In the VI century BCE, following the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians, the prophet Ezekiel faced one of the most difficult moments in Jewish history. Exiled to Babylon eleven years before Jerusalem’s fall, he witnessed his people transformed overnight from the elite of Judean society into agricultural laborers on the periphery of a major empire. “They could have easily abandoned God and assimilated,” says Dr. Ariel Kopilovitz, a faculty member in the Bible department at Bar-Ilan University. “But at this crucial moment Ezekiel delivered a message of hope.”
Kopilovitz explores how Ezekiel grappled with a theological crisis while navigating the difficulties of life as an exile. Through a close reading of his prophecies alongside ancient written and artistic sources, Kopilovitz’ lecture series at Beit Avi Chai examines both the prophet’s priestly heritage and the lived realities that shaped his prophetic vision.
“I always loved the priestly way of thinking and the priestly writings in the Pentateuch,” Kopilovitz explains. “It fascinated me that Ezekiel was both a prophet and a priest and I wanted a better understanding of how this functioned.” This dual identity shaped Ezekiel’s theological framework. “The priestly ideology had a clear view of God and what would make him dwell with his people in his Temple,” Kopilovitz notes. “Ezekiel explains the exile and destruction of the Temple in a special way.”
Punishing the Israelites for their sins
For Ezekiel, the Temple’s destruction wasn’t evidence of God’s weakness or the superiority of Babylonian deities. Instead, “Israel committed very grave abominations in the land, and the land and Temple were defiled, which forced God to leave that contaminated place. He’s punishing the Israelites for their sins.”
Ezekiel stands out as the first prophet to conduct his entire career in exile. Exiled in 597 BCE, he spent his prophetic ministry among the displaced Judahite community in Mesopotamia. “For the first time we see how a Judean author deals with these foreign cultural influences,” Kopilovitz says. This forced displacement shaped everything about his message.
The exiled community faced many challenges, which have been illuminated by recent archaeological finds. The Al-Yahudu tablets – cuneiform documents from southern Iraq – reveal the names, social structures, and economic activities of the first generation of Judean exiles, showing how they “managed to climb the social ladder, who they married, who they interacted with economically.”
The geographic and social displacement was severe. “We know they were resettled in the agricultural periphery of Babylon – like development towns,” Kopilovitz explains. “They didn’t need them in Manhattan, they needed them in South Dakota.” The irony was bitter. “Those who had been the elites suddenly became low-class farmers at the bottom of the social order.”
Imperial propaganda
Ezekiel couldn’t ignore the empire surrounding him. Every ancient empire broadcast its propaganda, and Babylon was no exception. Through royal inscriptions on palaces and monuments erected at major crossroads, the empire proclaimed its divine mandate. “The Empire delivers its message in order to create terror and to prevent the exiled minorities from rebelling or not cooperating,” Kopilovitz observes. “Ezekiel and his audience were exposed to this imperial propaganda and knew how the Babylonian kings depicted themselves and explained why they were fit to rule the world and had divine permission to conquer the nations.”
This propaganda posed a direct challenge to Judean faith. If Babylon’s gods had granted them dominion over all nations, what did that mean for the God of Israel? “Ezekiel reacted to this propaganda in his prophecies,” Kopilovitz says, “and explained how a Judean exile could continue to believe in his own God and hope for the Temple’s restoration.”
Exile as a necessary stage in redemption
But it wasn’t just imperial ideology that Ezekiel confronted. “The everyday experience of exile also impacted the prophet’s life and the way he perceived his role in history,” Kopilovitz notes. From this experience emerged one of Ezekiel’s most distinctive theological innovations: exile itself became a necessary stage in redemption. “If we now carry the heavy burden of exile we will also be repatriated to our homeland. The exile became a crucial point everyone needed to go through before returning.”
What makes Ezekiel’s restoration prophecies particularly significant is their systematic nature. While other prophets offered scattered oracles of hope, Ezekiel provided a comprehensive vision. “Not only some specific oracles here and there, but a general program that covers a lot of issues – leadership, covenant, the relationship between different parts of restored Israeli society. The breadth of his thinking is very impressive.”
His systematic approach mattered because the moment was so precarious. “The time period he prophesied in – just after the destruction of the First Temple – was a crucial moment in Israel’s history, because many people thought it was the end.” The exiles had good reason for despair. “Both because the Torah threatened them with exile if they violated the covenant, and because history taught that a nation that was exiled never recovered.” Previous civilizations – the Ammonites, Moabites, Phoenicians – had vanished after their conquest and displacement. The precedents were grim.
“They had very good reason to feel they were like dry bones,” Kopilovitz observes, invoking Ezekiel’s famous vision. “At this very moment Ezekiel says ‘no – God has other plans for you.’” The prophet’s message of restoration offered the exiled community both a theological explanation for their predicament and a concrete vision of return.
Social prophecy
Through his research, Kopilovitz has come to understand prophecy as fundamentally social. “The prophet who interacts with a group must supply a genuine and relevant message to his audience,” he explains, “otherwise they would not listen.”
This social dimension is crucial. “The audience wanted to hear God’s immediate plans for them, not the long-term plans. This is very crucial in our Jewish understanding of prophecy. It’s not eschatological but an interaction with an audience who is keen to hear god’s message and a prophet who supplies it.” Ezekiel couldn’t simply preach abstract theology; he had to engage with his community’s specific fears and lived experiences in Babylon.
Enabling the Jewish people’s survival
For modern readers, Ezekiel can sometimes seem forbidding. The book is long and complex, filled with bizarre visions and detailed ritual prescriptions. But Kopilovitz argues the effort is worthwhile precisely because of the historical moment it captures. “I think that he stood up at the most crucial moment in Israel’s history, when things could have gone either way. We could have ended up like the Ammonites or the Moabites or the Phoenicians.”
The long-term impact was profound. “Ezekiel is the one who enabled the Jewish community in Babylon to survive and be ready 70 years later to respond to Cyrus’ edict.” When the Persian king decreed that exiles could return, a community was prepared to respond – but only because they had maintained their identity through exile. “If nobody had encouraged them to maintain their identity and names and language and religion, they wouldn’t have waited that long.”
Looking back from his XXI century vantage point, Kopilovitz sees Ezekiel’s achievement clearly. “I think that the Jewish people owe Ezekiel a great debt for enabling their survival.”
For more, see Dr. Ariel Kopilovitz’s series “Study of Ezekiel’s Prophecies” (in Hebrew).
Main Photo: Ezekiel by Michelangelo\ Wikipedia
