"EZEKIEL is a particularly interesting and important figure in the history of the Old Testament religion, for the reason that he represents the transition from the prophetic to the priestly period. Both a prophet and a priest, he sympathized with, and did justice to, both tendencies of thought. In this respect he differs from Jeremiah, who, though a priest, felt little interest in the ritual. Ezekiel, as prophet, was alive to the dependence of the people on the immediate word of God, . . . but, as priest, he also saw that the people had reached a stage which demanded a more precise formulation of the law of worship. He lived on the verge of a great religious revolution—the abolition, namely, of idolatry, and the establishment of the sole worship of Yahwe in Israel. The religious leaders of Josiah's time, both priests and prophets, had with true insight insisted on the necessity of centralizing the worship at Jerusalem in order to destroy the corrupt local cults. Ezekiel carries on the fight for ethical monotheism, not only by denouncing the worship of other gods than Yahwe as the source of the national misfortunes, but also, more effectively, by furthering that strict organization of the cultus which alone could train the people to the purer worship of the one God of Israel.
—From the Encyclopædia Biblica.
