This was no isolated revelation or dream. The very name which the prophet thenceforth bore, the name by which he was to know himself, depended upon it. "Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak unto thee," were the first words which he heard after he fell upon his face. That great title is bestowed upon him through all the time in which he was prophesying. It was in many ways more suitable to him than to those who had gone before him. There was now no Hezekiah or Josiah to represent the Divine king. The witnesses for the kingdom seemed to be at an end. Nebuchadnezzar was the lord of the earth. At such a time the natural position of the Jewish seer became a human position. The Israelite's glory was to be a "Son of man." Yet he was not absolved from any of the obligations of the older prophets; he was not to expect a more willing or attentive audience among captives than they had found at home; briars, thorns would be with him; he must dwell among scorpions. Lamentations and mourning and woe filled his roll as much as that which Baruch wrote out for Jeremiah. And he must eat this roll; it must become a part of his very soul; its words must come forth living and burning out of himself. He must understand, besides, all the fearful responsibilities of the prophet. He was to speak whether the men about him would hear or whether they would forbear. There were times when his tongue would cleave to the roof of his mouth, when he should be dumb and should not be to them a reprover. But when God opened his lips, the blood of those to whom he was sent was upon him; it would be required at his hands if they died in their iniquity and he had not warned them. He must submit to do all symbolical acts, however strange and fantastical they might seem in themselves, which might bring the feeling of coming judgments home to a sense-bound people. He must act a mimic siege, he must eat defiled bread; he must cut off his hair and weigh it in balances, if so the people could be made to understand,--in spite of their false prophets who spoke of coming peace and enacted their signs, which of course involved no discomfort or humiliation to themselves,--that the city would really be destroyed and the sanctuary laid waste. He was to persuade his brother captives that they were a remnant in which the nation still lived, a stock out of which it should hereafter grow and flourish, even tho they were most rebellious, dreaming of good things which would never come, not waiting for that good which God had designed for them. There was to be the same end in all the punishments which were coming upon the land and in all its deliverances. God was saying in all "I am the Lord."