romise
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.

VII. Ezekiel's Plan of the Restored Temple. Ezekiel, being a true
prophet, fully realized that the fundamental question regarding the future
of his race was not whether they would be restored to their home but
whether or not they would guard against the mistakes and sins of the past
and live in accord with Jehovah's just demands. The solution of this
question which he proposes reveals h