Ezekiel 1:2

Fifth year. This date is easily synchronized with secular history, for the capture of Jehoiachin is the most precisely dated event in the Bible. Already placed in 597 B.C. by its synchronism with a year of Nebuchadnezzar (see on 2 Kings 24:12), whose reign is astronomically fixed (see Vol. II, p. 152), it is now known to have occurred on Adar 2 (see Vol. IV, pp. 505, 756), approximately March 16. Then came Jehoiachin’s removal to Babylon, and the beginning of the period known as Jehoiachin’s captivity (2 Kings 24:6-15). Obviously Ezekiel was in that unhappy company that was removed to Babylon at this time, for his system of dating, which is based on the years of the captivity of Jehoiachin (as indicated in the present verse), is twice equated with the years “of our captivity” (chs. 33:21; 40:1). The 5th year of Jehoiachin’s exile would bring us to 593/592 B.C. for the year of the beginning of Ezekiel’s visions. Whether the day of this vision was in the summer of 593 or the summer of 592 depends on whether Ezekiel counted the year of Jehoiachin’s captivity from the spring (by the Babylonian calendar) or from the autumn (by the Jewish civil calendar). See p. 572 for the alternative dates of the visions.