Pathways through the Bible: Classic Selections from the Tanakh (Third Edition)

Ezekiel

Ezekiel Cc Ezekiel son of Buzi was born in Judah, and was of high priestly family . He seems to have come under the influence of Jeremiah, whom he may have known personally. When a young man, he was among the elite that was exiled to Babylonia with King Jehoiakim (known as the First Captivity, 597 B.C.E.).* He was active as prophet in Babylonia for about twenty-two years. He was the first Hebrew prophet to prophesy regularly outside of the Land of Israel. Ezekiel took up residence, together with the rest of the exiles, in the village of Tel Aviv, south of the city of Babylon, by the Chebar Canal. He was married, and one of his most solemn prophecies was delivered in connection with his wife’s death, which took place at the very time that Jerusalem was destroyed. It was Nebuchadnezzar’s plan not to scatter a conquered people throughout his kingdom, but to establish them in one place as a community . Thus it happened that Ezekiel, a priest without a Temple, could still practice his religious leadership among his people. On Sabbaths and on holy days, the small exiled Jewish community would gather in his home to worship God—as best they could in that foreign land. There, perhaps, they heard Ezekiel read the Teaching of Moses and interpret it. He was, in effect, the founder of the first synagogue. Ezekiel’s task as spiritual leader to his people was a difficult one. It was a time of great confusion. The Temple was in Jerusalem; that was God’s dwelling place. How could the people worship God in a strange land? Furthermore, when Jerusalem was destroyed, many questioned whether it was worthwhile worshiping a God who could be vanquished by the gods of Babylonia. (In those days, the common belief was that *For Jeremiah’s letter to the First Captivity, see pages 364 f. ■ 371 ■ not only the nations fought, but their gods also joined in the battle. And the conquering god won the worship and loyalty of those whose god was conquered.) Still others believed that the exile would last for only a short time. All these questions Ezekiel had to face and answer. Ezekiel was deeply religious. His faith in God, despite all the misfortunes of his people, had not been broken. Ezekiel’s messages came during two periods. Some came before Jerusalem was destroyed. During that time, his words, like those of Jeremiah, were filled with the note of inescapable doom. He knew the idolatry of the people, the injustices of the princes, and the treachery of Judah’s kings. He too, like Jeremiah, believed that Nebuchadnezzar was God’s agent to punish Judah. He therefore taught the small group of exiles that, when Jerusalem fell, it was not because God was weak or less strong than the gods of Babylonia, but on the contrary, because the God of Israel—the God of justice—had used Babylonia to punish the wicked Judah. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Ezekiel changed the tone of his message from that of woe and lament to words of comfort, encouragement , and hope. He taught that God could be worshiped outside of the Land of Israel, for this was the God of the whole world. He held that the Jewish community could survive the national disaster by their common love of, and faith in, God, and by their common hope of returning to the Holy Land and building a new Israel. He believed that his immediate task was to prepare the Jews for that “far-off, divine event.” So certain was Ezekiel of the restoration of his people to the Land of Israel that he drew up detailed plans for the future Temple. Ezekiel was both prophet and priest. He combined the prophet’s spiritual ideals and the priest’s insistence on rites and ceremonies. He could not think of his beloved Community of Israel without either. This union of prophetic spirit and priestly instruction was the special contribution Ezekiel made to the Jewish people. Ezekiel was, in a sense, the founder of the religious Jewish community in the Diaspora (the lands of dispersion), a community of Jews bound together by the bond of religion and the hope of national restoration. Ezekiel had to overcome the exiles’ fear that their situation was hopeless because of their forebears’ sins in Judah. He therefore stressed what Jeremiah had already begun to teach: individual responsibility— 372 ■ Pathways Through the Bible [3...