1. Ezekiel presents a singular contrast to Jeremiah. The primary message delivered to each was, it is true, very nearly the same. Both needed courage in the midst of great difficulty and opposition. Jeremiah was to be an iron pillar and brazen walls to resist the attacks of the people and their rulers; Ezekiel's forehead was to be as an adamant harder than flint, though he dwelt among scorpions, and thorns and briars were with him. But there was a striking difference even in the way in which this message was conceived by the two men. What Jeremiah contemplated was in a large measure an attack against himself. With Ezekiel the prevailing thought is the obstinacy of the people and their rebellion against Jehovah, and the possible danger is that the prophet himself may be seduced to share their rebellious spirit. In the sequel this difference shows itself very markedly. For although both were inflexible and conscientious in the fulfilment of their mission, Ezekiel was beyond all doubt the sterner and the more resolute spirit. Unlike Jeremiah, he is not overwhelmed by personal grief at the sadness of his message. Again, although there was no lack of moral courage in Jeremiah as day by day he faced his opponents to “constantly speak the truth and boldly rebuke vice,” yet he bitterly resented the persecution of which he was the victim. Ezekiel, on the other hand, does not flinch as he throws himself with iron steadfastness into the same struggle, nor has he ever a word of personal complaint. True, the opposition which he encountered did not take the form of actual persecution, but it was hardly human not to feel as a personal grievance the obstinacy of his countrymen. And yet, on the whole, Ezekiel was respected by his fellow-captives, and was frequently consulted by their leaders. To some extent this was also true of Jeremiah, although in Ezekiel's case it was probably largely due to his fine independence and to the complete absence of sensitiveness. Nothing seems to ruffle that calm, rugged, indomitable spirit.
Recording a life in which so very much was accomplished as in that of Sir John Lubbock's, and in noting, year by year, the results of his extraordinary power and facility of work, it is difficult to avoid giving the impression of a man going at breathless speed, of one totally absorbed in his many projects and practical and scientific interests, of one who can have had no spare time for indulging the domestic affections and enjoying the domestic life. Such a picture would be very different indeed from a true one of Sir John. So far from the impression that he gave being one of breathless haste, as it were of an animated hurricane rushing from one sphere to another of activity, the atmosphere that he bore about him was invariably one of the most serene, unruffled calm. More than that, it was a calm which seemed as if it could not possibly be ruffled. His serenity, in peculiarly trying circumstances, more than once struck those who witnessed it as so remarkable that they have been disposed to ask if it must not be a cold nature that could be thus unruffled. The truth was far otherwise. Few men have been endowed by nature with sensibilities so keen and so nearly feminine in their delicacy.1 [Note: Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury (1914), i. 145.]
2. A very characteristic element in the predictions of Ezekiel is his free but careful use of imagery and symbolism. Both are employed by other prophets. Abijah, for example, gives point to his assertion that Jeroboam had been chosen to lead the revolt of the Northern Kingdom by rending his new mantle into twelve pieces, ten of which he gave to the incredulous overseer. Isaiah, by walking thinly clad and barefoot, made a vivid prediction of the threatened captivity of Judah. When Jeremiah wished to impress upon his sceptical audience the destruction which Jehovah was about to visit upon the city of Jerusalem, he dashed an earthen jar to fragments in their presence. By such actions these incomparable preachers enforced their messages. Teaching by symbols not only ensured the attention of their hearers and added to the impressiveness of their words, but often conveyed an idea the open expression of which might have been dangerous or inexpedient. Even more constantly do the prophets make use of various forms of imagery to illumine and beautify their addresses. Isaiah's parable which likened Judah to an unfruitful vineyard, and Micah's bold series of paronomasias by which he announced the approach of danger, illustrate in strikingly different ways this tendency. All other prophets, however, are surpassed by Ezekiel in the use of figurative language. He rarely puts forward an idea without some embellishment. Sometimes he proposes a riddle to his hearers, or utters a parable which he also illustrates by a symbolic action, or he unfolds an elaborate allegory, in each case making the figure of speech a mere means to the end of expressing his message more effectively. But he stands peculiar in his remarkable use of symbolism, especially of the vision, which is a higher form of the same mental tendency. He passes readily from the simpler forms of symbolism, like the metaphor, the parable, and some form of objective action, to the most complex, such as the allegory and the vision.
The prophet's symbolical actions have been variously understood. It is beyond doubt that actions of this kind were occasionally performed by prophets. Zedekiah made him “horns of iron” wherewith to push. Jeremiah put a yoke upon his own neck, which Hananiah broke from off him. The symbolical act in Jer_51:59-64 may also have been literally executed, as well as that in Eze_19:10. Whether his act in hiding his girdle was real or not may be doubtful; the fact that the sign was continued for three years rather tells against a literal performance of it; and it may be held certain that Jeremiah did not send yokes to the kings of Edom and Moab. It is possible that Ezekiel may in some cases have had recourse to this forcible way of impressing his teaching. Some of the actions described might well have been performed, such as joining two sticks together into one to represent the future union under one king of Judah and Israel. He might also have refrained from all outward mourning on the death of his wife, as a sign of the silent grief under which the people would pine away when tidings reached them of the destruction of the city and the death of all dear to them. But on the other hand how could the prophet “eat his bread with quaking, and drink his water with trembling” as a sign to the house of Israel? And can it be seriously supposed that he actually took a sharp sword as a razor and shaved off the hair of his head and beard, burning a third of it in the city (what city?), smiting a third of it with the sword about the walls, and scattering the remaining third to the winds? Such actions, and others like them, could not have been performed, and this fact casts doubt on the literality even of those which were possible. Even if 190 days be the true reading in Eze_4:5, it is most improbable that the prophet should have lain on his side immovable for half a year, and it appears impossible when other actions had to be done simultaneously.1 [Note: A. B. Davidson.]
3. A marked characteristic of the form of Ezekiel's teaching is his use of visions. They may correspond to the prophet's temperament, to a naturally imaginative cast of mind. God makes use of the natural gifts of His servants. These shape, to some extent at least, the form which their communications take. But there is no ground for regarding Ezekiel's visions as merely a literary artifice, as nothing more than the form in which he chose to clothe his message. On several occasions, we are told, “the hand of Jehovah was upon him”; in other words, he was the subject of an overpowering Divine influence, and fell into a kind of prophetic trance or ecstasy. This was the case when he saw the vision of the glory of Jehovah which was the prelude to his call. It was the case when he saw the vision of the shameless iniquities committed in the very Temple, by which the inhabitants of Jerusalem were banishing the presence of Jehovah from its precincts. It was the case again, when he beheld the vision of the dry bones brought to life by the inspiration of the breath of God, to teach the desponding Israelites that life could be restored even to the dry and scattered fragments of the nation. It was the case once more, when he saw rising before him a glorious picture of the restored sanctuary, in which Jehovah would once more vouchsafe to dwell in the midst of a purified people.
The simplest and most beautiful of all the visions is that of the dry bones and their resurrection. Three elements are observable in it: first, certain truths and ideas in the prophet's mind, truths not new but often expressed elsewhere, at least partially, such as the idea of the people's restoration; secondly, the operation on these truths of the prophet's mental genius, giving them a unity, throwing them into a physical form, and making them stand out before the eye of his phantasy as if presented to him from without; and thirdly, there may be a certain literary embellishment. This last element is most conspicuous in the visions of the cherubim and of the new Temple. But it must be maintained that the second element, the constructive operation of the phantasy, was always present, and that the visions are not mere literary invention.
God may communicate special revelations of His nature or of His will by visions and locutions. Such visions or locutions may be (a) imaginary, by which term is meant that they are apprehended like ordinary sights or sounds, except that the perception is due to no stimulus from outside; it is an “image,” not a “sensation.” In such cases there is a distinct psycho-physical process; the visual or auditory area of the cortex is stimulated, not, however, by an impulse travelling from an end-organ along a sensory nerve tract, as in the case of a sensation, but by an impulse originating in the cortex and impinging on the middle part of the sensory-motor are. The result of such an impulse is usually a mere memory-image, but occasionally the image has the quality of vividness which is the characteristic of a sensation, and at such times a vision is seen and a locution is heard in an experience to which the terms “clairvoyance” and “clairaudience,” or hallucination, are sometimes applied.
When such experiences are accepted as a Divine message, we hold that the contact between God and the soul stimulates the cortex of the brain to the production of the resulting perception, which has all the vividness of a sensation of sight or sound. If the spontaneous action of the “ego” can elicit memory-images of visions and voices, the action of God in the “ego” may well produce an experience of visions and voices which, though spiritual in its origin, will be sensationalistic in its vivid reality.
Or (b) these special communications may be intellectual, where there is nothing that can strictly be called perception, but rather a forcible and authoritative stamping of some truth upon the mind, or, in a word, a revelation of a truth. Such communication involves a contact of God with the human soul; its psychical accompaniment will be a stimulus of the association areas of the brain, and the resulting “idea” will differ from ordinary ideas in the qualities of strength, operativeness, and persistence, combined with an elevating and tranquillizing power, which mark it as of divine origin.1 [Note: A. Chandler, The Cult of the Passing Moment (1914), 43.]
4. Some recent interpreters have suggested the theory that throughout the earlier part of his ministry Ezekiel laboured under nervous diseases of the most distressing kind, and utilized his symptoms as a means of impressing certain truths on the minds of his fellow-exiles. This view was first expounded, with great learning and ingenuity, by Klostermann, who found in Ezekiel's condition all the marks of catalepsy, hemiplegia, alalia, hallucination, and so forth. It is difficult to believe that he has advanced the cause of sober and scientific interpretation of Scripture. The truth would seem to lie rather with those writers who also regard these representations as imaginative symbols, interesting as illustrations of the prophet's mode of thought, but not answering to anything external to his life. Probably Ezekiel was no more a cataleptic than St. Paul; with equal probability he was what would now be called a “psychical” subject-and, as such, liable to trances-and perhaps a clairvoyant. In any case, he would appear to be gifted with those powers of passing “over the threshold” which a great many of us possess to some slight degree, perhaps without discovering it, and which he himself, living before the days of strict medical investigation or nomenclature, could describe only by the categories at his command.
“The soul while thus seeking after God,” Teresa says, “is conscious, with a joy excessive and sweet, that it is, as it were, fainting away in a kind of trance; breathing and all the bodily strength fail it, so that it cannot even move the hands without great pain; the eyes close involuntarily, and if they are open they are as if they saw nothing. The ear hears, but what is heard is not comprehended. It is useless to try to speak, because it is not possible to conceive a word; all bodily strength vanishes, and that of the soul increases, to enable it better to have the fruition of its joy.”
These last words lead to a consideration on the positive side of the principle of ecstasy, or rapture. Teresa, in describing the external phenomena of this state, places the annihilation of the senses specially before our eyes.… “The soul,” she tells us, “feels her strength increase in proportion to the weakening of the exterior senses, so that she can better enjoy her bliss. She loses herself in God. She no longer exists, but God exists in her. It is true that her powers are suspended, and lose their natural activity; but a sweet and ineffable feeling replaces the other and absorbs her utterly; this is the consciousness of the Divine Presence.”1 [Note: Lady Lovat and R. H. Benson, The Life of St. Teresa (1914), 110.]
5. There remains to be considered the title, “Son of man,” which is given to Ezekiel throughout the book, and which occurs at the beginning of all his prophecies. It has a special interest because in the Old Testament Ezekiel, with the exception of Daniel, is the only individual to whom the title is applied, and that title, generally in the more definite form, “the Son of man,” is appropriated by our Lord to Himself in all the four Gospels, apparently with an implied reference to Dan_7:13 : “There came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man” (this idea is reproduced in Rev_1:13; Rev_14:14). Outside the Gospels the title is certainly used of our Lord only once, without any expression of similitude, and that by St. Stephen:-“Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” In the Old Testament it is used generally and not particularly, e.g., in Psa_8:4.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
In such a passage as this the title “son of man” implies humility to God-ward, but a certain sense of superiority in relation to the rest of the natural world.
Ezekiel was specially impressed with the sense of Jehovah's awful holiness. He felt himself a weak, sinful man; he saw in humility the crowning virtue of man to God-ward; and just as he falls upon his face when he hears the Divine voice speaking to him and needs the help of the Spirit to set him on his feet again, so at the beginning of all his oracles he places the words “Son of man,” to be a constant reminder to his hearers as to himself of his weakness and mortality and creaturely dependence upon the Lord.
Had Ezekiel been, like Jonah, a mere trumpet of judgment, he would have forfeited his right to a title that was greater than he knew. But when he yielded his soul to bear the iniquity which he so scathingly denounced, he made himself not only a brother of men, but a veritable brother of the Son of Man. Scoffing and scorn did not silence his prayer, laughter and the tears of hypocrisy did not quench his love for the race.
How mocked the rude,-how scoffed the vile,-
How stung the Levites' scornful smile
As o'er my spirit, dark and slow,
The shadow crept of Israel's woe,
As if the Angel's mournful roll
Had left its record on my soul,
And traced in lines of darkness there
The picture of its great despair!1 [Note: H. E. Lewis, By the River Chebar, 19.]
