Ezekiel 20:1 - Exposition

A new date is given, and includes what follows to Ezekiel 23:49 . The last note of time was in Ezekiel 8:1 , and eleven months and five days had passed, during which the prophecies of the intervening chapters had been written or spoken. We may note further that it was two years one month and five days after the prophet's call to his work ( Ezekiel 1:1-28 .), and two years and five months before the Chaldeans besieged Jerusalem ( Ezekiel 24:1 ). The immediate occasion here, as in Ezekiel 8:1 , was that some of the elders of Israel bad come to the prophet to inquire what message of the Lord he had to give them in the present crisis. Whether any stress is to be laid on the fact that here the elders are said to be "of Israel," and in Ezekiel 8:1 "of Judah," is doubtful (see note on Ezekiel 14:1 ). Ezekiel seems to use the two words as interchangeable. Here, however, it is stated more definitely that they came to inquire, probably in the hope that he would tell them, as other prophets were doing, that the time of their deliverance, and of that of Jerusalem, was at hand. Passing into the prophetic state, Ezekiel delivers the discourse that follows.