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ART. VI.-EZEKIEL'S VISION.

Commentar über den Propheten Ezechiel.
NICK. Erlangen. 1843.

Von HEINRICH ANDR. CHRIST. HÄVER

Ezekiel and the Book of his Prophecy. An Exposition. By PATRICK FAIRBAIRN.

D.D. Second Edition. Edinburgh. 1855.

Ezekiel and Daniel, with Notes, Critical, etc. By Rev. HENRY COWLES, D.D. New York. 1867.

The Prophecies of the Prophet Ezekiel Elucidated. By E. W. HENGSTENBERG, D.D. Translated by A. C. & J. G. MURPHY. Edinburgh, 1869.

THE introductory vision of Ezekiel's prophecy (chap. i, 1–28) is full of majesty and full of mystery. St. Jerome tells us that the ancient synagogue was silent on the passage, and, deeming it a record of secret theology concerning God and angels, the Jews prohibited any public attempt at exposition, and even suffered not their children to read it till the age of thirty. And all devout readers have felt on perusing it that here they were in the highest realm of sacred symbolism. But these symbols have a meaning, and this whole vision had its special design and deep significance, which every faithful student of the Divine Word will seek to know.*

It will serve the purpose of exposition to arrange and discuss the details of the vision under appropriate headings. The

DATE OF THE VISION, Verses 1, 2,

is definitely given as the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's cap tivity. This Jewish monarch had reigned only three months when he was conquered by the King of Babylon and carried into captivity, he and his mother, and all the princes and mighty men of his kingdom, and all the craftsmen and smiths, and none were left behind except the very poorest classes of the people. (2 Kings xxiv.) This was to the exiles a memorable woe, a national calamity never to be forgotten, and therefore might well form an epoch from which to reckon the time of Ezekiel's prophetic call. But the Prophet alludes to still another epoch which it is not so easy to understand, and which, in

*The results of the best criticism and the most trustworthy exposition of this Prophet of the Exile are given in the works named at the head of this article. These books we name, not for the purpose of reviewing them, or of showing their comparative merits, but to indicate our guides-so far as commentaries should be used as guides-in the present attempt to explain this sublime vision.

fact, all criticism has thus far failed to put beyond dispute. He tells us that this opening vision occurred on the fifth day of the fourth month of the thirtieth year. This is noticeably obscure, and the reader is obliged, to a certain extent, to conjecture the meaning. There are four different opinions from which we may choose. Calvin, following some Jewish expositors, and followed by Hitzig and others, understands the thirtieth year from the last Jubilee. But this view, as Fairbairn well says, "rests entirely on hypothesis, there being no historical notice of a Jubilee about the time referred to, nor any other instance of such an occurrence being taken by a prophet as an era from which to date either his own entrance on the prophetical office, or any other event of importance to the Church." There are two other epochs, for either of which more reason can be given. Thirty years from the fifth of Jehoiachin's captivity carries us back to the eighteenth year of Josiah, when the Book of the Law was discovered in the Temple. This led to various reforms in the Jewish state, particularly to the holding of "such a Passover as had not been holden from the days of the Judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the Kings of Israel, nor of the Kings of Judah." 2 Kings xxiii, 22. Hävernick, who adopts this epoch, remarks that the Prophet thus contrasts the latest national adversity with the latest prosperity. But others, not satisfied with this view, and at a loss to account for the prophet taking two Jewish epochs from which to date his visions, have sought for a Chaldean epoch that might meet all the conditions of the case. And it is claimed that the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity was also the thirtieth year from the beginning of the new era of Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar and founder of the Babylonian empire. It is supposed to favor this opinion that Jeremiah, Ezekiel's contemporary, makes a similar double reference in his prophecy, (xxv, 1:) "The fourth year of Jehoiachim, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar." But here it will be at once noticed that Jeremiah clearly tells his meaning, and does not leave us to conjecture. How utterly unintelligible would have been his allusion if he had only said, "That was the first year," and had not added the qualifying word, "of Nebuchadnezzar." Here, then, is an insuperable objection to both the last-named hypotheses. If the prophet meant to date this FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXIII.—17

thirtieth year from either the eighteenth of Josiah or the first of Nabopolassar, or from any other historic epoch, he ought by all means to have specified his reference. "No period of internal reformation, like that in Josiah's reign, is ever taken by the prophets as a chronological starting-point," * and “of an era of Nabopolassar there is otherwise no trace in Scripture." + In view of these considerations, and in the absence of all qualifying. terms to put beyond dispute the prophet's meaning, we incline to adopt the opinion that he means the thirtieth year of his own life. It is easier to account for the lack of precision on this hypothesis than on any other. "It was customary for the Levites, and, we may infer, also for the priests, to enter on their duty of service at the Temple in their thirtieth year; and though the prophets were not wont to connect the period when they received their predictions with their own age at the time of receiving them, yet the case of Ezekiel was somewhat peculiar. As the Lord, by his special presence and supernatural revelations, was going to become a sanctuary to the exiles on the banks of the Chebar, (see especially xi, 16,) so Ezekiel, to whom these revelations were in the first instance made, was to be to the people residing there in the room of the ministering priesthood. By waiting upon his instructions they were to learn the mind of God, and to have what, situated as matters now were in Jerusalem, would prove more than a compensation for the loss of the outward Temple service. It seems, therefore, to have been the intention of the prophet, by designating himself so expressly a priest, and a priest having reached his thirtieth year, to represent his prophetic agency to his exiled countrymen as a kind of priestly service, to which he was divinely called at the usual period of life.” ‡

THE PLACE, (Verse 3.)

where the prophet received his opening vision was in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar, one of those rivers of Babylon by which the tearful captives sat down and wept when they remembered Zion. (Psa. cxxxvii, 1.) It has been common to identify this Chebar with the Habor, "the river of Gozan," mentioned 2 Kings xvii, 6. But the orthography of the names Fairbairn, p. 25.

*Fairbairn, p. 24.

Hengstenberg, p. 2.

(-) could hardly have been thus confounded, and the Habor was in the country of the Medes, beyond the limits of Chaldea, and two hundred miles from Babylon. It seems, therefore, much better to identify this Chebar with the great canal of Nebuchadnezzar, which, according to Abydenus, was called the Royal River, and was dug as a branch stream from the Euphrates, deriving its waters from the latter river. "The word Chebar implies something great and long. The testimony of all history, sacred and profane, locates these Hebrew captives near Babylon, and not in the remote districts of Upper Mesopotamia. It scarcely admits of question that the Jewish captives were employed in excavating these immense canals, and hence would naturally have their homes along their line." *

THE PROPHETIC CALL, (Verses 1, 3,)

is indicated by a fourfold form of expression: "The heavens were opened. . . I saw visions of God . . . The word of the Lord came expressly † unto Ezekiel . . . The hand of the Lord came upon him." The first two were external presentations of the Divine Presence, premonitions of approaching wonders. The opening heavens indicate the source of all divine revelations, and visions are one method of communicating divine thought. The third expression indicates the direct and impressive communication of divine thought to the prophet's mind, and occurs very frequently in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. The last expression serves to indicate the imparting of divine energy to the prophet to qualify him for his holy work. (Compare Ezek. iii, 14-22; xxxvii, 1.) As Ezekiel in his thirtieth year by the river Chebar saw heaven opened, received the word and felt the hand of Jehovah, and beheld the vision-symbols of divine power and judgment, so Jesus at the age of thirty by the river Jordan received the wondrous visible anointing from on high; but in his case the Spirit, instead of presenting symbols of power and judgment, "took the semblance of a dove." That prophetic ecstasy or divine trance, so miraculously

* Cowles, p. 7.

literally, coming came, or forcibly came. It is the usual emphatic use of the infinitive absolute. "It is rather the felt assurance with which the revelation came than its expressness, which is indicated."-Fairbairn, p. 17.

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wrought, in which the holy seers beheld the visions of the Almighty, demands a passing notice here. It was evidently a spiritual sight-seeing, a supernatural illumination, in which the natural eye was either closed or suspended from its ordinary functions, and the inner senses vividly grasped the scene that was presented, or the divine thought that was made known. This opening of the spiritual eye to apprehend the supersensual is shown in the case of Elisha's servant, who was thereby enabled to see the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire, (2 Kings vi, 17;) and also at the transfiguration, when the three disciples were permitted to behold their Master's glory, and also to recognize his celestial visitants; and in the case of the apostle who was caught up to the third heaven, and heard unspeakable words. Especially is it involved in such impressive visions as this of Ezekiel, or that similar one of Isaiah, when he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high, and lifted up, and his train filling the temple. (Isa. vi.) We need not, perhaps, refine so far as, with Delitzsch,* to classify this divine ecstasy into the mystic, the prophetic, and the charismatic; but we may still, with him, define it as consisting substantially in this, that the human spirit is seized and compassed by the Divine Spirit, which searcheth all things, even the deep things of God, and seized with such force that, being averted from its ordinary state of life in connection with the soul and the body, it becomes altogether a seeing eye, a hearing ear, a perceiving sense, that takes most vivid cognizance of things in either heaven, earth, or hell. The phenomena of clairvoyance may furnish suggestive analogies, but these must never lead us out of sight of the fact that the prophetic ecstasy of the holy seers of the Scriptures was always a pure miracle of grace. Thus borne up in the Spirit, and with his inner senses all divinely quickened, Ezekiel looked and, behold,

THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE OPENING VISION, (Verse 4.)

A stormy whirlwind sweeps down from the north, and in its distant coming it seems to be a great cloud. The whirlwind is frequently used in prophecy to indicate the desolating judg* Biblical Psychology; Division V, section v, entitled "The Three Forms of the divinely-wrought Ecstasy and the Theopneusia."

Grammatically, cloud is in apposition with whirlwind.

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