Ezekiel was one of the priests of Jerusalem who was carried off to Babylonia with King Jehoiachin in the deportation of 597 B.C. Those who were thus deported were the upper classes, including, of course, the royal family and the court and the aristocracy of the priesthood, and skilled artisans, particularly the smiths (armorers). Having thus removed the natural leaders of the rebellious people, Nebuchadnezzar made Zedekiah, an uncle of Jehoiachin, king in his stead and gave Judah another trial. The eight or ten thousand Jews with their families who were removed to Babylonia were colonized at different points, Ezekiel repeatedly mentions the river Chebar, that is, probably, the grand canal in the vicinity of Nippur. The patricians in exile thought very poorly of the new lords who had stepped into their shoes in Jerusalem, and they flattered themselves that events would soon take such a turn that they would return to Judæa and to power. They had prophets and diviners among them who encouraged them in this expectation. When Zedekiah revolted and the Babylonian armies a second time besieged Jerusalem, their faith in the inviolability of Zion, confirmed, rather than shaken, by the outcome of things in 597 B.C., when Jehoiachin surrendered and the holy city took no harm, made them refuse hearing to Ezekiel's prediction of ruin; they may even have dreamed that Nebuchadnezzar would find out his mistake and restore to Judah its legitimate rulers, chastened by experience, and pack Zedekiah and his advisers into exile in their place. Against this vain and superstitious optimism Ezekiel had to contend until the disastrous issue made a rude end of all their dreams and threw the exiles into the depths of hopelessness: Bel had triumphed over Jehovah, and it was all over with the nation. Thenceforth Ezekiel's task was to save them from despair by the assurance that God still had a purpose to fulfil with them, and that, in his own time, when they had been thoroughly purged from their old sins and filled with a new spirit, he would restore them to their own land and bring to life again the dead nation. These two periods of the prophet's mission sharply divide the Book of Ezekiel. To the day when the word came to him that the Babylonian armies had invested Jerusalem (Ezek. 24) he combats delusion; from the arrival of the tidings of the fall of the city (xxxiii. 21 ff.) he combats despair. The first part is all menace, the second is full of promise. Numerous dated oracles serve as landmarks, especially in the first part.