Never had a prophet been more necessary. The people left behind in the land were thoroughly depraved, xxxiii. 25ff., the exiles were not much better, xiv. 3ff.--they are a rebellious house, ii. 6; and even worse than they are the exiles who came with the second deportation in 586, xiv. 22. Idolatry of many kinds had been practised (viii.); and now that the penalty was being paid in exile, the people were helpless, xxxvii. 11. For six years and a half--till the city fell--Ezekiel's ministry was one of reproof; after that, of consolation. The prophet becomes a pastor. His ministry lasted at least twenty-two years, the last dated prophecy being in 570 (xxix. 17); for thirteen years before the writing of chs. xl.-xlviii. in 572 B.C. there is no dated prophecy, xxxii. 1, 17, so that this sketch of ecclesiastical organization, pathetic as embodying an old man's hope for the future, stands among his most mature and deliberate work. His absolute candour is strikingly shown by his refusal to cancel his original prophecy of the capture of Tyre by Nebuchadrezzar, xxvi. 7, 8, which had not been fulfilled; he simply appends another oracle and allows the two to stand side by side, xxix. 17-20. It is obvious that in Ezekiel prophecy has travelled far from the methods, expressions and hopes that had characterized it in the days of Amos and Isaiah, or even of Ezekiel's immediate predecessor and contemporary, Jeremiah. In these books there are visions, such as those of Amos, vii. 1, viii. 1, ix. 1, and symbolic acts like that of Isaiah, xx. 2, walking barefoot; but there such things are only occasional, here they abound. Their interpretation, too, is beset by much uncertainty. Some maintain that the symbolic actions, unless when they are obviously impossible, were really performed; others regard them simply as part of the imaginative mechanism of the book. The dumbness, e.g., with which Ezekiel was afflicted for a period, iii. 26, xxiv. 27, xxxiii. 22, and which has been interpreted as "a sense of restraint and defeat," may very well have been real, and connected, as has been recently supposed, with certain pathological conditions; but it is hardly to be believed that he lay on one side for 190 days[1] (iv. 5). Again, though the curious action representing the threefold fate of the inhabitants of the city in ch. v. is somewhat grotesque, it is not absolutely impossible; but it is difficult to see how the command to eat bread and drink water "with trembling" can be taken literally, xii. 18. As the first symbolic action in the book--the eating of the roll, iii. 1-3--must be interpreted figuratively, it would seem not unfair to apply this principle to all such actions. It is even applied by Reuss to the very circumstantial story of the death of the prophet's wife, xxiv. 15ff., which he characterizes as an "easily deciphered hieroglyph." [Footnote 1: So the Septuagint.]