Ezekiel : Christian Community Bible

Introduction to Ezekiel

Ezekiel may have been a young priest taken to Chaldea with the ten thousand exiles after the first siege of Jerusalem in 598 B.C. (see 2 K 24:14). There he was called by God as he tells us (chapters 1 and 2). The first part of his book (chapters 1–24) contains his discourses predicting the total destruction of his country.

After the prophecies against the foreign nations, we have the third part of the book, which contains the promises to the exiles: God does not want his people to die.

We know of races that have disappeared and of immigrants who forget their land because they found work in another country. In the same way the Jewish people might well have disappeared after the crisis in which Jerusalem was devastated. While they were in Babylon, exiled in a much more prosperous country, the older people yearned for their homeland, while the young thought only of taking advantage of their new situation. Ezekiel, with his challenging teaching, kept forming the consciences of those who, one day, would return to Judea to build the new kingdom of God (chapters 33–39).

NOTE: excerpted from the introductory material for this book.