Jeremiah's activity as a prophet continued not only through the eleven years of Zedekiah's reign, but for a considerable period afterwards; so that the two prophets were for some time contemporary, the one prophesying in Jerusalem and afterwards in Egypt, the other among the captives in Mesopotamia. The latest date which the prophecies of Ezekiel furnish is the twenty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's captivity, about twenty-two years from the time when he was called to his office. How much longer he prophesied we have no means of determining. The date with which the book of Ezekiel opens is "the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month," which was also "the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity" (verse 2), or five hundred and ninety-five years before Christ. Reckoning back from this date thirty years, we come to the eighteenth year of Josiah, when he repaired the temple, and solemnly renewed the worship of God; and also to the first year of Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, who made Babylon independent of the Assyrian monarchy, and thus established a new era. Some have assumed the former of these two eras as that from which the prophet reckons; but the latter is more probable. Writing, as he does, under the Chaldean monarchy, it is natural that he should give, at the outset, a date by which the chronology of the whole series of his prophecies may be determined in reference to Chaldean history. Elsewhere he dates from Jehoiachin's captivity.