A PROPHET IN EXILE

“And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.” —Ezekiel 2:6

In a sense, Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry began where Jeremiah’s left off. While some of the people remained in Jerusalem after it was conquered and finally destroyed by Babylon, Ezekiel was among the first group of exiles taken to Babylon with King Jehoiachin in 597 B.C. (see 2 Kings 24:12–17). Called to be a prophet in “the fifth year of the exile” (Ezekiel 1:2), Ezekiel’s ministry would be among a dislocated and traumatized people who were beginning to adjust to the realities of life in exile but who were still in survival mode with all its fears and uncertainties. They would have been questioning God’s care for them and not likely to respond well to yet another prophet seeking to defend God and challenge their faithlessness. Like many of the other Hebrew prophets, Ezekiel’s message began with a vision of the majesty of God—“the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 1:28)—which left him flat on his face before it. Then God spoke to him, making plain the difficult task and the difficult people to which he was called. “To be a prophet means to challenge and to defy and to cast out fear. . . . The prophet’s duty is to speak to the people, ‘whether they hear or refuse to hear.’ ”* Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel’s message would be one of “lament and warning and woe” (Ezekiel 2:10). But as a result of his faithful ministry and his own courage in difficult circumstances, “whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them” (Ezekiel 2:5).

* Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001), 22.