Ezekiel is said to have been the son of Buzi the priest. Which means he was from the elite of the people. Since there is no reference on the part of the scriptures to further prophecies of Ezekiel after the twenty-fifth year of exile, it is possible that he did not live longer than that
In some of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah in the opening first verse of several chapters there is a date indicating in which year of which king the prophecy appearing in that chapter was given. Following these verses makes it possible to assess in the days of which kings these prophets were active. Not so with Ezekiel. The date with him is the number of the exile. The first date appears in chapter 2:1: "On the fifth of the month is the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's exile." The last date appears in chapter M. 31: "In the twenty-fifth year of our exile on Rosh Hashanah in the tenth of the month in the fourteenth year after which the city was struck." In the book of Jeremiah, chapter Nev 27, it is said that "...in the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's exile, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth of the month, in the year of his reign, Oel of Merodach, king of Babylon, carried the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and brought him out of the prison." Confirmation of this action by Marodach appears in XNUMX Kings XNUMX:XNUMX: "And it was thirty-seven years since Jehoiachin, king of Judah, was in exile, and in the twelfth month, in the twenty-seventh of the month, in the year of his reign, Marodach, king of Babylon, carried the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of the prison." Although there is a difference regarding the day of the mentioned month, but for the purpose of the matter it can be ignored.
Ezekiel is said to have been the son of Buzi the priest. Which means he was from the elite of the people. Since there is no reference from the scriptures to further prophecies of Ezekiel after the twenty-fifth year of exile, it is possible that he did not live longer than that. If this was indeed the case, it means that Ezekiel was from the generation of exiles in Babylon. He was among those exiled from the country with the conquest of Jerusalem.
In several chapters there is a reference to his meetings with the dignitaries of the people. In chapter 1:1 it is said: "And it came to pass in the sixth year, on the sixth day of the month, on the fifth day of the month, I am sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah are sitting before me, and the Spirit of the Lord Jehovah will fall upon me." In chapter 1 it is said: "And men of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me." In chapter 1 2 it is said: "And it will be in the seventh year on the fifth of the tenth of the month, men of the elders of Israel came to demand of Jehovah and sat before me." Another type of people he met with were the false prophets. In chapter 9 1-3 it is said: "And the word of Jehovah came to me saying: Son of man prophesy to the prophets of Israel who prophesy and you said to my prophets from their hearts hear the word of Jehovah" and in chapter XNUMX it is said: "And the prophet because he was beautiful and spoke a word I Jehovah tempted the prophet and bent my hand on him and destroyed him from People of Israel". In chapter XNUMX XNUMX, he refers to two specific people, Azania ben Ezer and Pletihu ben Benyahu, the ministers of the people, "in their thoughts is wickedness and the counselors are evil counsel in this city" (verse XNUMX). One gets the impression that Ezekiel was in close contact with this layer of the people whose people he knew even before the destruction of Jerusalem.
We can learn about his high status from the fact that the elders of the people in the cases mentioned in the book, come to him and chapter 21-22 in which it is stated that a refugee from Jerusalem came to him and told him that the city had been beaten. That refugee found it appropriate to go all the way to meet with the prophet and not with anyone else and report to him what happened. It seems that Ezekiel was the spiritual leader of the exile community in Babylon and that he served as a link between it and the authorities. This assumption can be explained by the fact that the king of Babylon showed a warm attitude towards Jehoiachin and released him from prison, but without any political rights. Since he still needed some kind of connection with the exiles of Israel, it was convenient for him to use the services of a spiritual leader and the solution he found was the prophet Ezekiel, who apparently did not have any far-reaching personal ambitions and therefore would not have been a political threat.
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