Ezekiel 33:22

Now the hand of the LORD was upon me in the evening, afore he that was escaped came; and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(22) Was upon me.—The sentence becomes clearer by translating this in the pluperf.: The hand of the Lord had been (already) upon me.

Benson Commentary

Ezekiel 33:22. Now the hand of the Lord was upon me in the evening — I felt a sensible impulse of the prophetic spirit: see Ezekiel 1:3. And had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning — Had so influenced my mind, that I found myself disposed and prepared to speak freely and with authority. Not that he had been utterly dumb before: for he had probably “been able to converse with the Jews concerning the predictions formerly delivered to them, and perhaps spake, or delivered in writing to them, the prophecies which he uttered concerning other nations; but he had received no further revelation from God respecting their affairs: in this sense he had been dumb.” — Scott. But now the Spirit moved him to speak, and continued so to do till the messenger came, whose information concerning the taking and burning of Jerusalem, which had been repeatedly and clearly foretold by the prophet, would give an indisputable authority and credit to all his predictions, and prepare the people’s minds to receive, with faith and a due regard, every future message which he was commissioned to deliver to them.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

33:21-29 Those are unteachable indeed, who do not learn their dependence upon God, when all creature-comforts fail. Many claim an interest in the peculiar blessings to true believers, while their conduct proves them enemies of God. They call this groundless presumption strong faith, when God's testimony declares them entitled to his threatenings, and nothing else.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Was upon me ... was opened - For was read "had been." The prophet was under the hand of God in ecstatic trance on the evening preceding the arrival of the messenger, and continued in this state until his arrival.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

22. in the evening—(see on [1075]Eze 33:2). Thus the capture of Jerusalem was known to Ezekiel by revelation before the messenger came.

my mouth … no more dumb—that is, to my countrymen; as foretold (Eze 24:27), He spake (Eze 33:2-20) in the evening before the tidings came.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The hand of the Lord was upon me; the powerful influence of the prophetic Spirit inspired me, and prepared me for what followed.

Had opened my mouth; not that the prophet was dumb through impotence and inability to speak, for he had prophesied against many nations, but he was forbidden to say any thing of the Jews, to threaten, warn, counsel, or command, Ezekiel 24:25-27 29:21; but now the Spirit moved me to speak, and continued his motion till the messenger came, and ever after, for God did not command him silence any more.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Now the hand of the Lord was upon me in the evening, afore he that was escaped came,.... The prophet felt a divine impulse on his mind; he was under the influence of a spirit of prophecy, and knew before the messenger came to him what his message was, and was prepared to receive it, and to prophesy upon it; for this is to be understood of prophecy, as the Targum,

"prophecy from before the Lord was with me in the evening (k);''

see Isaiah 8:11,

and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; the hand of the Lord, or the power of the Lord, had done it, as he promised he would, Ezekiel 3:27 so that he spoke freely and boldly, and continued to do so from the evening, to the time the messenger came to him in the morning, to all those that were with him:

and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb: as he had been for three years past; for though he had been prophesying against several nations, yet these prophecies were not delivered, it is very likely, by word of mouth, but by writing, and sent into those countries by proper messengers; but now the prophet's mouth is opened by the Spirit of God, as it was said it should, when this messenger should come to him, Ezekiel 24:27 and from this time he was not silent, but prophesied to his people, the Jews, verbally, as he was bid to do by the Lord.

(k) So R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 54. 2.

Geneva Study Bible

Now the {k} hand of the LORD was upon me in the evening, before he that had escaped came; and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; and my {l} mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb.

(k) I was endued with the Spirit of prophecy, Eze 3:22.

(l) By which is signified that the ministers of God cannot give them courage and open their mouths, Eze 24:27,29:21, Eph 6:19.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

22. Though the date is inserted here, it is probably to be understood as applicable to the whole chapter, for Ezekiel 33:1-2 the prophet is commanded to speak publicly to the children of his people. In the evening he felt the hand of the Lord upon him, he fell into an excitation. Thoughts such as those in Ezekiel 33:1-20 of the new Israel that God would create and of the conditions of belonging to it filled his mind. He was well aware that the city’s fall was inevitable, to him it was as good as fallen. And full of the new thoughts of the future he felt himself standing before his fellow exiles with an impulse strong upon him to speak to them of this future in the name of the Lord. In the morning the fugitives arrived with the confirmation of all his past predictions.

until he came to me] should come: against his coming, Exodus 7:15.

no more dumb] i.e. silent, Psalm 39:2; Isaiah 53:7.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 22. - Now the hand of the Lord. When the messenger arrived he found the prophet in a state of ecstasy. This was in the evening. In that prophetic ecstasy his mouth was opened, and the long silence broken, and though he had not heard the message with his outward ears, he had taken, as it were, that message as his text. It was not till his discourse was ended, and the morning came, that he himself heard the terrible tidings from the lips of the messenger. Then a change came over him. He was no more dumb. The long silence was broken. Had the silence lasted, we ask, from Ezekiel 3:26 onward? Had the whole intervening period been one of simply symbolic action, and of written but unspoken prophecies? The words at first suggest that conclusion; but it is traveled by the facts; by the commands of Ezekiel 12:10, 23; by the order to "prophesy" in Ezekiel 13:2; by the message to speak unto the elders in Ezekiel 14:4; by the question, "Doth he not speak parables?" of Ezekiel 20:49. I infer, therefore, that, though the silence had been dominant, it had not been unbroken. To some, at least, a message had been spoken. Others may have been allowed to read the written prophecies. The death of the prophet's wife tended, probably, to the continuance of the silence, and it seems a legitimate inference from Ezekiel 24:27 that it had continued from that date onward. Ezekiel 33:22

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Tidings of the Fall of Jerusalem, and the Consequences with Regard to the Prophet

Ezekiel 33:21. And it came to pass in the twelfth year, in the tenth (month), on the fifth of the month after our being taken captive, there came to me a fugitive from Jerusalem, and said, The city is smitten. Ezekiel 33:22. And the hand of Jehovah had come upon me in the evening before the arrival of the fugitive, and He opened my mouth, till he came to me in the morning; and so was my mouth opened, and I was silent no more. - In these verses the fulfilment of the promise made by God to the prophet in Ezekiel 24:25-27, after the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, is recorded. The chronological datum, as to the precise time at which the messenger arrived with the account of the destruction of Jerusalem, serves to mark with precision the point of time at which the obstacle was removed, and the prophet was able to speak and prophesy without restraint. - The fact that the tidings of the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place in the fifth month of the eleventh year, are said to have only reached the exiles in the tenth month of the twelfth year, that is to say, nearly a year and a half after it occurred, does not warrant our following the Syriac, as Doederlein and Hitzig have done, calling in question the correctness of the text and substituting the eleventh year for the twelfth. With the distance at which Ezekiel was living, namely, in northern Mesopotamia, and with the fearful confusion which followed the catastrophe, a year and a half might very easily pass by before a fugitive arrived with the information. But Hitzig's assertion, that Ezekiel would contradict himself, inasmuch as, according to Ezekiel 26:1-2, he received intelligence of the affair in the eleventh year, is founded upon a misinterpretation of the passage quoted. It is not stated there that Ezekiel received this information through a fugitive or any man whatever, but simply that God had revealed to him the fall of Jerusalem even before it occurred. לגלוּתינוּ, after our being led away (Ezekiel 33:21 and Ezekiel 40:1), coincides with לגלוּת המּלך in Ezekiel 1:2. הכּתה, smitten, i.e., conquered and destroyed, exterminated. In the clause 'ויד יהוה , the verb היתה is a pluperfect, and אלי stands for עלי, according to the later usage. The formula indicates the translation of the prophet into an ecstatic state (see the comm. on Ezekiel 1:3), in which his mouth was opened to speak, that is to say, the silence imposed upon him was taken away. The words, "till he came to me in the morning," etc., are not to be understood as signifying that the prophet's mouth had only been opened for the time from evening till morning; for this would be opposed to the following sentence. They simply affirm that the opening of the mouth took place before the arrival of the fugitive, the night before the morning of his arrival. ויּפּתח פּי, which follows, is an emphatic repetition, introduced as a link with which to connect the practically important statement that from that time forward he was not speechless any more. - It was in all probability shortly afterwards that Ezekiel was inspired with the word of God which follows in Ezekiel 33:23-33, as we may infer from the contents of the word itself, which laid the foundation for the prophet's further prophesying. But nothing can be gathered from Ezekiel 33:22 with regard to the time when this and the following words of God (as far as Ezekiel 39), of which no chronological data are given, were communicated to the prophet and uttered by him. His being "silent no more" by no means involves immediate or continuous speaking, but simply recalls the command to be speechless. There is no ground for the assumption that all these words of God were communicated to him in one night (Hvernick, Hengstenberg, and others), either in Ezekiel 33:22 or in the contents of these divine revelations.