Lives of Scripture

Ezekiel, a priest exiled to Babylon with King Jehoiachin in 597 BC, received his prophetic call beside the Chebar River through an overwhelming vision of God's throne-chariot — wheels within wheels, four living creatures, and blazing glory — after which he ate a scroll of lament and was appointed "a watchman for the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 1-3). His ministry was marked by dramatic symbolic acts: he lay on his side for over a year to bear Israel's guilt, ate rationed food to depict coming siege and famine, shaved his head and divided the hair to picture Jerusalem's judgment, and packed an exile's bag and dug through a wall to act out the coming captivity (Ezekiel 4-5; 12:1-7). When his wife suddenly died, God forbade Ezekiel to mourn openly, making his own restrained grief a sign to the exiles of the greater loss coming to Jerusalem (Ezekiel 24:15-24). Ezekiel saw the glory of the LORD deliberately depart from a defiled temple before Jerusalem's fall, and later saw it return in a vision of restoration (Ezekiel 10-11; 43:1-5). His best-known vision, a valley of dry bones brought back to life, pictures God restoring not just land but Israel's very spirit (Ezekiel 37:1-14). His closing chapters describe an elaborate future temple whose meaning remains genuinely debated among careful readers (Ezekiel 40-48).