VI.  The Divine Shepherd.  In the thirty-fourth chapter Ezekiel deals with the same theme under a different figure.  First he traces the cause of the exile to the inefficiency and greed and oppression of the earlier shepherds, the rulers like Jehoiakim, who had scattered rather than gathered and led the people intrusted to them.  Now Jehovah himself, the great Shepherd of the People, will arise and gather his flock, and lead them back to their home and give them a rich pasture.  Over them he will appoint a descendant of David, but this prince shall be shorn of his ancient kingly power.

Ezekiel also presents in his characteristic, symbolic form the promise that Jehovah will now fulfil the popular hopes and destroy the wicked foes who have preyed upon his people, and thus vindicate his divine rulership of the world.  In one passage Judah’s worst foes, the Edomites, represent aggressive heathendom.  Again, in a still more impressive picture, suggested by an experience in his own childhood when the dread Scythians swept down from the north, he portrays the advance of the mysterious foes from the distant north under the leadership of Gog (38, 39).  When they are already in the land of Palestine, the prophet declares, Jehovah will terrify them with an earthquake, so that in panic they shall slay each other, as did the Midianites in the days of Gideon, until they shall all fall victims of Jehovah’s judgment.  Ezekiel thus revived in the changed conditions of the exile that popular conception of the day of Jehovah which the earlier prophets had refused to countenance.  It was the prophet’s graphic way of declaring that Jehovah would prepare the way for the return of his people, if they would but respond when the opportune moment should arrive.  Later Judaism, however, and especially the apocalyptic writers, interpreted literally and developed still further this picture of Jehovah’s great judgment day until it became a prominent teaching of later Jewish and Christian thought.

Similarly Ezekiel declared that the barren lands of Judah would be miraculously transformed and rendered capable of supporting the great numbers of the exiles who should return.  In this respect Ezekiel became the father of the later priestly school to which belongs the author of the book of Chronicles, in whose thought the events of Israel’s history came to pass, not through man’s earnest effort and in accordance with the established laws of the universe, but through special divine interposition.  It is difficult to determine whether Ezekiel himself was simply endeavoring to state dramatically that Jehovah would fully anticipate the needs of his people, or whether he did actually anticipate a series of prodigious miracles.