Dean Anderson

Ezekiel's visions are fairly way-out - and are often interpreted by 'alternative scholars' (i.e. those who use an alternative to scholarship) to be evidence of alien visitations or such like.

Does anyone have any decent information on the book of Ezekiel (when it was written, who wrote it, who it's target audience was, how they were expected to interpret the visions, etc.)

Thanks in advance...

CJD

I hope the following is "decent" enough for you:

The book of Ezekiel contains numerous subscriptions, which couch the narrative in a specific historical background, namely, the Babylonian judgment (c. 605–586 BC).

Its primary audience, if we are to take the first superscription seriously (Ezek. 1:1), would have been the earliest Judahic exiles of the Babylonian invasion. Deportations began as early as 605, but Ezekiel himself was a captive (along with King Jehoiachin [cf. "Jeconiah", 1 Chron. 3:16]) of the first actual invasion by Nebuchadnezzar (597). See 2 Kings 24:8–12 for the corresponding historical narrative. Having settled along the River Chebar with other Jewish captives, Ezekiel begins his memoir. Taking the specific dating into account in 1:1 ("30th year, 4th month, 5th day") we are talking c. July, 593.

Of course, those in exile and many of those left behind in Jerusalem had high hopes that the Exile would be short, and that Jerusalem itself would be spared further disaster. False prophets, as was typical, were saying "peace, peace" when there was no peace. This all stemmed from the mindset that God was on their side (since he had defended the city in the past), and thus the city was inviolable. Ezekiel warned them that such was not the case. The only remedy is Repentance. Many of the visions, then, are calls to repentance. But they also were intended to warn the people that the worst is quite possibly yet to come.

As far as how the people were to interpret the visions, that is easy. They understood prophetic literature/language well enough to know not to rip the words from their historical contexts. For example, in chpts. 12–24, there are many oracles regarding the sins of the people. Such would serve as an indictment, of course, and Babylon, God's sword (chpt. 21), would exact God's judgment. The blessing oracles in chpts. 33–48 were, like every other prediction uttered in prophetic literature, the possible future of the nation if the tacit conditions (i.e., repentance) were attended to. Did you have any particular passage in mind?

The book reads like a composite of Ezekiel's own scribblings and a scribe's patient narrative weaving and arrangement.

Regards,

CJD

mark9950

Lets face reality ezekiel was taking some sort of controlled substance

Toto

Ezekiel is mentioned in this classic thread Jesus used Cannabis.

Kilgore Trout

I love the "scientific" way they figured out who was a "false" prophet. Some prophets say there will be peace, some say there won't be. Then because it wasn't peace, the ones who said "peace" are called false prophets. I guess nobody figured out that there are just two choices, so all of the "prophets" were just playing the odds just to get attention.

It's like asking a bunch of people "heads or tails" on a coin toss, and whoever got it right must be a true prophet and the rest are false prophets.

"How did you know it would be heads?":notworthy