AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL

Ezekiel went to Babylon in the second deportation in 597 B.C. Four years later, he began a prophetic career that was to last more than twenty years, all of it in Babylon. He had the helpful habit of dating many of his prophecies, and most of the messages about contemporary events were delivered before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. The New Jerusalem section in Eze.40-48 held out hope for restoration of the land and the Temple after the exile. Of all the prophets, Ezekiel was probably the most colorful. He used pantomime, would cry and wail and slap his thighs, ate a scroll, and did many other unusual things to burn his messages into the minds of the people. Some of his visions are unusually arresting in their graphic details. From Ezekiel we get a picture of a holy, transcendent God whose name and glory must be protected. By contrast, Judah had sunk to the depths of depravity in a national apostasy. God had to punish His people because of His hatred for idolatry, but He never ceased to love them. Judah's sin was a national one, but Ezekiel also stressed individual responsibility for one's own sins to an extent unparalleled in the rest of the Old Testament. Ezekiel forms the important background for many passages in the New Testament, but this is perhaps more true of Revelation than any other book. Material from most of Ezekiel's chapters is quoted or alluded to in all but one chapter in Revelation.

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