Dublin, OH
Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
3:22-27 Inaugural Vision Reprise. This final piece of the complex vision sequence comes as something of an aftershock in the wake of the main event, with several direct parallels to the earlier vision.
3:22-23 Here the valley is the broad river valley of Mesopotamia, the same setting as the later vision of dry bones (37:1).
3:25-27 Ezekiel has already ingested the message (vv. 1-3) and absorbed the divine perspective (v. 14). His identification with the prophetic message is pushed even further, with his actions and words under direct divine control. Ezekiel will be mute until Jerusalem's fall (see 33:22). Such constraint raises the problem: how will he warn if he cannot speak? The solution: oracles of God will be divinely enabled--I will open your mouth. The concluding words are familiar, echoing the terms of the divine commission in 2:4, 7.
