Ezekiel, Ezekiel

This date is confirmed to some extent in that the author of the book of Ezekiel appears to use a dating system which was only used in the 500s BCE.

Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, is said to have been a descendant of Joshua by his marriage with the proselyte Rahab (Talmud Meg. 14b; Midrash Sifre, Num. 78). Some scholars claim that he (Ezekiel) was Jeremiah or the son of Jeremiah, who was (also) called "Buzi" because he was despised by the Jews. He was already active as a prophet while in Israel, and he retained this gift when he was exiled with Jehoiachin and the nobles of the country to Babylon (Josephus, Ant.

Rashi on Sanh. 92b, above). In the event Jeremiah and Ezekiel were indeed not the same person, Hilkiah the priest was his father.

At first God revealed to the prophet that they could not hope for a miraculous rescue; whereupon the prophet was greatly grieved, since these three men constituted the "remnant of Judah". But after they had left the house of the prophet, fully determined to sacrifice their lives to God, Ezekiel received this revelation: "Thou dost believe indeed that I will abandon them. That shall not happen; but do thou let them carry out their intention according to their pious dictates, and tell them nothing" (Midrash Canticles Rabbah vii. 8).

Although the Hebrew Bible describes this event as an ecstatic vision rather than a historical occurrence, later interpreters speculated as to the fate of these men, both before and after their revitalization. Some say that they were godless people, who in their lifetime had denied the resurrection, and committed other sins; others think they were those Ephraimites who tried to escape from Egypt before Moses and perished in the attempt. There are still others who maintain that after Nebuchadnezzar had carried the beautiful youths of Judah to Babylon, he had them executed and their bodies mutilated, because their beauty had entranced the Babylonian women, and that it was these youths whom Ezekiel called back to life.

This date was chosen because it is the day after the feast day of the Prophet Elias. Ezekiel is commemorated on August 28 on the Calendar of Saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church.

Source: Wikipedia > Ezekiel