INTRODUCTION.

It is not our intention to detain our readers long at the threshold, or to enter here into any discussions which might pre-suppose and require an intimate acquaintance with the writings of our author. We mean simply to present a few statements of a strictly preliminary kind, respecting the personal position and circumstances of Ezekiel, the more distinctive features of his prophetical character, the nature of his style and diction as a sacred writer, the order and classification of his prophecies, and the literature connected with their interpretation.

I. On the first of these points, it is not necessary to say much; for the whole that is known with certainty of Ezekiel is furnished by his own hand, and is so closely interwoven with his discharge of the prophetical office, that it is only by following him through the one, we can become properly acquainted with the other. We know nothing of what he was or did as a man; but only of what he was and did as a prophet. That he was the son of Buzi, a priest, and entered on his prophetical career by the river Chebar or Chaboras, in the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, which was the same also of his own (comp. chap. i. 1, and xxxiii. 21), he has expressly informed us; and Josephus transmits the additional information (Ant. x. 6, 3), that he had become a captive when he was but a young man. This, however, has been as often questioned as believed; and among recent commentators-while Ewald sees reason to conclude, that the prophet "was pretty young when he was carried into exile"-Hävernick, on the other hand, thinks that "the vigorous priestly spirit, which prevails throughout his prophecies, furnishes evidence of a greater age; and that he had undoubtedly for some considerable time performed the service of a priest in the temple" before he left Judea. These diversities of opinion show, that the precise age of Ezekiel at the period of

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his exile can at most be only a matter of probability. But from certain considerations we intend to adduce on the dates assigned in the opening verses of his Book, we are of opinion, that the probability is mainly on the side of his having been, at the time of his removal to Chaldea, a comparatively young man-in the twenty-fifth year of his age. And as one of his later prophecies makes mention of the twenty-seventh year of his captivity (chap. xxix. 17), this, added to the original number of twenty-five, brings him to an advanced stage of life, though still not to the close of his prophetical agency. For some of his later predictions appear to have been uttered at a period subsequent to the time to which the prediction in ch. xxix. belongs. There is reason, therefore, to conclude, that Ezekiel's public life both began early, and was prolonged to the season of mature age..

But of the absolute cessation of his prophetical gift, we have no definite chronological information; nor, except from incidental notices sometimes introduced into his communications, do we learn anything of the experiences and results that attended its exercise. The direct historical notices in his writings, apart from the record of the visions he saw, and the messages of good and evil he received from above, are comparatively few. But in the messages themselves references are not unfrequently made to the circumstances amid which he was placed, and the trials or sorrows connected with his official ministry. From those scattered notices we can easily gather, that as the time was marked by the fearful prevalence of evil in a moral, not less than in an outward and worldly respect, so there was the application, on his part, of an unwearied activity, and the energy of a devoted zeal, striving against gigantic difficulties and manifold discouragements. He had to plead the cause of God in an atmosphere of rebellion; prove himself to be faithful amidst many faithless; and, without palliation or reserve, lay open evils in the condition of his companions in exile, which they sought most anxiously to cover out of sight. Hence, while he appears as one tenderly sympathising with them in their depression and gloom (chap. iii. 15), there is nothing to indicate that they ever properly sympathised with him in his contendings for truth and righteousness. They recognise him, indeed, as a prophet of the Most High, and collect around him, from time to time, to hear what message he might have received for their behoof, or to make inquiry through him concerning

the mind of God (chap. viii. 1, xi. 25, xiv. 1, etc.); but it was never without having a rebuke administered to them on account of the frame of mind in which they appeared, or an intimation made respecting the light and captious humour they were wont to indulge in toward him (chap. xiv. 1, xviii., xxxiii. 30–33, etc.). So that his prophetical career, we can have no doubt, was connected with much that was trying and painful, and, like too many of our Lord's prophetical types, he also in no slight degree had to "endure the contradiction of sinners against himself.”

Yet this must not be understood of his connection with the whole band of exiles, nor probably of the later period of his public ministry nearly so much as of the earlier. For, amid the prevailing iniquity there are not wanting occasional indications of a better spirit among the captives (chap. xi. 16, Jer. xxiv.); and, at a period not very distant from the close of his ministrations, a very marked and general amendment had undoubtedly taken place among them. It could not greatly, if it did at all, exceed thirty years from the cessation of his active labours, when the decree was issued for the return of the captives; and notwithstanding the corruptions which still lingered among them, and which soon began to appear in the infant colony, there was a general repudiation of idolatry, and an adherence to the law of Moses, very different from what had existed at the era of the captivity, or for a considerable time previous to it. Nor can there be any doubt, that among the agencies which contributed to effect this beneficial change, a prominent place must be ascribed to the ministry of Ezekiel. By the results that appeared, decisive evidence was thus borne to the fact, that a prophet had been among them, who had not laboured in vain; and we can scarcely doubt, from the whole circumstances of the case, that the satisfaction was afforded our prophet--a satisfaction which was denied to his great contemporary Jeremiah, of witnessing the commencement of the spiritual renovation for which he so earnestly laboured.

II. It naturally follows, from what has been said of the position and circumstances of Ezekiel, that, in respect to his prophetical agency, one of the leading characteristics was that of active and energetic working. He had, almost single-handed, to begin and direct the process of a general reformation, which no one can do with effect, even now, without force of character and energy of

action; and still less could it be done then, when writing and reading were so much less in use, and practical effects on communities were necessarily more dependent upon the instrumentality of the living voice. This consideration is of itself sufficient to disprove the idea entertained by Ewald, and more recently espoused by Hitzig, of the comparatively quiescent and chiefly literary character of Ezekiel as a prophet. "As we see him in his Book," says Ewald, "he appears more as a writer, than as a prophet taking part in public life. The writer may have his individual peculiarities of a kind quite foreign to a prophet of the elder sort; and so, in point of fact, Ezekiel as an author surpasses all the earlier prophets, in particular Jeremiah, in finish, beauty, and completeness; but the more the man grows as an author and a cultivator of learning, he loses in the same proportion as a genuine prophet." He, therefore, contemplates the great book of Ezekiel as "proceeding almost entirely from the study of a learned retreat ;" and Hitzig, following in the same track, and speaking as from the most intimate acquaintance with the facts of the case, tells us that, as Ezekiel was driven from the external world by the badness of the times, he "but cultivated the more the internal world-he flew to his books, and gave himself up to literature, leading a kind of dusky retirement in the law and his own past reminiscences" (Vorbem. § 2). If so, we might certainly affirm, never did an author's course of life present a greater contrast to the character of his writings, or appear less adapted to the aim he professes to have in view. The work, to which he owns himself to have been called, from its very nature required the most resolute and devoted agency: he was expressly called to do the part of a watchman in the midst of abounding danger and corruption; where success in any degree must have seemed utterly hopeless, excepting as the result of unwearied diligence and self-denying labour. And though, it is true, in his writings, as in those of the prophets generally, we have the record of little else than his direct communications with Heaven, and his more special messages to the people; yet these breathe throughout such a living earnestness and practical vigour, as clearly bespeaks the man of active labour, not the learned leisure and meditative quiet of a recluse.

This moral dewórns, or fervent, energetic striving after a practical result is stamped upon the whole of Ezekiel's writings, although

it comes out more palpably in some portions than in others. The Book possesses much of a rhetorical character, and has, in a manner, but one aim-that of moral suasion. Hence, the more peculiar difficulties connected with its interpretation, are not those which attach to the meaning of the words, or the construction of sentences, but such rather as inhere in the general form and substance of the prophet's communications. Though the former are occasionally found, it is the latter which chiefly prevail; and some even of the most profound and enigmatical portions are remarkable for the perfect plainness and simplicity of the style. At the same time, while we thus maintain the essential incorrectness of the view given of Ezekiel's prophetical character by Ewald and Hitzig, we are not insensible to a difference, in the line indicated by them, between the writings of this prophet and the other prophetical books; this book is characterised in a quite peculiar manner by a tendency to minute, detailed, and, as might seem, elaborate descriptions. But this arose from the native bent of the prophet's mind-not from the retired and studious character of his life.

For, as another distinctive peculiarity in Ezekiel, there appears a very marked individuality in his cast of mind-such as gives a kind of uniqueness to his writings, and plainly distinguishes them as productions from those of the other prophets. It is true, that in the one, as well as in the other, we have the inspired utterances of men speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. But it is not the less true, that in thus moving them, the Spirit of God had respect to their native bent of mind, and allowed their several constitutional peculiarities to give their full impress to the form and method of their prophetic announcements. The doctrine of inspiration does not imply, however often it may be represented as if it did, that the persons who were the subjects of it, should be wrought upon by the Spirit as mere mechanical instruments, whose natural faculties were suspended under the violent and impulsive agency of a higher power. On such a supposition, we could never account for the diversities of manner which characterise the sacred oracles, and which not only shed over them the charm of an instructive and pleasing variety, but also endow them with a manifold adaptation to the different tastes and capacities of men. The Spirit did not suspend, or imperiously control, but most wisely and skilfully used the mental peculiarities and