Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

Today we jumped into the book of The Major Prophet Ezekiel.

It's 48 chapters long.

Ezekiel was exiled to Babylon in the first round of deportation which happened in 597 BC.

He begins by prophesying a few years later in 593 BC.

Jerusalem doesn't fall until 586 BC, which is still seven years away when he starts prophesying.

Ezekiel was from the line of priests, and priests begin their service when they turn 30.

But when Ezekiel turns 30, he's in exile, far away from the temple in Jerusalem.

So instead of serving as a priest, God calls him to serve as a prophet.

Knowing he would task Ezekiel with writing this book, I'm grateful for the unique personality traits

God gave him. We probably all have a friend who's like Ezekiel in some ways.

He's like the friend who corrects you when you say it took us half an hour to get here,

by saying, actually, it was only 25 minutes and that includes stopping for gas.

Compared to the other prophets, he goes the extra mile to give us very specific details.

And even when he has a hard time coming up with concrete descriptions for things he's seeing,

he does his best to give helpful comparisons. Despite all his details and metaphors,

he doesn't get lost in the weeds. He continually reminds the reader of the main point.

In fact, one of the most common phrases in the book is, then they will know that I am the Lord.

Ezekiel reminds us that God's plans revolve around getting his people to know him.

Chapter 1 opens with Ezekiel's first vision as a prophet. Before we talk about the vision,

we need to know that anytime he says things like, they had the appearance of, or the likeness of,

he's basically letting us know that this is his closest approximation to what he saw.

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