LIFE-STUDY OF EZEKIEL
Read and pray: “Now Jesus Himself, when He began His ministry, was about thirty years old, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Heli” (Luke 3:23)
AN EXTRAORDINARY INTRODUCTION
Each book of the Bible begins in a unique way. For example, Genesis begins like this: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Matthew and John begin in a very different way. Matthew 1:1 says: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” John 1:1 says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The book of Ezekiel also begins in a very peculiar way. The first three verses of Ezekiel are a special, specific, extraordinary introduction to this book. Ezekiel 1:1-3 says: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month, which was in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, the word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.”
In this introduction four main things are covered. First, this is a book of visions, and these introductory verses show us the year, the month, and the day when Ezekiel began to see the visions. Second, these verses show us the place where he saw the visions. Third, here we have a word concerning the man, the person, who saw the visions. Fourth, in this introduction we see the conditions for seeing the visions.
THE DATE OF THE VISIONS
Regarding the introduction of Ezekiel, the first thing we need to consider is the date, with the year, the month, and the day.
The Thirtieth Year
The year was the thirtieth year. This refers to Ezekiel’s age. At that time Ezekiel was thirty years old. According to Numbers 4:2-3 and 1 Chronicles 23:3, a priest, a Levite, began to serve the Lord at the age of thirty. The Lord Jesus also began to serve God in His ministry at the divinely legal age of thirty (Luke 3:23).
As a priest who had reached the age of thirty, Ezekiel was qualified to begin his priestly ministry. Here we have the principle that to understand spiritual things and to see the heavenly visions, we need maturity in life. The age of thirty signifies maturity.
At the time the priests reached the age of thirty, they were considered mature. Therefore, the phrase in the thirtieth year indicates that Ezekiel, being thirty years old, was mature. This indicates that if we want to see the visions in the book of Ezekiel, we must have maturity in life.
Christians today have difficulty understanding this book because most of them do not have maturity in the divine life. Spiritually speaking, not many Christians have reached the age of thirty; therefore, it is difficult for them to understand the visions in this book.
In Ezekiel 40 through 48, the portion of this book that is devoted to God’s building, the number thirty is used for three kinds of things. The outer court of God’s temple in 46:22 has four corners, each of which has a width of thirty cubits. These four corners are the places for the priests to prepare the offerings for the people to eat and enjoy.
According to verse 40:17, in the outer court of the temple there are thirty chambers. When the people gather to worship God, they can enjoy the rich offerings in these thirty chambers. Ezekiel 41:6 mentions another thirty side chambers. These chambers are around the temple on three sides, on each of the three stories. On each story there are thirty side chambers. All these side chambers indicate the fullness of the temple.
When we put these verses together, we can see that thirty is a number related to preparing Christ, ministering Christ to others, enjoying the riches of Christ, and expressing the fullness of Christ. Thus, in the Bible the number thirty signifies the maturity in life to prepare Christ for others, for us ourselves to enjoy Christ, and to express Christ in all His fullness.
When Ezekiel saw the visions recorded in this book, he was thirty years old. He was a mature person, able to prepare Christ and minister Christ for the enjoyment of others, and also able to enjoy the riches of Christ Himself and to express Christ in all His fullness.
The number thirty was not only significant for Ezekiel, but it is also significant for us as believers in Christ today. Just as Ezekiel had to be mature in order to serve as a priest, see the visions, prepare Christ as the offerings for the enjoyment of others, enjoy the riches of Christ, and express the fullness of Christ, so we also need to mature in our spiritual life so that we may see the visions concerning Christ and His Body, prepare Christ for the enjoyment of others, and enjoy all the riches of Christ to become the fullness of Christ as His expression.
In the book of Ezekiel, the number thirty is formed in two ways: five multiplied by six and three multiplied by ten. It is constituted mainly of three times ten. In the Bible the number ten, which is the complete number of a man, is composed of two fives, of five times two. Consider, for example, the ten virgins in Matthew 25. Five virgins were prudent and five were foolish.
Here we see that the ten virgins were divided into two groups of five. With the Ten Commandments, there were five commandments on one tablet and five on the second. The Ten Commandments, therefore, were also divided into two groups of five. The number five signifies the responsibility that we can bear because God has been added to us.
Four is the number of the creature, and one is the number of the Creator. When the Creator is added to the creature, the creature is able to bear responsibility. The number two is the number of testimony, union, and balance. When the Lord Jesus sent out the disciples, He sent them two by two.
The number ten, composed of two fives, signifies that as creatures we have God added to us so that we may be able to bear responsibility. This indicates that we are graced to sustain responsibility before God in the form of testimony, union, and balance.
As shown in the following chapters, this responsibility occurs in three levels, or stages, signifying the three persons of the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Three is the number of the Triune God, and thirty signifies the threefold nature of God being in man.
Thirty is therefore an important number, signifying man with the Triune God in him bearing responsibility in a complete way. From all this we can see that in Ezekiel the number thirty indicates that the creatures have the Triune God added to them so that they may bear responsibility in the Triune God.
This is maturity in life, which we need in order to prepare Christ for the enjoyment of others, that we ourselves may enjoy Christ in a full way and express Him as His fullness. Only by having this kind of maturity will we be able to see the visions in the book of Ezekiel.
The Fifth Year
Ezekiel goes on to speak of the fifth year. Considering that the thirtieth year was counted from the year of his birth, the fifth year was counted from the year of the captivity. Why did the visions come in the fifth year of the captivity and not earlier? The visions did not come earlier because the people were not ready and Ezekiel himself, who was less than thirty years old, was also not ready. This indicates that to see the visions recorded in Ezekiel requires that we ourselves be prepared.
Ezekiel was thirty years old when he saw the visions; however, in the year of the captivity he was only twenty-five. Numbers 4:2-3 tells us that the priests began their ministry at the age of thirty, but Numbers 8:24 says that the Levites began to serve at the age of twenty-five.
The reason for the difference here is that the priests needed five years of apprenticeship. They could not enter the priestly service immediately. Instead, they needed to be trained and disciplined for five years. At the beginning of the captivity, Ezekiel was a novice priest, an apprentice. He did not yet have the maturity necessary to see the visions.
This indicates that in spiritual matters maturity is required. Because of a lack of maturity, some among us cannot see the visions that the Lord intends to show us from this book. We cannot see certain spiritual matters when we are young. Therefore, we need to seek the Lord that He would grant us maturity in life so that we may see, accept, receive, and take possession of all spiritual things.
The fact that the visions came in the fifth year indicates that not only Ezekiel but also the people had been prepared. The number five signifies that man is graced by God to bear responsibility toward God. Even though God’s people were in captivity, they still had some grace; therefore, when the time came, they could bear responsibility before God.
The “fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity” indicates that the time had come for the people of Israel to assume responsibility toward God. When this captivity began, Ezekiel began his office as a priest. Even in captivity, God gave him the grace that he might learn the office of a priest.
At the time of the fifth year, both Ezekiel and the people were ready. On the one hand, Ezekiel, having reached the age of thirty, could officially minister as a priest before God. On the other hand, the people could now bear their responsibility, and God came to speak to them concerning this.
Before parents can speak to a child concerning a certain responsibility, the child must have the proper age to receive such speaking. A child must reach a certain age before his parents can ask him to bear a certain responsibility.
The situation is similar with God’s speaking in the book of Ezekiel. God did not speak until the fifth year of his captivity. Before Ezekiel reached the age of thirty, God did not give him the responsibility to speak for Him. In the same way, before the fifth year of the captivity, the people had not received enough grace to bear the responsibility about which God would speak to them.
However, at the time of the fifth year, the people had enough grace, and Ezekiel had learned enough and could now bear the responsibility of speaking for God. Thus, in the fifth year God wanted Ezekiel to bear the responsibility of speaking to the people of Israel, and He wanted Israel to bear the responsibility of hearing His words.
We cannot speak about the things in the book of Ezekiel to those who have just been saved, because they cannot understand them. However, when someone reaches the “fifth year” of his salvation, God may want to speak to such a one in a particular way. In the same way, as one who speaks for God, I could not speak these things until I had reached my “thirtieth year.”
Now that I have reached my “thirtieth year” and others have reached their “fifth year,” I am able to speak to them concerning the visions of Ezekiel, and they are able to receive this speaking. Both the one who speaks and those who hear must bear their responsibility before God.
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