The prophet Ezekiel, one of the most influential thinkers and
writers of the period which saw the beginnings of the Baby-
lonian exile, was a younger contemporary of Jeremiah. The
only information we have about him comes from the one book
of the Old Testament which bears his name. In the first chapter
of this we are told that Ezekiel, at the time he received his call
to prophesy, was "among the exiles" who dwelt near the banks
of the river Chebar in Babylonia. ¹ Since the first part of the
book contains a series of messages to the people of Judah before
the fall of Jerusalem, we may infer that the prophet was one
among the large number of captives taken to Babylon along with
King Jehoiachin in 597B.C. He may have returned to Jerusalem
sometime after he received his commission to preach to the
house of Israel. ² If he did this, he probably remained there until
a short time before the fall of the city in 586 B.C. When he re-
ceived the news of the fall of Jerusalem he was again in Baby-
lonia with the Jewish exiles where he functioned as a kind of
pastor to his own people, delivering to them the messages he had
received from Yahweh.

While living among the Jewish captives, it was Ezekiel's task
to preserve the religious ideals developed by his people through
the centuries, and to do so among those who were on the verge
of despair. It was no easy task for him to accomplish. The
captivity in itself had been a terrible blow not only to the national

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