The first section of the book (chapters 1–24) contains prophecies against Judah and Jerusalem. Ezekiel’s call is recorded in chapter 1 to chapter 3, verse 15. It came in a vision of four heavenly cherubim, who appeared in a wind from the north, a cloud, and flashing fire (lightning?)—traditional symbolic elements of a theophany (manifestation of a god) in ancient Near Eastern religions. These winged hybrid throne bearers—with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle (which became iconographic symbols of the four Gospel writers of the New Testament)—bore the throne chariot of Yahweh. The cherubim, symbolizing intelligence, strength, and—especially—mobility, had beside them four gleaming wheels, or “a wheel within a wheel” (i.e., set at right angles to each other), which further emphasized the omnimobility of the throne chariot. This vision harks back to Isaiah’s mystical experience (Isaiah, chapter 6) in which that prophet envisioned the throne of the ark, which symbolized the omnipresence of the invisible Yahweh. High above the cherubim was a firmament, or crystal platform, above which was the throne of Yahweh, who—in a “likeness as if it were of a human form”—spoke to Ezekiel. The Spirit of Yahweh entered him, and he was commissioned to preach to the people of Israel a message of doom to an apostate people. The significance of this vision is that it occurred not to a priest in the holy Temple at Jerusalem but to an exiled prophet-priest in a foreign land. The God of Israel was the God of the nations. The impact of his visionary experience so overwhelmed Ezekiel that he simply sat at Tel-abib for seven days.

Commissioned by Yahweh to be “a watchman for the house of Israel,” Ezekiel performed a series of symbolic acts to illustrate the impending fate of the city from which he had been banished: he placed a brick on the ground to symbolize Jerusalem’s future siege, lay down on the ground, bound himself to indicate capture, ate food first cooked on fuel composed of human feces and then animal excrement, and then cut his hair and beard. Though these acts were performed in Babylon, news of them was most likely communicated to the people of Jerusalem. Just as Jeremiah had tried to repress the false hopes that the residents of Jerusalem harbored concerning the downfall of Babylon, which had been predicted by the popular nationalistic prophet Hananiah (Jeremiah, chapter 28, verses 5–17), Ezekiel attempted to quash the ill-founded aspirations of the exiles for an immediate return to Jerusalem.

In chapters 6 and 7 Ezekiel prophesies that Jerusalem’s “altars shall become desolate,” its people will be “scattered through the countries,” and “because the land is full of bloody crimes and the city full of violence,” Yahweh “will put an end to their proud might and their holy places shall be profane.” In chapter 8 he attacked the people of Jerusalem for their idolatry, as manifest by the women sitting before the entrance to the north gate of the Temple of Yahweh weeping in cultic despair for the Mesopotamian fertility deity Tammuz’s “annual death.”

After prophesying the fall of Jerusalem in chapters 9–11 because “the guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great,” Ezekiel performed other symbolic acts such as packing baggage for an emergency exile, digging a hole in his house to illustrate the fact that some will try to escape, and eating and drinking with trembling actions to show the future fear that the Jerusalemites will experience; he also attacked prophets who gave the people false hopes. “Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing. Your prophets have been like foxes among ruins, O Israel.” He tried to underline his message of urgency by relating the problem of apostasy to similar situations in Israel’s past history.

About the time that Nebuchadrezzar besieged Jerusalem, Ezekiel’s wife became ill. Though Ezekiel could mourn her impending death “but not aloud” (i.e., only by himself so that the people would notice his unusual reaction and thus receive the full impact of his prophetic message), he was not to mourn her death publicly. When he did not eat the “bread of mourners” the people asked him for an explanation. He told them, and it was a shattering exposure: Jerusalem would be destroyed “and your sons and daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword”; when this happens—in spite of their pining and groaning—they will know the meaning of Ezekiel’s actions.

In order to show that Yahweh was the Lord of the whole creation and of all nations, Ezekiel issued prophecies of impending disasters that would be experienced by many neighboring Near Eastern countries. Nations that exulted in Judah’s defeat—i.e., Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, and Phoenicia—would all suffer the same fate, as well as Egypt, the formerly great empire that had manoeuvred Judah into its disastrous foreign policy of opposing Babylon.

Oracles of hope

In the third section, chapters 33–48, Ezekiel proclaimed, in oracles that have become imprinted in theological discourse and folk songs, the hope that lies in the faith that God cares for his people and will restore them to a state of wholeness. As the good shepherd, God will feed his flock and will “seek the lost,” “bring back the strayed,” “bind up the crippled,” and “strengthen the weak.” He will also “set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them.” This Davidic ruler will be a nasi (prince), the term used for a leader of the tribal confederacy before the inauguration of the monarchy. In chapter 37, Ezekiel had a now-famous vision of the valley of dry bones, which refers not to resurrection from the dead but rather to the restoration of a scattered Covenant people into a single unity. To further emphasize the restoration of the scattered people of Yahweh, Ezekiel uttered the oracle of the two sticks joined together into one, which prophesied the re-unification of Israel and Judah as one nation. Chapters 38 and 39 contain a cryptic apocalyptic oracle about the invasion of an unidentified Gog of Magog. Who this Gog is has long been a matter of speculation; whoever he is, his chief characteristic is that he is the demonic person who leads the forces of evil in the final battle against the people of God. Gog and Magog have thus earned a position in apocalyptic literature over the centuries. Chapters 40–48 are a closing section in which Ezekiel has a vision of a restored Temple in Jerusalem with its form of worship reestablished and a restored Israel, with each of the ancient tribes receiving appropriate allotments. Ezekiel’s prophecies while in exile in Babylon were to have a significant influence on the religion of Judaism as it emerged from a time of reassessment of its religious beliefs and cultic acts during the Babylonian Exile (586–538 bce).