Preceding prophecies described the redemption and restoration of the people (xxxiii.-xxxvii.); the present section gives a picture of the condition of the people thus for ever redeemed. The background of the picture is the whole preceding part of the book. The last words of ch. i.—xxxix. are, "And I will hide my face from them no more; for I have poured out my spirit on the house of Israel, saith the Lord God." The people are all righteous, led by the spirit of the Lord, and knowing that Jehovah is their God. The passage does not describe how salvation is to be attained, for the salvation is realized and enjoyed; it describes the state and life of the people now that their redemption is come. The fact that the subject of the passage is the final blessedness of the people accounts for the supernatural elements in the picture. But both the natural and the supernatural features of the people's condition are to be understood literally. The Temple, the services and the like are meant in a real sense, and no less literally meant is the supernatural presence of Jehovah in his House, the transfiguration of nature, the turning of the desert into a garden, and the sweetening of the waters of the Dead Sea (cf. introductory note to ch. xl.).

(1) ch. xl. I-xliii. 27. Account of the Temple buildings. (a) ch. xl. 1—27, description of the outer gateway and outer court. (b) ch. xl. 28—47, the inner gateway and inner court. (c) ch. xl. 48—xli. 26, the house itself with its annexed buildings. (d) ch. xlii., other buildings in the inner court, and dimensions of the whole. (e) ch. xliii. 1—12, entry of Jehovah into his House. (ƒ) ch. xliii. 13—27, the altar of burnt-offering, and the rites consecrating it.

(2) ch. xliv.-xlvi. Ordinances regarding the Temple. (a) ch. xliv., those who shall minister in the house, priests and Levites. (b) ch. xlv. 1—17, revenues of priests, Levites and prince; the duties devolving on the prince in upholding the ritual. (c) ch. xlv. 18-xlvi. 24, the special and daily services in the Temple; the special offerings of the prince.

(3) ch. xlvii., xlviii. The boundaries of the holy land, and new disposition of the tribes within it. (a) ch. xlvii., the life

giving stream issuing from the Temple; the boundaries of the holy land. (b) ch. xlviii., disposition of the tribes in the land; dimensions and gates of the holy city.

CHAPTER II.

EZEKIEL'S HISTORY AND PROPHETIC WORK.

EZEKIEL was the son of Buzi, of whom nothing further is known. This name has some resemblance to the word "to despise," and a rabbinical fancy interprets it of Jeremiah, “the despised," making Ezekiel the lineal descendant of this prophet, as he is his child in thought and faith. Ezekiel is styled the priest, and in all probability he was of the family of Zadok. The priests had already in this age attained to great influence; they were the aristocracy, standing next to the royal family (xxii. 25, 26). It is not certain whether Ezekiel had actually been engaged in priestly duties before his captivity, though it is not unlikely, both from the name priest applied to him and from the minute acquaintance which he shews with the Temple, its dimensions and furniture, and with the sacerdotal rites. The passage iv. 14 is not certain evidence, as the prohibition to eat carrion was binding on all the people (Ex. xxii. 31, though some consider this verse a later insertion). The age at which priests undertook their duties is not clearly stated in the Law. Ezekiel began to prophesy five years after the captivity of Jehoiachin (597 B.C.), and he states that this was in the thirtieth year. If this statement referred to his age he would have been grown up to manhood some years before his exile, but the words are obscure (notes on i. 1-3). It is doubtful if the statement of Josephus (Ant. x. 6, 3) that he was carried captive "when a youth" has any ground beyond the historian's own fancy. The evidence points in a different direction. In several passages the prophet's "house" is mentioned (iii. 24, xii. 3 seq.); the "elders" occasionally assemble there (viii. I, xiv. 1, xx. 1), and according to xxiv. 18 he was married. Reuss is hardly right in regarding his wife and her

death as fictions; the language used implies that she was a real person and that her death occurred as stated, though, as usual, the prophet employed the incident for didactic purposes, and some of the details may be creations of his idealism; for it is characteristic of him that real events float before his eye in a moral atmosphere, which magnifies them and gives them an outline which is ideal only. The uncompromising attitude taken up by him towards his fellow captives is a thing hardly to be expected from a mere youth (Jer. i. 6); and even in the earliest part of his Book his views appear fully formed, and his convictions regarding the impending fate of his country unalterably fixed. The weight due to the last fact, however, may not be so great, because the Book was written at an advanced period of life, and even the earlier parts of it may be coloured with reflections of a later time.

The period at which the prophet's youth was passed was rich in influences that must have powerfully affected him. Though too young to take part in the reform of Josiah (620), or perhaps to remember it, he grew up in the midst of the changes which it had introduced, and probably learned to estimate previous history from the point of view which it gave him. The tragic events which followed one another closely at this epoch, such as the death of Josiah (608), the exile of Jehoahaz to Egypt and of Jehoiachin to Babylon, made a lasting impression on his mind. The last event formed the chief landmark of his life, and that not solely because his own history was so closely connected with it; and how deeply the fate of the two young princes touched him, and how well he could sympathise with the country's sorrow over it, a sorrow recorded also by Jeremiah (xxii. 10), is seen in his Elegy on the princes of Israel (ch. xix.). He has a fondness for historical study, and no history is to him without a moral; and silently the events of this time were writing principles upon his mind to which in after years he was to give forcible enough expression.

It was not, however, merely the silent teaching of events from which Ezekiel learned. He had a master interpreting

events to him to whose influence every page of his prophecies bears witness. Jeremiah, indeed, may not have been Ezekiel's only master; there were other prophets of the time likeminded with him, such as that Urijah whom Jehoiakim dragged from his hiding-place in Egypt and slew with the sword (Jer. xxvi.), and perhaps others of whose names no record has been kept, for it is almost an accident, and only because his fate cast light on the history of Jeremiah in a moment of peril, that the name of Urijah has been preserved. There were also priests who cherished the same aspirations as these prophets, and pursued in their own province the same ends. It is not without significance that Jeremiah no less than Ezekiel was of a priestly family, and that too a rural one, for it was not in the capital alone that true religion had its representatives-like Micah Urijah was a prophet of the country, being of Kirjath-jearim (Jer. xxvi. 20). And among Ezekiel's predecessors in the priesthood and also among his contemporaries there were some who, if they had spoken to the world, would have spoken in the same manner as he did, for the favourable judgment which he passes on the Zadokite priests (xliv. 15) is not altogether due to mere caste prejudice.

Still the teaching and life of Jeremiah was probably the most powerful influence under which the young priest grew up. It would, no doubt, be a mistake to ascribe every idea in Ezekiel which coincides with Jeremiah's teaching to the influence of that prophet. There is a common circle of thoughts and feelings which even the greatest minds share with those of their own age. Striking out some new conceptions, and opening up some lines of advancement which mark an epoch, the chief elements of their faith and life are common to them with others of their day and have been inherited from the past. The surprise with which we read Jeremiah might be lessened if the means of comparing him with others were not so narrow as the paucity of writers in the century before the exile causes it to be. At any rate his influence upon the language and thought of Ezekiel can readily be observed. It could hardly have been otherwise. For thirty years before Ezekiel's captivity Jeremiah had

been a prophet, speaking in the courts and chambers of the temple and in the streets of Jerusalem, and having such a history as made him the most prominent figure of the day. Ezekiel was familiar with his history and had listened to his words from his infancy. Many of his prophecies had circulated in writing for a number of years previous to the captivity of Jehoiachin which Ezekiel shared, and the constant intercourse between Jerusalem and the exiles kept the prophet of the Chebar well informed regarding the course of events at home, and the views which prominent persons there took of them (xi. 2 seq., xvii. &c.).

In the year 597 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem and carried into captivity the young king Jehoiachin, the flower of the population including many priests, Ezekiel among them, as well as a multitude of other citizens, particularly craftsmen. Ezekiel with a community of other exiles was settled at TelAbib by the river Chebar-not to be identified with the Chabor which falls into the Euphrates near Carchemish, but some stream or canal in Babylonia proper; and five years later he was called to occupy among them the place of a "watchman" (592 B.C.). How large the community was does not appear, nor what kind of place Tel-Abib was, for the references of the prophet to walls (xii. 7, xxxiii. 30) hardly justify the conclusion that it was a walled town. The community appears to have been left, as was usually the case, to regulate its internal affairs and govern itself according to its own mind. The prophet repeatedly mentions the "elders," and though he calls them elders of Judah (viii. 1) or Israel (xiv. 1, xx. 1), he identifies them with the captivity (xi. 25), of which they must have been the heads and representatives. The lot of the exiles might in some cases be hard, but there is no evidence that they were harshly treated by their conquerors or suffered want. When the prophet speaks of famine he refers to Canaan (xxxvi. 29, 30, xxxiv. 27, 28), and the phrase "made servants of them" (xxxiv. 27) has more a national than an individual reference, like such expressions as "prison houses" in the second part of Isaiah (xlii. 22). The exiles possessed houses (iii. 24,