The structure of this book is peculiar.  Its five chapters constitute five poetical compositions, each complete in itself so far as outward form is concerned, but the whole inwardly bound together as parts of one great theme.  The first and second chapters consist each of twenty-two verses, arranged in the order of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; that is, the first verse beginning with the first letter, the second with the second, and so on.  Each of the verses, moreover, contains as a rule three clauses.  The third chapter contains sixty-six short verses of one clause each, the first three beginning with the first letter of the alphabet, the next three with the second, and so throughout.  In this central chapter, therefore, the alphabetic structure reaches its culmination.  The fourth chapter is like the first and second, with the exception that the verses generally consist of two clauses each.  The fifth chapter contains twenty-two short verses of one clause each, like those of the third, but not arranged alphabetically.

The more artificial structure of the third chapter marks it at once as peculiar.  In this the prophet, as the representative of the pious part of the nation, bewails the calamities that have come upon himself and his country, expresses his firm confidence in God and his purpose to wait for deliverance in patient submission to his will, exhorts his countrymen to repentance, and offers up his fervent prayer to God that he would remember his suffering people and punish their persecutors.  The fifth chapter is a complaint of Zion in prayer to God in view of the terrible calamities that have come upon her.  The other three chapters (the first, second, and fourth) are occupied mainly with a description of these calamities.

III.  EZEKIEL.

15.  Ezekiel was especially the prophet of the captivity.  Daniel, his contemporary, received in Babylon glorious revelations respecting the future history of God’s kingdom; but he was a statesman, exercising the prophetical office, like David, only in an incidental way.  Ezekiel, on the contrary, was expressly called and consecrated, like his predecessors Isaiah and Jeremiah, to the prophetical office.  Like Isaiah, he has given us but few particulars concerning his personal history.  He was the son of Buzi, and of priestly descent (1:3); belonged to that company of captives of the better class of the people who had been carried away with Jehoiachin by the king of Babylon when he made Zedekiah king in his stead (2 Kings 24:8-16); and lived with other captives at Tell-abib on the Chebar (perhaps the ancient Chaboras, a branch of the Euphrates), where he had a house and was married (1:1-3; 3:15; 8:1; 24:15-18).  That he was held in high honor by his fellow-captives, as a true prophet of God, is manifest from the manner in which they assembled at his house to inquire of the Lord through