Chapter XIV. Final Oracles Against Jerusalem. Chapters xxii., xxiv. The close of the first period of Ezekiel’s work was marked by two dramatic incidents, which made the day memorable both in the private life of the prophet and in the history of the nation. In the first place it coincided exactly with the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. The prophet’s mysterious knowledge of what was happening at a distance was duly recorded, in order that its subsequent confirmation through the ordinary channels of intelligence might prove the divine origin of his message (ch. xxiv. 1, 2). That Ezekiel actually did this we have no reason to doubt. Then the sudden death of his wife on the evening of the same day, and his unusual behaviour under the bereavement, caused a sensation among the exiles which the prophet was instructed to utilise as a means of driving home the appeal just made to them. These transactions must have had a profound effect on Ezekiel’s fellow‐captives. They made his personality the centre of absorbing interest to the Jews in Babylon; and the two years of silence on his part which ensued were to them years of anxious foreboding about the result of the siege. At this juncture the prophet’s thoughts naturally are occupied with the subject which hitherto formed the principal burden of his prophecy. The first part of his career accordingly closes, as it had begun, with a symbol of the fall of Jerusalem. Before this, however, he had drawn out the solemn indictment against Jerusalem which is given in ch. xxii., although the finishing touches were probably added after the destruction of the city. The substance of that chapter is so closely related to the symbolic representation in the first part of ch. xxiv. that it will be convenient to consider it here as an introduction to the concluding oracles addressed more directly to the exiles of Tel‐abib. I The purpose of this arraignment—the most stately of Ezekiel’s orations—is to exhibit Jerusalem in her true character as a city whose social condition is incurably corrupt. It begins with an enumeration of the prevalent sins of the capital (vv. 2‐16); it ends with a denunciation of the various classes into which society was divided (vv. 23‐31); while the short intervening passage is a figurative description of the judgment which is now inevitable (vv. 17‐22).