Ezekiel preached to exiles in Babylon for about 22 years
Ezekiel was a priest from Judah living among deportees beside a canal near Nippur in Babylonia. From 593 BC he delivered visions of fiery living creatures and wheels, foretold Jerusalem's fall, and then promised a return. His recorded prophecies span roughly 22 years, and three faiths honour him as a prophet.
His name means God is strong, or God strengthens. The book bearing his name presents him as the son of Buzi, of priestly descent, living with his wife in Tel Abib beside the Kebar Canal. He dates his first vision to the thirtieth year, which the text equates with the fifth year of King Jeconiah's exile, placing it in 593 BC; his last dated prophecy comes from April 571 BC. The thirtieth year may simply be his age, which would make him 52 at the end. Older Jewish commentary instead counts from 622 BC, when a book of the law was found in the Temple under King Josiah, and the two readings fit if he was born around then.
The background was catastrophe. Babylon deported Jeconiah and the elite of Judah beginning in 597 BC, and the historian Josephus put the number of exiles at 10,832. In 587 BC the Neo-Babylonian Empire took Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon's Temple. With monarchy and state gone, Ezekiel built a spiritual foundation instead. His promise that God would replace a heart of stone with a heart of flesh was quoted by the apostle Paul, and his images of the four living creatures, the war with Gog of Magog and a river flowing from the Temple reappear in the Book of Revelation.
Jewish tradition says the Great Assembly gathered his prophecies rather than Ezekiel writing the book himself. The Talmud's Rava offered a cheeky comparison: Isaiah described God's throne like a courtier familiar with the palace, while Ezekiel embellished it like a villager awed by distant royalty. He is believed to have died around 570 BC, three decades before Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BC and Cyrus allowed the exiles home.
Christians commemorate him on various dates, including July 21 in Eastern Orthodox churches, and Saint Bonaventure read his closed gate as a figure of the Virgin Mary. Although the Quran never names him, Muslim scholars list him among the prophets and often identify him with Dhu al-Kifl. His traditional tomb at al-Kifl in Iraq, long a Jewish pilgrimage site, now lies beneath a Shia mosque.
Source: Ezekiel
