Jehovah ceased to be the Jehovah of the wind-swept plains and hills.
He became a set of rules and regulations.He no longer spoke to men amidst the crash of thunder in the desert.His voice from now on was heard in the solitude of the library.And the prophet became the rabbi—became the priest—who explained and expounded and interpreted and elucidated and gradually buried the spirit of the Divine Will underneath that philological rubbish-pile of learned annotations and criticisms which grew to enormous extent as the ages went by.
This new development,however (like all similar changes)did not come suddenly,and the period of exile produced several men who compare favourably with those among their predecessors who had been the acknowledged spiritual leaders of their race.
Two prophets stand out from the others.
One of these was Ezekiel.
Of the other (most unfortunately)we do not know the name.He was “the evangelist among the prophets.”He spoke a new language,the like of which had never been heard either in Israel or in Judah.His works you will find hidden in the latter half of the twenty-third book of the Old Testament which is called Isaiah.
This book contains sixty-six Chapters.The first thirty-nine may have been the work of the Prophet Isaiah,who lived during the reigns of Jotham,Ahaz and Hezekiah,and who predicted the fate of the two Jewish nations long before the days of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar.
But the last twenty-six Chapters are most evidently the work of a man who lived several centuries later and who used different language and a different style.
That these two dissimilar parts have been put together without a word of explanation need not surprise us.The compilers of the Old Testament (as we have repeatedly stated before)were not particular in such matters.They took whatever they liked wherever they found it and pasted their scrolls together without a vestige of what we modern people call “editing.”
In this way,the identity of the man who wrote the second part of the book was lost in that of the prophet of the first half.It does not matter very much.As the “Un-known Author,”the poet has gained more fame than many of his contemporaries whose genealogies have been incorporated in some very dull pages of the Old Testat-ment.
What makes his work so valuable is his new and unique vision of the power and character of Jehovah.Jehovah,to him,is no longer the tribal god of a small Semitic nation.His name is written across the high heavens of all lands.
He is the ruler of all men.
Even the mighty King of Babylonia and the no less powerful King of Persia (to whom the Jews looked secretly for their ultimate deliverance)—they are both the un-witting servants of the One God whose will is law unto all men.
This God,however,is not a cruel God who hates those who know him not.On the contrary,he offers his love and his compassion even to those who live in darkness and who have never heard His Name.
He does not keep himself hidden from man behind the forbidding clouds of his own perfection.He is visible to all who have eyes to see.His words are clear to those who have ears to hear.He is the loving Father of all men,the Shepherd trying to lead an unwilling flock to the safe harbour of peace and righteousness.
Such language was far in advance of the times.
The average exile regarded it with profound misgivings.
This talk of a God who loved all living things did not appeal to a small community which depended for its existence upon its daily hate quite as much as upon its daily bread and which prayed incessantly for the days of vengeance when Jehovah should destroy the detestable Babylonian captors.
And eagerly they turned to other men who had been carefully grounded in the strict doctrines of an older day and who believed that Jehovah had chosen the descendants of Abraham and Jacob (and them only)to be the instruments of his divine will,and who never ceased to predict the day when all other nations should lie prostrate before the victorious hosts of the New Jerusalem.
Among the popular prophets of the exile,Ezekiel stands forth with granite strength.
He was born in the old country.
His father was a priest and the boy grew up in the highly religious atmosphere of Jerusalem,where he undoubtedly listened to the sermons of Jeremiah.
Later,he too became a prophet.
He seems to have been a young man of some importance in his community,for he was among the first to be driven away from the capital as soon as the Babylonians conquered Judah and several years before the beginning of the great exile.
