EZEKIEL ĭ ze’ kyəl (יְחֶזְקֵ֨אל; LXX, ̓Ιεζεκιήλ, God strengthens). Ezekiel was one of the major prophets. He was the son of Buzi, a priest of the family of Zadok (Ezek 1:3); and so like Zechariah (Zech 1:1; Neh 12:12, 16) and Jeremiah (Jer 1:1), combined both the offices of prophet and priest, the Levitical influence being apparent in chs. 40-48 of his prophecy. He was reared in Jerusalem and perhaps had already entered upon the work of the priesthood when he was taken with other captives, including King Jehoiachin to Babylonia into exile by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 b.c.
The problem concerning the age of Ezekiel when he was taken into exile has been a matter of discussion, but it is most probable that he was twenty-five years old at the time. The opening statement of his prophecy, “In the thirtieth year...as I was among the exiles,” appears to be a reference to his age at the time of his call into the prophetic ministry, which in the following verse is dated in the “fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin,” who was also among the captives of the 597 b.c. deportation (Ezek 1:2). The summons to take up the prophetic ministry thus came to Ezekiel in 592 b.c. Both John the Baptist and Jesus began their public ministry at the age of thirty (Luke 3:23).
As a member of the Zadok family, Ezekiel was among the aristocracy taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:14). The prophet therefore built the chronology of his prophecy on the years of Jehoiachin’s abduction (Ezek 1:2; 33:21; 40:1). His last dated prophecy is in the year 570 b.c., the twenty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s captivity (29:17), and indicates that Ezekiel exercised his prophetic office for at least twenty-two years, his first prophecy having been announced in 592 b.c.
Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry falls into two major periods. The first included the years 592-586 b.c., during which the prophet’s message—directed toward Jerusalem—consisted of reiterated warnings and symbolic actions designed to bring Judah to repentance and back to her historic faith in God. The second period, which began with the year of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar, included the years 586-570 b.c. In the course of these years, Ezekiel was a pastor to the exiles and a messenger of comfort and hope (Ezek 33-48). Thirteen years of silence separated the two periods of active prophesying, the last prophecy of the first period having been delivered in April 585 b.c. (32:17). He was not heard from again until April 572 b.c. (40:1). It has been suggested that Ezekiel returned to Jerusalem before the city fell, but there is no real evidence for this. He was in Babylonia when the city fell (cf. 33:21, 22.)
The years of Ezekiel’s captivity were the most severe years of Judah’s history. The period of Assyrian domination of Judah actually began in 722 b.c. when the Assyrian Sargon took Samaria and destroyed the northern kingdom, and although Judah remained an independent kingdom, she was forced to pay tribute to the Assyrians. With the rise of Babylonian power under Nebuchadnezzar in 605 b.c. through the battle of Carchemish, the position of Judah rapidly grew worse. In that year, Daniel was in the group taken into captivity by the Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar. This was the first deportation, which was followed in 597 b.c. by a second when Nebuchadnezzar again invaded Judah and took the young king Jehoiachin and many of the leading citizens as captives to Babylonia (2 Kings 24:14-17). Among the captives of this deportation was Ezekiel. The third deportation of Judean captives to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar was in 586 b.c., the year of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the kingdom of Judah. Thus Ezekiel’s life paralleled the years of the greatest crisis of Israel’s history.
In Babylonia, Ezekiel was a member of a colony of captives in or near Tel-Abib on the “River Chebar,” which is not to be confused with the River Chaboras. It prob. was the arm of an extensive system of canals (Ezek 3:15). Ezekiel was married (24:16-18) and lived in his own house (3:24; cf. 8:1). On the fifth day of the fourth month in the fifth year of his exile (592 b.c.), he was summoned in a vision to be a prophet of God (1:1-3:11). His description of this vision is full of mysterious imagery designed to demonstrate the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God as they are related to the ministry of Ezekiel and the future of Judah. Ezekiel was commissioned to summon the rebellious nation to hear the word of the Lord. Another vision followed in which the prophet was given a scroll with writing on both sides. He was told to eat the words, “words of lamentation and mourning and woe” (2:10), and he found them “as sweet as honey” to the taste (3:3). He was informed that he would meet resistance (3:4-11), and he then went to the exiles and sat among them overwhelmed. He proceeded to prophesy the inevitability of Jerusalem’s destruction for its persistence in sin.
It is interesting to contrast Ezekiel’s inaugural vision with the experiences of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The lips of Isaiah were cleansed and then he received an audible and verbal communication from the Lord (Isa 6:6-10). Jeremiah first heard the Lord addressing him. The Lord then touched his mouth in an act symbolizing the delivering of His words to the prophet (Jer 1:4-10). For Ezekiel, however, the words for the people were written in advance and he “ate” the written words (Ezek 2:10).
Ezekiel emphasized the doctrine of personal responsibility for sin in the most vigorous terms. “The soul that sins shall die” (18:4). The message of Ezekiel in this respect constituted an important turning point in the prophetic message. With the destruction of the nation, the emphasis on national responsibility gave way to an emphasis on individual responsibility.
Like other prophets, Ezekiel enforced his spoken message from the Lord by various symbolic acts. These symbolic acts were enacted words, and they were assumed to have in themselves divine effectiveness. He drew a plan of besieged Jerusalem upon a brick (4:1-3). He lay prostrate on one side and then on the other for several days (4:4-8). He shaved himself with a sword and then divided the hair (5:1-17). Many such dramatic symbolic acts enhanced the effectiveness of the prophet’s message. After the destruction of Jerusalem Ezekiel’s prophecy became predominantly a message of consolation. Fully aware of the weaknesses of God’s chosen people, the prophet centered Israel’s Messianic hope in them, describing in glowing terms their religious, moral, political, and economic future.
Aside from Ezekiel’s influence upon the NT, esp. the imagery of the Apocalypse, he exerted great influence upon the development of Judaism. He is sometimes referred to as the father of Judaism. The doctrines of personal immortality and the resurrection, and the emphasis upon the law in Judaism were all profoundly influenced by Ezekiel. His visions, frequently mysterious, affected considerably the development of Judaism’s apocalyptic as well as the later mysticism of the Cabala. The prophet figured prominently in the mural paintings of the synagogue of Dura Europos completed in a.d. 255. The synagogue was removed and reconstructed as part of the national museum in Damascus, Syria. Some rabbis of the school of Shammai regarded Ezekiel as only an apocryphal book because they thought it contradicted the Mosaic law. See Exile.
Bibliography G. E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology (1960), 88, 123, 132; H. Daniel-Rops, Israel and the Ancient World (1964), 203, 286-290, 313; W. Narrelson, Interpreting the Old Testament (1964), 285-315.