Original Meaning

THE OPENING THREE VERSES of Ezekiel serve to locate the prophet’s ministry in time and space. Verse 1 tells us that the prophet received his call on the fifth day of the fourth month in the thirtieth year, among the exiles beside the Kebar River. This verse may originally have stood simply as the heading for the opening vision, addressed to people familiar with the prophet and his situation. At a later date, when the prophecies were addressed to a wider (Judean?) audience, it became necessary to clarify the details of verse 1. It was at this point that the next two verses were added, either by the prophet or someone else. This addition equates the “thirtieth year” of verse 1 with the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin (593 B.C.), specifies the “I” of verse 1 as “Ezekiel son of Buzi the priest” (see NIV text note), and identifies the Kebar River, where the exiles lived, as being “in the land of the Babylonians.”

The original meaning of the “thirtieth year” in verse 1 has been much discussed from the time of the rabbis onward. The text gives us no indication from what datum the thirtieth year is counted. Three major possibilities have emerged.

(1) It is the thirtieth year since a specific event. This method of dating is well attested in the Old Testament (see, e.g., 2 Chron. 23:1, where “the seventh year” is the seventh year since the usurpation of the throne by Athaliah). Elsewhere in Ezekiel, the dates have as their consistent baseline the exile of King Jehoiachin (as in Ezek. 1:2), while Amos dates his prophecy with reference to an earthquake (Amos 1:1).

On the basis of the other dates in Ezekiel, some have thus seen the “thirtieth year” as the “thirtieth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile,” which would make verse 1 refer to the date of the final prophecy of the whole book.1 Other commentators from ancient times have sought an event thirty years previous to 593 B.C. that might serve as a suitable datum point. The identification of Josiah’s reform (ca. 621 B.C.) as that “point zero” goes back to the Targum and was held by Jerome,2 while David Kimḥi favored the idea of the thirtieth year since the last year of Jubilee.3

(2) It is the thirtieth year in the reign of a specific king. This is the most common dating method in the Old Testament, used not only of the kings of Israel and Judah but also of a foreign king in Nehemiah 1:1 and 2:1. Indeed, the references in Nehemiah are of particular interest since the first simply speaks of “the twentieth year,” which is not more specifically defined until the next chapter, where it becomes clear that the “twentieth year” in question is that of King Artaxerxes. Some have therefore argued that the dating in Ezekiel 1:1 is based on “Babylonian time,” beginning with the accession of Nabopolassar in 625 B.C.4

(3) It is the thirtieth year of the prophet’s life. This view goes back to Origen and has found several contemporary supporters.5 One would normally expect an additional phrase in the Hebrew to indicate it as his age; yet there is a parallel at Genesis 8:13, where the “six hundred and first year” is that of Noah, as 7:11 makes clear. This date would have been significant for Ezekiel, for at that age he would have taken up his priestly ministry in the Jerusalem temple, had it still been standing.

There is no simple solution to this problem (self-evidently, since otherwise it would not continue to be discussed!). Some reference point that was presumably transparently clear to the original audience is no longer available to us. More significant, whoever added the additional notes of verses 2–3 chose not to highlight the “thirtieth year” but rather offer the date from Jehoiachin’s exile. It is thus perhaps best to leave the question open and not base our exegesis on inevitably speculative reasoning. What is clear and underlined in the present form of the text is that the opening vision of the prophet Ezekiel is placed in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s exile, that is, 593 B.C., while the prophet lived among the exiles of Babylonia. Historically and socially, therefore, Ezekiel’s message was addressed to those in exile.

There in exile, Ezekiel was confronted by a dramatic spectacle: The heavens were opened and he saw “visions of God” (ʾmarʾôt ʾ ^elōhîm, 1:1). The prophet was taken behind the scenes, as it were, and given a different, divine perspective on the events unfolding around him. The phrase “visions of God” or “divine visions”6 encompasses not only the opening vision of the divine throne-chariot, but all of the visions that play such an important part in Ezekiel’s message.

Although Ezekiel, like other Old Testament prophets, hears the word of the Lord, for him the visual aspect of God’s revelation has a particularly prominent place. Thus the book is in important ways structured around the vision of God’s throne-chariot prepared for action in chapter 1, that of the abominations that cause the glory to depart from the Jerusalem temple in chapters 8–11, the vision of the renewal of the dry bones in chapter 37, and the vision of the new temple in chapters 40–48. God is dramatically at work even in the apparently hopeless situation of the exiles, a work that the prophet is invited to “show and tell” to those around him.

Bridging Contexts

GOD’S WORD FOR the exiles. One common mistake in interpreting the prophets (and perhaps esp. Ezekiel) is to get bogged down in the minor details and thus attempt to overinterpret the text. For instance, some commentators build extensively on the “thirtieth year” of verse 1, speaking of that as the time when the prophet would have expected to enter priestly service had he been at home in Jerusalem. Yet the presence of Ezekiel 1:2–3 already serves to play down the importance of the exact identity of the thirtieth year. If verse 1 is the original heading of (part of) the prophecy for the original audience, verses 2–3 are the heading for the wider audience, that is, for us! They address those who do not know what the thirtieth year is, need to be informed which prophet is speaking, and cannot be expected to know that the Kebar River is in Babylonia unless that fact is made clear.

The basic point, then, of the introductory verses is that God’s word comes to the exiles. Now it may seem self-evident to contemporary readers that God can address us and we can come to him wherever we are. The prophet’s original hearers, however, had a different understanding of their relationship to the place where they lived. If we are to understand Ezekiel’s message, we must seek to understand what it meant to the people of his day to be in exile. It was not merely that they happened to be living somewhere other than they would have preferred to be; rather, their entire world had caved in upon them. In the same way that contemporary Jewish theology can be described as “Theology after Auschwitz,” because every understanding of God and the world has to take into account the experience of the Holocaust, so also this part of Old Testament theology must be designated the “Theology of Exile,” because of the radical impact of that earlier holocaust. Tamara Eskenazi expresses it thus:

Exile. It is not simply being homeless. Rather, it is knowing that you do have a home, but that your home has been taken over by enemies.

Exile. It is not being without roots. On the contrary, it is having deep roots which have now been plucked up, and there you are, with roots dangling, writhing in pain, exposed to a cold and jeering world, longing to be restored to native and nurturing soil. Exile is knowing precisely where you belong, but knowing that you can’t go back, not yet.7

Weeping and dreaming. What do you do in exile? The first thing that you do is sit down and weep. As the psalmist put it in Psalm 137:1–4:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the LORD

while in a foreign land?

In exile, life cannot be “business as usual.” How can there be joy in exile? How can there be joy when the memory is still filled with the demolition of all that is precious: Jerusalem’s stones torn down, her infants slaughtered (Ps. 137:7–8)? In view of God’s apparent rejection of his people, who can but pour out tears unceasingly (Lam. 2:18; 3:49)? Joy is gone and dancing turned to mourning (Lam. 5:15).

This mourning is not simply grief at the random sorrows of life, the “slings and darts of outrageous fortune,” to use Shakespeare’s phrase. Rather, in the midst of the pain, there is a recognition of the cause of that pain. Judah’s calamity is a consequence of her own sin (Lam. 3:42; 4:13). Paradoxically, though, in the midst of that recognition is also the beginning of hope. If tragedy is not a random event but the result of God’s sovereignty, then there may be hope of a new beginning.8 The one who has bruised can also bind up; the one who has rejected his people can restore them to himself (Lam. 5:21). God’s covenant love, his ḥesed, is the basis for hope in the midst of tears.

Just as Moses appealed to the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob so that God would not destroy his people utterly after the incident with the golden calf (Ex. 32:13), so also in the Exile, God’s commitment to the covenant brought hope. Added to this self-commitment was the basic character of God as gracious and compassionate, again as he had revealed himself originally to Moses (Ex. 34:6). Because of those facts, the possibility of forgiveness and restoration was real. Thus the book of Lamentations closes: “Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may return; renew our days as of old unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure” (Lam. 5:21–22).

Such a restoration could not be claimed presumptuously, however. The temptation, even in exile, was to hang on to glib hopes rather than truly to mourn and repent. Thus Jeremiah wrote to the exiles furiously denouncing those who promised a quick end to their troubles (Jer. 29:15–23). Such prophets found a ready audience for their words, but Jeremiah criticized them for failing to listen to God’s words through the prophets, words that spoke of the sword, famine, and plague (29:17–19). Until the dregs of the bitter cup of exile had been drained, there could be no talk of a new future. For the foreseeable future—for seventy years, which in most cases was far more than their life expectancy, their future lay in Babylon. Only after the cup of wrath had been drained would a new future be possible for Israel; only after the sin had been paid for would it be possible to speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim her comfort (Isa. 40:1–2).

In the meantime, alongside weeping, there was also room for dreaming.9 According to Psalm 126:1, “When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed.” The dreaming actually started a long time before the captives began to return. When everything has been torn down to the foundations, when nothing remains of the structures of the past, but when at the same time there is confidence that the nation will rise again, phoenix-like, from the ashes, visionary dreams can flourish. There can be dreams of a future that will preserve the best of the past while avoiding the worst.

Ezekiel’s task. This context of weeping and dreaming describes well Ezekiel’s task. On the one hand, he speaks clearly and unequivocally of judgment and destruction. During the early years of his ministry, he spoke of more judgment yet to come. In 589 B.C., in spite of the warnings of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, Zedekiah rebelled against the Babylonians, hoping to break free with Egypt’s help. It was a disastrous error of judgment; in the aftermath, the temple itself was destroyed and Jerusalem razed to the ground (see 2 Kings 25). The people needed to know that the events of the fall of Jerusalem and its temple were no mere accidents of fate but were the result of the people’s sin. Those responsible had to be called to account.

Yet while he was called to tear down the ruins of the past, at the same time Ezekiel was called to portray also a message of hope for the future. Though the judgment was from God, so also was the possibility of restoration. In the opening portion of the book the emphasis is on tearing down: The ruins must first of all be cleared, yet hope for the future is not completely lacking. Likewise, in the latter portion of the book, though the emphasis is on hope and dreams of the future, there is also room for a return to criticism and weeping for the past.

There is thus both continuity and discontinuity in Ezekiel’s presentation of the Exile. On the one hand, things can never again be as they once were. Because of the idolatry of the past, God’s judgment has come upon his people with devastating effect. The glory has departed, not just symbolically but really from Israel. God has turned his face away, abandoning his people, leading to their certain death. Had that been all there was to the history of redemption, no one could have faulted God.

But amazingly in the midst of that sentence of death comes God’s re-creative word of life. God speaks to these people where they are, in exile! God tears the heavens open and invites his chosen prophet to see his glory, the grounds of both judgment and hope. There will be, after the Exile, life from the dead—not because of any claim Israel may have but simply because of the mercy of God. In the meantime, Israel in exile is not forgotten or abandoned by God but is to live in the light of that promise, with hope. Though they live after the coming of night before even the first rays of dawn, yet in the light of who God is and his free promise to his people, they can live in expectant hope.

Contemporary Significance

LEARNING TO LIVE in exile. It seems to me that the social location of the book of Ezekiel in the Exile is one of the reasons for its contemporary neglect. The image of the Christian life as exile is not a common one in our days. We don’t think of ourselves as exiles, and so we neglect the literature of the Exile, not simply in favor of the New Testament, but of the literature of the Exodus and of the periods of conquest and monarchy. We even prefer the writings of the return to Judah to those of the Exile; Moses and Joshua, David and Nehemiah are our mentors, not Ezekiel. Why is that? Perhaps it is because in our culture we prefer heroes and idolize success; our models are strong, “can-do” types, people who seem able to take on the world with one hand tied behind their backs. The primary paradigm we have adopted is that of the victorious Christian life.

How then do we live with the reality of life in a very different world, where victories are frequently hard to come by and right living does not always lead to success? How can we speak an encouraging word to those barely able to keep their heads above water, to those who are not living the victorious Christian life but for whom it is an achievement simply to live the surviving Christian life? What does God have to say to those of us who frequently find ourselves, like the prodigal, far away from where we should be, suffering the deserved consequences of our actions? The answer is to balance the biblical models of exodus and conquest with the equally biblical models of wilderness and exile.

In fact, the biblical image of life in exile has actually never been more timely than it is today, for we live in a time in which people are experiencing a growing sense of alienation from the world around them. Fewer and fewer people find themselves “at home” where they live. On the one hand, in our generation millions across the globe have been forced to flee their homes through migration and ethnic cleansing, through persecution and war, as well as through economic migration in search of job opportunities.10 On the other hand, even safe and affluent communities in the West have turned relocation—and dislocation—into a way of life.11 Sometimes our email addresses seem to be the only “constant” in a rapidly changing world. In such a world, the pressing question for many is, “Where do I belong?” What address can we give that describes where our hearts are? Some of us can identify a geographical area as “home,” the part of the world where we would live if we could, where our language is spoken and our faces fit. But for many, home is not where we live. We live geographically uprooted lives.

Even among those who have not experienced such a physical uprooting, there are many who endure their own personal, internal experiences of “exile.” The comfortable veneer of life is easily scraped away, perhaps with the loss of a job and the comfortable lifestyle that went with it, or with the death of a loved one. There are times when the props in which we trusted are knocked away and we are left winded and gasping, not knowing which way is up or where to turn. Our entire personal world has caved in upon us in an experience that will forever shape who we are.

The tendency is at such times to feel isolated and alone in feeling this way. However, it is a far more common experience than we think. Paul Simon gave expression to the sense of alienation and disorientation of an entire generation of young Americans when he wrote:

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered;

I don’t have a friend who feels at ease;

I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its knees.12

The universality of the sense of exile (“so far away from home”) that Paul Simon is describing is conveyed in the title he gave to this lyric: “An American Tune.” It describes the experience of all those who have metaphorically sailed off on the Mayflower into the American dream. Nor is that a uniquely American experience. Almost all of us in the modern world know what it is to live with battered souls and shattered dreams.

In those times of personal tragedy and uprootedness, our first response is to mourn and weep, and rightly so. We turn to the psalms of lament and pour our tears out before God. But we are not to weep forever. There comes a time when we need to move on and hear the challenge of God’s Word as well as its comfort. Where it is our sin that has brought us into this situation, we are to confess it to God and acknowledge our own responsibility. Even where the pain we are suffering is not caused by our sin, we need to hear his words of discipline, as he reminds us that, as Christians, we can never be “at home” in this world. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “Here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). The Christian life is, in a profound sense, always one of exile in a strange land, far from home.

Ancient believers understood this. The writer of the early second-century Epistle of Mathetus to Diognetus reminded his friend:

As citizens, Christians share all things with others, and yet endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. . . . They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.13

Why then do we moderns persist in seeking to live as though it were not so? We put down roots as though we were here on this earth to stay forever, and we pursue the trinkets of time while ignoring the essentials of eternity. Truly, we need to learn how to live in exile.

Our true home. But living in exile is not simply a matter of gritting our teeth and getting on with it in the manner of the Stoics; we are not called to accept that life stinks, so that all we can do is make the best of a bad job. As exiles, we are not homeless and hopeless. We do have a home—it is just not here. Though we cannot go home yet and though we feel the pain of not being home, we can still dream of home. As an “exile” in the United States, I have plastered the walls of my office with reminders of home: I have a map of Britain on my wall, a calendar with views of Scotland, a Scottish flag to fly on days of national significance. I read a British newspaper daily via the Internet to keep up with current events. So also, as citizens of heaven, our lives should be filled with tokens of our true home. As Paul puts it in Colossians 3:1–2: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Why do we love to read the Scriptures daily? Because they speak to us of home. Why do we live differently from those around us? Because we remember that we are soon going home (1 Peter 4:1–7). Why are we willing to suffer and even die for our faith? Because we are sure of what we hope for and certain that to be with God, even through pain, is better by far than to be comfortable without him (Heb. 11:1–2, 13–16).

But we do not simply dream about heaven, our true home; we do what we can to establish an enclave of heaven where we live. In exile, the Sabbath and the synagogue became key institutions for the Jewish community as the means by which they maintained their distinctiveness. So too for us, if we appreciate what it means to be living in exile, our Sundays will become precious and distinctive as opportunities to experience in the company of other believers a foretaste of heaven. In fact, how you use Sunday says a lot about what you really believe about heaven. If you think that heaven is a successful career and a large house, you’ll use Sunday to put in extra time at work. If you think heaven is eternally doing nothing, you’ll snooze Sunday away on the sofa. If you think heaven is shopping till you drop, Sunday will find you at the local mall. But if you think that heaven is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever,” how are you going to spend Sunday? By glorifying him and enjoying him now! To those who look forward to spending eternity praising God among his people, spending one day in seven in like manner is surely no hardship; rather, it is an antidote to the harsh reality of life in exile.

Equally, the experience of exile should lead us to value all the more the counterculture of the new community of the saints. The exiles focused their lives around the synagogue: It was the heart of their social lives as well as their spiritual lives. In a similar way, the infant church formed an alternative community from their earliest days, eating and spending time in one another’s company as well as worshiping together (Acts 2:42–47). This is the natural response of exiles to life in an alien land and will act as an accurate measure of just how much we as Christians are truly citizens of heaven first and citizens of our earthly country second. If we truly believe that those we worship with week by week are our brothers and sisters with whom we will gladly spend eternity, then it will be entirely natural for them to be our closest friends and companions here and now.

All this is possible because to us too, in our contemporary exile, God speaks and reveals himself. Whereas in the past he spoke to the exiles through the prophet, now in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, Jesus (Heb. 1:1–2). In the coming of Jesus, God has definitively drawn aside the curtain and revealed his heavenly purpose to all of his people—that in all things God is working for the good of those who love him, so that in Christ we may ultimately be more than conquerors (Rom. 8:28, 37). To be sure, as we look around us, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Jesus (Heb. 2:8). That is part of the experience of living in exile. But by faith, we do see Jesus, crowned with glory and honor at the right hand of the Father, and believe that our present suffering is part of God’s perfect plan to mold us into the image of the one who suffered first for us (2:9–10).