Ezekiel was more than a prophet. An important part of his work was the task of rebuking, instructing and consoling the people among whom he dwelt. He laboured to cultivate among his countrymen the temper of humility, of personal repentance, of confidence in Jehovah's mercy. His mission was to justify God's dealings with Israel, and to keep alive in individual souls the faith which was ready to perish under the pressure of adversity. As in other troubled periods of human history, so during the Exile, the distresses of the nation ministered to the growth of individual faith. When national hopes were extinguished, men found comfort in the practice of personal religion, and sought the Kingdom of God in their own hearts and lives.
There are thus three aspects in which Ezekiel's work is to be regarded. He was Prophet, Priest, and Pastor. Let us consider these offices separately and in that order.
1. The Prophet.-The actual circumstances of Ezekiel's prophetic career are greatly obscured for us by the difficulty we have in separating what is real from what is merely imagined in the representation given by the book. That everything did not happen literally as it is recorded is evident enough from several indications. The symbolic actions described as performed by the prophet are in some instances incapable of a literal acceptation; yet there is no external criterion by which these can be distinguished from others which are possible. A similar uncertainty hangs over the events that are mentioned. These are never introduced for their own sake, but only as the setting of some idea which the writer wishes to enforce, and it is frequently impossible to determine how far the allusions correspond with actual experiences. In such incidents as the death of the prophet's wife or the opening of his mouth in the presence of “the fugitive,” fact and symbolism seem to be so intimately blended that we cannot tell where the one ends and the other begins. The book, in short, is not an autobiography, but a systematic exposition of prophetic ideas, and any attempt to extract historical information from it has to be made with a certain measure of caution. At the same time, it is quite incredible that the whole representation should be nothing but an elaborate fiction, without any basis in fact. There can be no reasonable doubt that Ezekiel really exercised an oral public ministry among his fellow-captives, or that its main outlines may be gathered from the thin thread of narrative that runs through the book.
Now Ezekiel occupied an entirely new position as the prophet of Jehovah in a foreign country, far removed from the old centre of national life and worship, and from all that had been regarded as constituting the distinctive privileges of Israel among the nations of the world. This new position largely moulded the character of his ministry. In the land of exile, at a distance from the scene of action, remote from the feverish turmoil, the restless hopes and fears which agitated Jerusalem during the last ten years of its existence, he could more dispassionately survey the great catastrophe that was impending, and more calmly reflect upon its meaning and its purpose. Hitherto, public discourse had been the principal method of prophetic ministry. Jeremiah preached for years before he committed any of his prophecies to writing; but now, under the changed circumstances of his position, the prophet must turn author. It is significant that “a roll of a book” is given him as the symbol of his commission. Ezekiel's prophecies bear evidence of long meditation and careful elaboration. Originally he may have spoken the substance of them to his little band of hearers, for he tells us that at one time it was the fashion to come and listen, and that they complained that he was “a speaker of parables”; but they were intended for Judæa as well as Babylonia, and he bestowed careful attention on their literary form as he committed them to writing. He dwells upon his subject, and expands and develops his thoughts, in contrast to the terse, sharp utterances of the older prophets. Not content with an outline, he fills in the details of the picture, sometimes to the detriment of its distinctness.
And it is here, surely, that we finally come upon the central ground and basis of all true religious prophecy. The seer, what is he? Is he not just the man who sees deeper than others, more clearly than others; sees right into the heart of things, into the essential equality of being; one who, from an accurate knowledge of the great spiritual forces at work in the world, can predict how they will act, and what results will come from this action? This it is which has made the prophets-the true ones-the great moral authorities of the world. Whether teaching in Judæa, in Greece, in Germany, in England, the men of the spirit have had practically one message. Uttered in all languages, in a hundred different forms, it has meant always and everywhere the same thing. They have stood, all of them, for a Kingdom of God, for a rule of righteousness, for the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh, for the rule of love, for the redemption of our lower nature by a higher nature, for the final triumph of goodness.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Faith's Certainties (1914), 85.]
It is the prophet who has roused the race from ignoble sleep, has fired its imagination with lofty ideals, has nerved it for costly sacrifices, has led it to victory. It is the prophet, above all, who, under Christ, has laid the foundations of the Church in every land, has restored her after periods of decay, has filled her with courage and hope. He is the teacher, comforter, fosterer, defender of his brethren, and therefore the chief office to which any man can be called is to declare the Will of God, and especially the Evangel of Christ.2 [Note: John Watson, The Cure of Souls, 2.]
And thus, O Prophet-bard of old,
Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told!
The same which earth's unwelcome seers
Have felt in all succeeding years.
Sport of the changeful multitude,
Nor calmly heard nor understood,
Their song has seemed a trick of art,
Their warnings but the actor's part.
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will,
The world requites its prophets still.
Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art,
For God's great purpose set apart,
Before whose far-discerning eyes,
The Future as the Present lies!
Beyond a narrow-bounded age
Stretches thy prophet-heritage,
Through Heaven's dim spaces angel trod,
Through arches round the throne of God!
Thy audience, worlds!-all Time to be
The witness of the Truth in thee!3 [Note: T. G. Whittier.]
2. The Priest.-But Ezekiel differs from the other prophets in this, that he stands before us as half-prophet and half-priest. He has been described by a great authority as “a priest in a prophet's mantle.” In him the two streams met and parted. Prophetism ended in Ezekiel the prophet, and the hierarchy began in Ezekiel the priest. His prophetic inspiration helped to set the relics of Israel on their feet; but his priestly sympathies began that organization of the inspiration which made the nation a Church, and tied it at a short tether where it stood. The Judaism which he started on its career tended to kill the faith in which he began it.
To Ezekiel the prophetic view, that the history of the past had been one long moral disobedience, was joined to the priest's view that it had been one great ritual mistake. Holy things and places had been put to wrong uses; there had been a terrible confusion of the sacred and the profane, until at last Jehovah was forced out of His own Temple; and His Presence had been displaced by that of corpses interred there, of uncircumcised Temple servants, and of unholy and monstrous superstitious rites. Sacrifices offered by impure hands could avail nothing. Hence the imperative need of new legislation. The Temple must be preserved from all impurity; the degrees of holiness must be preserved; the sacrifices must be defined and fenced round so that they may become effective for real atonement; and the priests must keep themselves pure for their high office. When the Temple is thus made the centre of the nation's holiness the whole nation will be grouped, so to speak, around it; there must be as little inter-tribal rivalry as there will be monarchical oppression; each tribe, like the priests, the inhabitants of the holy city, and the prince, will have its own estates to cultivate, and there will be nothing to disturb Jehovah's gracious Presence in the midst of His people.
In this aspect of Ezekiel's work it has been customary to see a decline from the heights of earlier prophetic teaching. And in the abstract this is no doubt true. Ritual, in and of itself, is no necessary part of genuine religion. On the contrary, it frequently carries with it much that is materialistic and unspiritual. But over against this it should be borne in mind that there are many non-essential things in religion that are acceptable in order to make religion effective in the world. These non-essentials vary from age to age. But they exist in every age. And it is an evidence of true religious statesmanship to be able to single them out and make them the efficient means of religious culture. This power and insight Ezekiel possessed; and it was because he possessed it, and because his work was carried on by other men, such as Ezra and Nehemiah, that Old Testament religion was made strong enough to resist the encroachments of Greek naturalism.
Whatever may be the opinion of us regarding some aspects and effects of ritualism-more especially of debased forms of it-it is well to remember what an integral part it has been, and is, of the history of the Church of Christ. That being so, we should be grateful to the Lord of the Church when ritual movements and developments are guided by good and holy men. A Father Damien in the lepers' colony, a Pather Dolling in the heart of London's wretchedness-both are clearly in Ezekiel's succession, priests of his Temple and dwellers on the bank of his River. Another vaster Temple is ours, “not made with hands”; and from this Temple another vaster river flows.
We faintly hear, we dimly see,
In differing phrase we pray;
But dim or clear, we own in Thee
The Light, the Truth, the Way.
What God blesses, what Christ owns, must have its place and use. Ezekiel's order has not lived on from age to age in vain.1 [Note: H. E. Lewis, By the River Chebar, 176.]
3. The Pastor.-Ezekiel was prophet and priest, and he was more. He was pastor of souls. To say that he was no prophet at all, but merely a pastor exercising the cure of souls among those who came under his personal influence, is an exaggeration of a truth. His insistence on the independence of the individual soul before God, and his comparison of himself to a watchman responsible for each person who perishes through not being warned of his danger, suggest that the care of the individual must have occupied a larger place in his work than was the case with the pre-Exilic prophets. At a time when the unity of the nation was broken up, and the new Kingdom of God had to be born in the hearts of those who embraced the hope set before them by the prophets, it was inevitable that a religious teacher should devote much of his attention to the conversion and spiritual direction of individuals.
He had a lofty ideal of the pastoral office, and knew that God would require the blood of souls at his hand if he failed to warn them. And, in spite of his Pelagian view, as some might be inclined to call it, on free-will, Ezekiel regards the work of conversion as essentially Divine. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.… A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” Of all the misgivings that troubled him, the watchman's terror moved him most profoundly. “When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die, and thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way; that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand.” The Divine warning had come to him at the very beginning of his ministry, after he had remained among the captives “astonished” seven days. The simple feeling of bitterness and indignation which filled his mind when he newly left the presence of God became broken into a tumult of feelings when he saw the face of men. Zeal for God becomes tempered and humanized in actual service.
“Remember what is written of this pastoral office by the prophet Ezekiel,” said Edward Irving, in a solemn Ordination Charge in 1827.
A certain doctor of the Order of Preachers, troubled with the warning given to Ezekiel-“His soul will I require at thine hand”-came to Francis of Assisi and said:
“Many, good father, do I know that be in mortal sin, unto whom I speak not to warn them from their wicked way. Will their souls be required at my hand?”
Francis, humble as usual, was unwilling to take upon him to decide such a “case of conscience,” but, being pressed, said: “If it be that the word is to be understood generally, I take it in such wise as that the servant of God ought so to burn and shine in his life and holiness in himself as by the ensample of his life and by the tongue of his holy conversation he may be a rebuke unto all the wicked. Thus, I say, the brightness of his light and the sweet smell of his good name will be a warning to all to forsake their wicked way.”1 [Note: H. E. Lewis, By the River Chebar, 33.]
Watson's pastoral work was, in some respects, even more remarkable than his preaching. As his friend Dr. Oswald Dykes has said, the pulpit offers attractions for artistic natures like his sufficient to outweigh any fastidious shrinking from those vulgar accessories which attend a popular preacher in these days of advertising. But quiet pastoral duty with its absorbing demands upon the spiritual as well as the physical resources of a minister is done out of sight of the public, and promises nothing to the love either of sensationalism or notoriety. The ends it seeks and the rewards it gains are such as only a true lover of souls will value. “John Watson,” he says, “never stood so high in my eyes as when I came to know how assiduous was his visitation of his flock, and with what keenness he had studied the problems and the methods of pastoral care.” He made it a point to visit each member of his great congregation every year. This was by no means the whole of his pastoral labour. He was tenderly watchful in times of joy, and especially in times of sorrow. He comforted assiduously the sick, the dying, the bereaved. It was much more by his presence than by letters that he did his work, though every member of his flock was made conscious that at no turn or epoch of his life was he forgotten by his pastor. It has to be remembered that in all probability he added very little to the outward strength of his church by this toil. Hardly any minister in his position would consider it necessary. His congregation for many years taxed the limits of his church, and would have been more numerous still if he had not refused to have a larger building. He found his reward in the strong ties that bound himself to his people, and also in the consciousness of having done his duty, for he would often repeat the saying, “Duty done is the soul's fireside.” … Watson was a true shepherd of souls. His people were always in his heart. He claimed identity with them in the joys and sorrows and endless vicissitudes of life. No friend was blessed with any good gift of God but he was also richer. No household suffered but he was poorer; no one resisted temptation but he was stronger; no one failed but he was weaker. He inquired and planned about all his young men, trying to find spheres for them or to stimulate them in their work, or to protect them from temptation.1 [Note: W. Robertson Nicoll, “Ian Maclaren”: Life of the Rev. John Watson, 117.]
