Ezekiel. Ezekiel is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ezekiel is acknowledged as a Hebrew prophet. In Judaism and Christianity, he is also viewed as the 6th-century BCE author of the Book of Ezekiel, which reveals prophecies regarding the destruction of Jerusalem, the restoration to the land of Israel, and what some call the Millennial Temple visions. The name Ezekiel means 'God Strengthens'. The author of the Book of Ezekiel presents himself as Ezekiel, the son of Buzzi, born into a priestly lineage. Apart from identifying himself, the author gives a date for the first divine encounter which he presents: in the thirtieth year. If this is a reference to Ezekiel's age at the time, he was born around 622 BCE, about the time of Josiah's reforms. His thirtieth year is given as five years after the exile of Judah's king Jehoiachin by the Babylonians. The Aramaic Targum on Ezekiel 1:1, however, as well as the 2nd-century rabbinic work Seder Olam Rabba, take a different approach, where they both say that Ezekiel's vision came in the thirtieth year after Josiah was presented with a Book of the Law discovered in the Temple. According to Jewish tradition, Ezekiel did not write his own book, the Book of Ezekiel, but rather his prophecies were collected and written by the Men of the Great Assembly. Josephus claims that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia's armies exiled three thousand Jews from Judah, after deposing King Jehoiakim in 598 BCE. According to the Bible, Ezekiel and his wife lived during the Babylonian captivity on the banks of the Chebar River, in Tel Abib, with other exiles from Judah. There is no mention of him having any offspring. Ezekiel describes his calling to be a prophet by going into great detail about his encounter with God and four living creatures with four wheels that stayed beside the creatures. For the next five years he incessantly prophesied and acted out the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, which was met with some opposition. However, Ezekiel and his contemporaries like Jeremiah, another prophet who was living in Jerusalem at that time, witnessed the fulfillment of their prophecies with the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. On the hypothesis that the thirtieth year of Ezekiel 1:1 refers to Ezekiel's age, Ezekiel was fifty years old when he had his final vision. On the basis of dates given in the Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel's span of prophecies can be calculated to have occurred over the course of about 22 years. The last dated words of Ezekiel date to April 570 BCE. Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, is said by Talmud and Midrash to have been a descendant of Joshua by his marriage with the proselyte and former prostitute Rahab. Some statements found in rabbinic literature posit that Ezekiel was the son of Jeremiah, who was called Buzi because he was despised by the Jews. Ezekiel was said to be already active as a prophet while in the Land of Israel, and he retained this gift when he was exiled with Jehoiachin and the nobles of the country to Babylon. Rava states in the Babylonian Talmud that although Ezekiel describes the appearance of the throne of God, this is not because he had seen more than the prophet Isaiah, but rather because the latter was more accustomed to such visions; for the relation of the two prophets is that of a courtier to a peasant, the latter of whom would always describe a royal court more floridly than the former, to whom such things would be familiar. Ezekiel, like all the other prophets, has beheld only a blurred reflection of the divine majesty, just as a poor mirror reflects objects only imperfectly. According to the midrash Canticles Rabbah, it was Ezekiel whom the three pious men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah asked for advice as to whether they should resist Nebuchadnezzar's command and choose death by fire rather than worship his idol. 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. Ezekiel is commemorated as a saint in the liturgical calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, on July 21.