Ezekiel 2:1 Ezekiel the prophet is continually called “the Son of man.” I know this title continues into the New Testament with Jesus being referred to as the Son of man as well. What is the meaning of this phrase or title?
Excellent question, and one that has been debated by generations of scholars. The original usage of this term was as a simple synonym for “human being.” Thus, NRSV translates the term in its over 90 usage in Ezekiel as “mortal.” Other renderings are “mortal man” (TEV), “man” (NEB) and “son of dust” (Living Bible). In the poetic literature it often stands in parallel to the word “man” and is used for literary variation. The most famous example is Psalm 8:4 where the Psalmist asks:
“What is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him?”
In the context of Ezekiel's interactions with God, “it emphasizes man's finite dependence and insignificance before God's infinite power and glory.” (Oxford Annotated Bible, p. 1002)
A new use of the term occurs first in Daniel 7:13-14:
“I saw one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”
In this late Old Testament apocalyptic book, Son of Man becomes another title for the Messiah. Many of the phrases in this passage reappear in the Book of Revelation, where they clearly refer to Christ.
So when Jesus uses this term to refer to himself (over 80 times in the Gospels), the question is: Does Jesus mean (1) to stress his identification with lowly humanity or (2) to clearly identify himself as the heavenly figure described in Daniel? Liberal scholars usually opt for the first explanation and use it to explain that Jesus never considered himself as divine. Others feel that the second option is more likely. My own feeling is that Jesus used Son of Man because it was the most precise way to describe both His full humanity and full deity.
The only issue remaining is the confusing footnote in The Daily Bible on Ezekiel 2:1. It states, “The phrase son of man is retained as a form of address here and throughout Ezekiel because of its possible association with “Son of Man” in the New Testament. I personally see no association whatsoever between an address used by God to firmly designate Ezekiel as a mere human being and the self-identification of Jesus as not only human but also the divine personage that appears in the Book of Daniel.
Ezekiel 4:4-8 What time period does this strange acted-out prophecy refer to?
You are not alone in being confused. I will answer this question in an indirect way by examining a chain of reasoning popular in some dispensational circles, which says that the prophecy actually foretold to the exact year (some even say to the exact day) the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
Step 1: The main prophecy comes from Ezekiel 4:4-8 with Ezekiel being told to lie 390 days on one side and 40 on the other, standing for the number of years of punishment. Add both numbers.
A. The first fact to note is that the textual evidence is evenly divided between 190 and 390 in verse 5. The New Bible Commentary, for example, says that 190 is probably the correct number (p. 668). The New English Bible and The Jerusalem Bible actually use this number for their translations. It is possible to reach a good understanding of the text using the number 190 (without resorting to convoluted mathematics) as indicated in some of the approaches in D below.
B. Next is the common understanding among most commentators that the 40 years in verse 6 is another way of stating a complete generation in the Exodus story, and is not to be taken literally.
C. Even if the two numbers are taken literally, there is a difference of opinion as to whether they should be added up, or occur simultaneously.
D. The next, and most important, point to notice is that there is no hint here that this applies to a future (secular) state such as modern Israel. A universally accepted principle of hermeneutics is that the nearest date of fulfillment is to be preferred. Therefore it is not unexpected that the vast majority of commentators apply this prediction to events related to the return from Babylonian exile. Many of these approaches are summarized by Block (The Book of Ezekiel, pp. 174-178). Using 190 days as the original text and subtracting 40 years, the calculated time of exile for the Northern Kingdom becomes 150 years, which is almost exactly the time between its fall and the fall of Jerusalem. Using 390 + 40 years, the time period approximates the duration of the First Temple. Thus, when the combined time of punishment equals the time of Solomon's temple, then the temple may be rebuilt. Other calculations point to the rise of the Hasidim or the Maccabees as the endpoint of the prophecy.
Even Robert Chisholm, a Dallas Theological Seminar professor, concurs with Block on the difficulty of determining which time period is being referred to, but he does agree that it occurred during OT times. (see Handbook on the Prophets, p. 236).
Step 2: In Jeremiah 25:11, the period of Babylonian exile is predicted to be 70 years. Subtract this from the previous number for the remaining time in exile.
A. Some commentators assume that 70 is simply another way of stating the average lifetime of a person, or another way of saying “many”.
B. This is variously understood, even by other biblical authors as applying (approximately) to the time between the destruction of the Temple in 587 and its rebuilding in 520-525 (Zechariah 1:12), the period between 587 and Cyrus' edict in 538 (II Chronicles 36:20-23), or to events during the days of Antiochus Epiphanes (Book of Daniel). This time period also approximates the time between the fall of Nineveh in 612 and the fall of Babylon in 539, and may refer to that period. (Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah, pp. 513-514). Finally, NRSV notes that it refers from the time of the original prophecy to Jeremiah (605 BC) to the defeat of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 (total of 66 years)
Step 3: The years of punishment must next be multiplied by 7 according to Leviticus 26:18-33.
A. Nowhere in this chapter does it say that Israel's time of punishment will be multiplied by seven. The descriptions instead show the wide variety or number of punishments that will be visited on them.
B. Seven is a round number often applied to repeated (not extended) punishments in the Bible (see references in Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, p. 331).
C. “Seven times: It is apparently the intensity rather than the duration that is referred to.” (New Bible Commentary: Revised, p. 167.
D. Payne (Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, p. 199) applies this particular curse specifically to the time of the Divided Kingdom and the Babylonian Exile, having nothing to do with any other time period. Allen Ross (Holiness to the Lord, pp. 476-481) similarly notes that there are five stages to the punishments outlined in Leviticus 26, ending (not beginning) with the exile.
Step 4: The starting date to be used is Israel's loss of independence as a vassal state under Nebuchnezzar in 606.
A. The actual fall of Jerusalem in 586 would be a much more expected and logical date to start with.
B. Loss of independence actually began in 608 with a puppet state set up under Eliakim by the Egyptians. (Lasor et al, Old Testament Survey, p. 218)
C. The date 606 (or 607) was first proposed by the Jehovah Witnesses for the fall of Jerusalem, in spite of all archeological evidence to the contrary. Dispensationalists then took the same date, but applied it to a different event to get the math to work out properly.
Step 5: The ending date is when a proposal for establishing State of Israel was given to the UN. However, it wasn't until the following year that the state was actually established.
Step 6: All calculations must be based on the 360-day lunar year Hebrew calendar. Convert the number of years arrived at above.
A. In the first place, a Hebrew year has 365 1/4 days in it just as our modern calendar. But even if you want to ignore all the added days needed to make up a true year (by all cultures' standards), the Hebrew lunar calendar has only 354 days in it, with the deficit being made up by occasional additions of days or even whole months (randomly decided by the priests each year). Because of this variation, no exact date in Old Testament times can be correlated with any modern date, whether using a common calendar or the Gregorian one. (see detailed Wikipedia article on the Hebrew calendar)
B. As best as I can tell, the existence of a 360-day calendar was first proposed by the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1800's to justify their various predicted dates for the Second Coming (all of which failed and were subsequently revised) using the same sort of calculations employed later by the Dispensationalists.
Some general references that might be helpful if you are interested in this sort of prophetic argument:
A. It is instructive to look at some of the failed prophecies of the Jehovah Witnesses using this identical type of chain reasoning.
B. Davis' Biblical Numerology is very useful in highlighting the various ways Biblical authors used numbers, some of which are quite different from our modern, scientific usage.
C. Carl Armerding and Ward Gasque's book A Handbook on Biblical Prophecy on how to truly understand Biblical prophecy is probably the best one on the subject. The chapters are written by a variety of authors with somewhat different points of view, but all agree that a strictly literal reading of most prophecies is not justified by the evidence.
Ezekiel 14:14, 20 The commentary in The Daily Bible refers to Noah, Daniel and Job as the “righteous remnant” symbolizing other righteous citizens who remain. Chronologically speaking, the events of the Book of Daniel appear to be happening concurrently with the events in Ezekiel. However, Daniel is already regarded highly on the same plateau as Noah and Job. Does this reference to Daniel help scholars date the Book of Ezekiel? Does it present a problem implying the book may have been written much later than one might be led to believe? It seems as though the “word of the Lord,” which includes a reference to Daniel, is coming to Ezekiel before Daniel has accomplished many of the things which would elevate his status to that of Noah and Job?
The rough chronology of events is as follows:
605 BC Daniel exiled to Babylon
605-603 BC Events described in Daniel 1-2
597 BC Ezekiel exiled to Babylon
593 BC First call of Ezekiel
586/7 BC Fall of Jerusalem
Before 562 BC Events described in Daniel 3-4
Thus, Ezekiel would have been in Babylon and presumably known of the events in Daniel's early career as described in Daniel 1-2 (and perhaps chapters 3-4 also) before proclaiming the prophecies of Ezekiel 1-24, which relate to events before the fall of Jerusalem.
However, some scholars feel that Ezekiel 1-24 was supposedly written at too early a date for Daniel to have yet gained much of a reputation. To these critics it can be suggested that the scribes who later compiled all of Ezekiel's oral prophecies into a book (or Ezekiel himself at a later date) added Daniel's name to the list of righteous men to give a later audience a more contemporary example of righteousness. There is no textual evidence for such a supposition, but it remains a possibility.
There is another option, however. First, note the strange order of names in these two similar passages. Daniel is clearly out of chronological order; we would expect his name to be given last in the list, not in the middle. Another fact to point out is that the early Hebrew texts did not indicate vowels in any way; they were added at a much later date as an aid to pronunciation. The name was actually written as dn'l, rather than dny'l, as is usual for Daniel.
At this point, we can ask whether there are any other famous righteous men with the consonants “dn'l” living in the early patriarchal times. And the answer is “Yes, there are several.”
(1) Jewish tradition lists a Dan'el who is the grandfather of Methuselah on his mother's side.
(2) Ezekiel 28:3 compares the wisdom of the King of Tyre with that of an otherwise unknown personage named Dan'el.
(3) 14th-12th Cent. B.C. Ugaritic tablets talk about a legendary king named Dan'el “upright, sitting before the gate, beneath a mighty tree on the threshing floor, judging the cause of the widow, adjudicating the cast of the fatherless.” (Daniel L. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24, p. 448)
For those concerned that Ezekiel would include a non-Jew in his list of righteous men, keep in mind that Noah was not a Jew, and Job came from Uz in northern Arabia, even though both of them worshiped Yahweh. Using three examples of righteous non-Israelites fits well in the immediate context (see verse 12) which deals with the situation within a sinful land (not Jerusalem, which will be dealt with a few verses later). (Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20, p. 257-261)
Ezekiel 45-46 I hope this isn't a silly question. These chapter keep referring to the allotments and responsibilities of “the prince.” Who is this prince? In the minutia of detail describing the measurements of the Temple and the divisions of the land I failed to notice this prince coming into the picture. Where did I miss it?
This is not a silly question at all, but one that continues to confuse scholars.
The prince in these passages first comes into the picture in Ezekiel 44:1-3, where he is described as “less a messianic figure than a civil ruler with immediate, concrete tasks.” (NRSV Study Bible) J. A. Thompson (The Book of Jeremiah, p. 562) suggests that Ezekiel and Jeremiah (in Jeremiah 30:21) purposely use the term (nasi) for prince/king rather than the more common word for king (melek) in order to indicate that the ideal king (Messiah) is not being referred to. No particular prince/king is in mind in these later passages in Ezekiel, just whichever ruler is over Israel at the time. This fact is indicated by the use of the plural “princes” in Ezekiel 45:8, where they are limited by God in their power and in the amount of land they can take away from the people. The regulations in Ezekiel 45-46 show that these princes are also to be subservient to the priesthood. (New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Vol. 3, p. 171) The International Bible Commentary (p. 844) adds that the princes “and others in authority will have no more excuse for exploiting or oppressing the people.”
Much of the mystery surrounding chapters 40-48 is due to the uncertainty regarding when the various cultic regulations are to apply since, as The Daily Bible (p. 1136) points out, the religious service and temple architecture pictured by Ezekiel differ significantly from those experienced by Israel before or after the exile. Premillennialists generally place the fulfillment of these passages during the Millennial Reign of Christ on Earth but stop short of explaining who the prince or princes is/are. However, the dispensationalist dean John Walvoord goes a little overboard in identifying the “prince” in Ezekiel as the bodily resurrected King David who will co-reign on earth with Christ. (The Millennial Kingdom, p. 300-301)
Other schools of interpretation focus on the fact that these later chapters of Ezekiel are apocalyptic visions, and as such should probably not be interpreted in a woodenly literal manner. “Some future realities transcend the ability of human language to describe them, so the familiar and fundamental realities of Israel's life became the basis for representing the indescribable.” (C. Hassell Bullock, An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophetic Books, p. 249)
Daniel Block (The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25-48, p. 497) states, “Here Ezekiel is offered a glimpse of spiritual possibilities for Israel...” On the other hand, some amillennialists treat Ezekiel 40-48 as a vision that was symbolically fulfilled by the coming of Christ and institution of the church.
Overall, I think the ancient rabbis were on the right track when they forbade any Jew under 30 years of age from reading the visions at the beginning and end of Ezekiel. Only I would increase the minimum age to about 90 or so.
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