. xvii. 6), or a cedar (xvii. 3); Egypt as a cedar (xxxi. 3 sqq.), or a crocodile (xxxii. 1 sqq.); the Chaldean power as a great eagle full of feathers of diverse colors (xvii. 3). After giving the meaning of his cryptic utterances, he again takes up the allegoric form. He shows himself a master in describing the great and sublime, and some portions of his book are specimens of the most beautiful and the most tender lyric poetry — e.g., the elegies, characteristic of him as of Jeremiah, in which he laments the lot of the foreign powers (xix. 1 sqq., xxvi. 17 sqq., xxvii. 2 sqq., xxviii. 12 sqq., xxxii. 2 sqq.). To consider Ezekiel only a writer, however, who did not actually deliver his addresses, is not admissible; but it is true that the written form was of special importance to him, particularly as his spoken words could benefit only a small part of his people.
Once again, Ezekiel's position, his exclusion from all share as an active participant in the events of his time, was accountable for the symbolic actions with which he accompanied his discourses and made them impressive. His whole person was called on to serve his oracles in most varied pantomime. Dumbness (iii. 26), motionless constraint (iv. 4-8), eating and drinking (iv. 9 3. Symbolic sqq.), cutting of the hair (v. 1 sqq.),
Actions, stamping with the foot and clapping of hands (vi. 11), sighing (xxi. 11), and trembling (xii. 17) were all made " signs." What happened to the prophet was emblematic of the fate of his people (xxi v. 14 sqq.); in his own person he represented also that of his king (xii. 3 sqq.). Partly because of the triviality of such symbolic signs it has been denied that they were actually employed, and they have been regarded as mere literary devices. But considering Oriental skill in interpreting such symbols and the readiness of the Israelites to attach importance to the acts of a prophet, actual performance is the more natural assumption, though vii. 23 and xxiv. 3-5 are probably parables. In other cases a mere recital of what happened to the prophet would have lacked significance and contributed little as illustration.
But what an impression it must have made when people found him in the condition described in iv. 1 sqq. with hostile look directed for weeks on Jerusalem and with arm uplifted against it! The picture was a most eloquent epitome of the fate of the city. Klostermann attempts to make the lone immobility of the prophet more intelligible by finding here the symptoms of severe catalepsy. Dumbness, indeed, seems to have been imposed on the prophet, to judge from expressions which can not be referred to mere silence (cf. iii. 26-27, xxiv. 27). Such a disease might be considered a means God-ordained for prophetic purposes.
To the solemnly ceremonial style of Ezekiel belongs also the stereotyped recurrence of certain solemn formulas. The sayings are generally introduced by " thus saith the Lord Yahweh " (117 times according to Zunz) or " the
4. Other word of Yahweh came unto me." Character- The prophet is always addressed by
istics. God and the angels with the elsewhere unusual name "son of man"; and many other recurring phrases give the book a uniform cast. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel draws frequently from former prophets. His muse is inspired by the entire sacred literature of the past, especially by the " Mosaic " law, but also by sacred history and tales of prehistoric times (cf., e.g., Gen. ii. 8 and Ezek. xxviii. 13; Gen. i. 28 and Ezek. xxxvi. 11). Beside this is his artistic realism, which everywhere produces concrete forms from the material furnished by the historical, archeological, and literary store of the theocracy. He was no mere " scholar," as he has been called, but rather a creative genius who made his knowledge of the past useful for new ideas. His sentences are involved, often diffuse, and his language is more Aramaized than that of Jeremiah; but the clumsiness of expression in Ezekiel's book is partly due to corruption of the text, which in many passages can be corrected from the Septuagint.
Passing to the spiritual significance and theological character of Ezekiel, he has marked points of contact with Jeremiah, who remained in Jerusalem. Both declare with all emphasis the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth to be unavoidable and near at hand, destroying relentlessly the illusory hopes of the patriots and strongly condemning the fraudulent policy of the princes who were trafficking with Egypt. The Levitical character of Ezekiel's prophecies, which portray the city of
5. Theo- God and its cultus under a new logical regime and in its details, springs from
Character, his sacerdotal education and disposition. The Levitical side of Ezekiel in recent times has been exaggerated in two ways. In the first place it is asserted that he was the originator of the priestly legislation with its tabernacle, its orders of sacrifices and priests. In the second place he is charged with having pushed aside or destroyed by his formulas and outward injunctions the free ethical religion of the prophets, becoming the father of the bigoted postexilic Judaism and Pharisaism. It is true that for Ezekiel, as for the Mosaic law, external order and ethical communion with God are inseparably connected. He