III.
The division between this and the preceding chapter is unfortunate; both should be read as one continuous passage. What is symbolically described in the last verses of Ezekiel 2 and the first of Ezekiel 3 is expressed plainly in Ezekiel 3:10-11.
EXCURSUS A (at end of Ezekiel 3): ON THE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE AND SYMBOLICAL ACTIONS OF EZEKIEL.
At this point, when the prophet has been fully commissioned for his work, and his actual prophecies begin, it may be well to consider their general character, especially as the very next chapter brings us at once into the midst of symbolical action. That much of Ezekiel’s language is figurative, and that some of the actions he records were done in vision only, it is impossible to doubt. Thus, for example, in Ezekiel 24:6 the prophet is told to “bring it (the city) out piece by piece,” and then to set it upon the coals (Ezekiel 3:11), which of course could only have been done mentally or symbolically, and that it was the former is plain from Ezekiel 3:3. In Ezekiel 21:19, the appointing of two ways, from which the king of Babylon was to choose, could not have been literally done; and there are many like passages, in which it is plain that the prophet has merely expressed in concrete figures (thus giving them vividness and force) the ideas he wished to convey. On the other hand, there are passages in which a symbolical use is made of events and acts which are evidently to be taken in a literal sense. Thus in Ezekiel 24:16-24, it would be impossible to understand the sudden death of Ezekiel’s wife and the prohibition of mourning for her as otherwise than strictly literal, and yet he is directed to make important symbolical use of them. What has been said of actions applies equally to prophecies. There is in them also the same mingling of the literal and the symbolical, the same intense disposition to embody every thought in some concrete form.
How then, it may be asked, is the literal to be distinguished from the figurative, whether in language or in act? It may not always be possible to do so in regard to every detail; to be absolutely certain whether the binding of Ezekiel 3:25, for instance, was only a figurative expression or a symbolical act, although, in this case, we believe the former to be the true explanation. But the details of the application are comparatively unimportant; and sometimes there may well be a difference of opinion in regard to them. The literal and the figurative blend together, and pass the one into the other, in the prophet’s teaching of these spiritual infants, as children often carry on their tales partly by sensible images and partly by pure imagination. In fact, this is often a necessity in the teaching of things which lie partly above human comprehension, as may be seen, for instance, in our Lord’s description of the end of the world, and in many other passages. No serious harm can come of occasionally understanding literally that which was meant figuratively, provided it contains no internal marks of its figurative character. In the chapter which immediately follows there has always been a difference of opinion whether the prophet actually performed the symbolic actions recorded, or whether they were only mentally done, and then related. The latter seems almost the necessary interpretation, for several reasons: the mere lying upon one side for 390 days, so bound that he could not move, if not an impossibility, is extremely unlikely; it is also inconsistent with the command for the preparation of his food during the same time; the amount of food allowed, though sufficient to sustain life, would have led to great emaciation; the preparation of the food itself would have been, in the eyes of the law, abominable; and although this is very effective as a vision, it would have been exceedingly strange as a reality; the tile seems quite insufficient in size for all the uses to which it is put; and, finally, the time of 430 days in all is scarcely possible. From the fifth day of the fourth month in the fifth year (Ezekiel 1:1-2), to the fifth day of the sixth month of the sixth year (Ezekiel 8:1), according to the length of either the Jewish or Chaldean year, would have been 420 days only, and at least eight days of this had already passed. There is, then, too little time by eighteen days, and even if we were to suppose that this was the year for an intercalary month (of which there is no evidence), it would yet leave but twelve intervening days for the two important prophecies of Ezekiel 6:7. Still there has been a difference of opinion here, and it is not of much consequence in itself. The important point is to recognise the general habit of the prophet’s mind; for there can be no satisfactory interpretation of his writings without a full appreciation of his readiness to clothe his thoughts in concrete forms, whether those forms were sensible realities or only the creations of his own mind.