Ezekiel’s Visions among the Exiles

Ezekiel, a priest, was among the Judeans deported to Babylonia with King Jehoiachin in the first deportation of 597 BC (Ezekiel 1:1–3). In the fifth year of that exile, by the river Chebar, he saw a storm cloud coming from the north, four living creatures with four faces and four wings each, wheels with rims full of eyes beside them and, above them, a throne with a figure like a man on it. He calls it “the appearance of the likeness of Yahweh’s glory” (Ezekiel 1). A voice sent him as a prophet to a “rebellious house” and gave him a scroll of lamentation to eat; he then sat stunned for seven days among the exiles at Tel-abib (Ezekiel 2:1–3:15).

The exiles lived together in settlements in Babylonia, several of which are named (Ezekiel 3:15; Ezra 2:59). A canal called Kabaru appears in a business tablet from the archive of the Murashû family, which was excavated at Nippur and written about a century and a half after Ezekiel (Murashû archive BE 9, no. 4, lines 8–9). Its first editor identified the canal with the Chebar (Murashû archive BE 9, p. 28).

Until Jerusalem fell, Ezekiel’s message to the exiles was that the city was doomed. He acted out its siege with a clay tile (Ezekiel 4:1–3). In the sixth year he was carried in a vision to the temple, saw idols and sun worship in its courts, and watched the glory of God leave the building and come to rest on the mountain east of the city (Ezekiel 8) (Ezekiel 10:18–19; 11:22–23). He wrote down the day the siege began (Ezekiel 24:1–2). When his wife died he was told not to mourn, as a sign of what was coming (Ezekiel 24:15–24). In the twelfth year a fugitive arrived with the news that the city had been taken (Ezekiel 33:21–22).

After that the oracles turn to restoration. God will gather the scattered people like a shepherd (Ezekiel 34:11–16), cleanse them and give them a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:24–28). In a valley of dry bones Ezekiel sees the bones joined, clothed with flesh and brought to life, and is told that they are the whole house of Israel (Ezekiel 37:1–14). In the twenty-fifth year a man with a measuring reed leads him through a new temple. The glory returns to it by the east gate, a river flows out from under its threshold, and the city is named “Yahweh is there” (Ezekiel 40:1–4) (Ezekiel 43:1–7) (Ezekiel 47:1–12) (Ezekiel 48:35).

Ezekiel told a people without a temple that God would be “a sanctuary for a little while” to them where they were (Ezekiel 11:16). His images lived on: the book of Revelation takes up the four living creatures and the river lined with healing trees (Revelation 4:6–8) (Revelation 22:1–2).