The place where we find Ezekiel is the river Chebar. This river is now known by the name _Kabour_. It emptied into the Euphrates north of Babylon and was also called _Nar-Kabari_, the great canal. Here Nebuchadnezzar had started a colony of captives. In chapter iii:15, the name of the place is given, it was at Tel-abib. In this settlement the prophet seems to have lived. Two passages in the book tell us that he had his own house (iii:24; viii:1). We also know that he was married (xxiv:16-18). The death of his wife is the only event he mentions of his personal history and that would probably have not been recorded if it were not connected with his prophetic office. The prophecies he uttered among the captives are carefully dated. The first date is found in chapter i:1-2. He began his prophetic office on the fifth day of the fourth month (Tammuz) in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captivity. The latest date is recorded in chapter xxix:17. Here we have the twenty-seventh year, so that the prophecies of Ezekiel cover a period of about twenty-two years. Ezekiel's great prophetic ministry is closely connected with that of Jeremiah. When Ezekiel had his first great vision on the banks of the river Chebar, Jeremiah had already been a prophet for thirty-five years. Only a few years more remained for this great man of God. That Ezekiel must have been acquainted with Jeremiah and his messages of warning and exhortation is more than likely. Yet it is strange there is not a single reference to Jeremiah in the entire book of Ezekiel. It is strange in view of the fact that the messages of these two men have so much in common. Critics make the assertion that Ezekiel as a prophet was moulded by the teaching of Jeremiah. Kuenen claims that Ezekiel must have been for many years the close student of Jeremiah's writings. Before Ezekiel proceeded to write his own prophecies, his mind, it is claimed, had become so saturated with the ideas and language of Jeremiah that every part of his book betrays the influence of his predecessor. This view would make Ezekiel an enthusiastic admirer and copyist of Jeremiah. But in the book of Ezekiel the phrases "Thus saith the Lord God"--"The Word of the Lord came unto me"--occur over and over again. The words he spoke, the mighty messages he delivered, were not produced by the influence of Jeremiah nor by his example, but by the Spirit of God. Other critics have even done greater dishonor to this chosen instrument of the Lord and to the Word he preached. We quote from _The New Century Bible_: "It would appear that there runs through all the prophet's activities, at least in the earlier period, a strain of mental abnormality--perhaps of actual malady. By some writers this has been supposed to be a form of catalepsy. Probably Ezekiel was no more a cataleptic than Paul; with equal probability he was what would now be called a 'psychical subject,' and as such liable to trances--and perhaps