Ezekiel Chapter 40 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 1-4. - The introduction to the vision. Verse 1. - In the five and twentieth year of our captivity; i.e. in B.C. 575, assuming Jehoiakin's deportation to have taken place B.C. 600, i.e. in the fiftieth year of the prophet's age, in the twenty-fifth of his prophetic calling, and in the fourteenth after the fall of Jerusalem. As the last note of time was the twelfth year (Ezekiel 32:17), it may be assumed the interval was largely occupied in receiving and delivering the prophecies that fall between those dates, though it is more than likely a period of silence preceded the vision of which this last section of the book preserves an account. If not the last of the prophet's utterances (see Ezekiel 29:17), it was beyond question the grandest and most momentous. Accordingly, the prophet notes with his customary exactness that the vision came to him in the beginning of the year, which Hitzig, whom Dr. Currey, in the 'Speaker's Commentary' follows, believes to have been a jubilee year, which began on the tenth day of the seventh month. As, however, the practice of commencing the year with this month was not introduced among the Jews till after the exile, and as Ezekiel everywhere follows the purely Mosaic arrangement of the year, the presumption is that the beginning of the year here alluded to was the month Abib, and that the tenth day of the month was the day on which the Torah enjoined the selection of a lamb for the Passover. Indeed, the two clauses in Ezekiel read like an abbreviation of the Mosaic statute (Exodus 12:2, 3) - a circumstance sufficiently striking and probably significant, though emphasis should not, with Hengstenberg, be laid upon the fact that every word in Ezekiel's copy is found in the Exodus original. On that day, which was the anniversary of the beginning of a merciful deliverance to Israel in Egypt, of the initial step in a gracious process of transforming Pharaoh's captives into a nation, - on that day (for emphasis the selfsame day, as in Ezekiel 24:2), the prophet's soul was rapt into an ecstasy (see on Ezekiel 1:3), in which he seemed to be transported thither, i.e. towards the smitten city, and a disclosure made to him concerning that new community which Jehovah was about to form out of old Israel.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(1) In the five and twentieth year.--It is the habit of Ezekiel in giving the year to make no mention of the era from which it was reckoned; but in a few important passages (Ezekiel 1:2; Ezekiel 12:21, and here) it is described as "of our captivity." This vision was seen "in the beginning of the year." The Jews always reckoned the month Abib, or Nisan, in which the Passover was celebrated, as the beginning of the year, according to the command given in Exodus 12:1, and the "tenth day" of that month was the day in which the preparations for the Passover began, and hence a most appropriate season for this vision of the Church of the future. Others consider that this was a Jubile year (for which there is no evidence); and since the Jubile began at the great fast of the Atonement, on the tenth day of the seventh month, it is thought that this is the day here intended. At a much later time the Jews sometimes reckoned the years from the Jubile, but there is nothing to show that this custom began so early. In either case the text distinctly says that it was fourteen years after the destruction of Jerusalem; a substantial period had, therefore, elapsed in which this great judgment would have produced its effect upon the minds of the exiles; there was thus now occasion for bringing before them the brighter hopes of the future.