The more artificial structure of the third chapter marks it at once as peculiar. In this the prophet, as the representative of the pious part of the nation, bewails the calamities that have come upon himself and his country, expresses his firm confidence in God and his purpose to wait for deliverance in patient submission to his will, exhorts his countrymen to repentance, and offers up his fervent prayer to God that he would remember his suffering people and punish their persecutors. The fifth chapter is a complaint of Zion in prayer to God in view of the terrible calamities that have come upon her. The other three chapters (the first, second, and fourth) are occupied mainly with a description of these calamities. III. EZEKIEL. 15. Ezekiel was especially the prophet of the captivity. Daniel, his contemporary, received in Babylon glorious revelations respecting the future history of God's kingdom; but he was a statesman, exercising the prophetical office, like David, only in an incidental way. Ezekiel, on the contrary, was expressly called and consecrated, like his predecessors Isaiah and Jeremiah, to the prophetical office. Like Isaiah, he has given us but few particulars concerning his personal history. He was the son of Buzi, and of priestly descent (1:3); belonged to that company of captives of the better class of the people who had been carried away with Jehoiachin by the king of Babylon when he made Zedekiah king in his stead (2 Kings 24:8-16); and lived with other captives at Tell-abib on the Chebar (perhaps the ancient Chaboras, a branch of the Euphrates), where he had a house and was married (1:1-3; 3:15; 8:1; 24:15-18). That he was held in high honor by his fellow-captives, as a true prophet of God, is manifest from the manner in which they assembled at his house to inquire of the Lord through him (8:1; 14:1; 20:1). Of his personal standing and reputation, as well as of the character of his hearers, we have an interesting notice in chap. 33:30-32, where instead of "talking against thee" (verse 30) we may better render, as in the margin of our English version, "talking of thee:" "Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people are still talking of thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not." Ezekiel was called to the prophetical office "in the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity" (1:2), from which date he constantly reckons.