The Book of Yehezkel covers a fateful period of some 22 years in the history of the Jewish People: beginning with year five of the exile of King Yehoyakhin and ending fifteen years after the Destruction of the First Temple. As opposed to other prophets, Yehezkel's prophecies are conveyed in Babylon and grapple with the contemporaneous crisis from a Diaspora vantage point.
The purpose of Yehezkel's prophecies – in the years preceding the Destruction – was to inform the people that God had departed from His Temple in Jerusalem. He therefore describes in detail the Divine chariot and the journeys of God's glory outside the Temple.
Yehezkel presents the view of the "inhabitants of Jerusalem," who say that the exiles have distanced themselves from God and from His Land, and that they are not counted among the inheritors of the land and those close to God. God's response, however, conveyed through the prophet, is that while those taken in captivity are currently in exile, God is with them there, as a "miniature Temple". For the first time, the prophet affirms the Jewish identity of the exiles: they remain part of God’s nation, even though the Jews still living in their homeland have a different view, and maintain that God's place is still in the Temple in their midst.
Both groups, the inhabitants in the land and those exiled to Babylonia, despite their differences, have this in common: neither changed its behavior during these years. Thus, Yehezkel's prophetic mission during these years was not to call upon the people to mend their ways and repent, but rather to explain the significance of the events in Jerusalem, and thereby to prepare the ground for the prophecies of rebuilding which came after the Destruction, as well as the vision of the future Temple.
