Ezekiel 33:21

Jerusalem Has Been Destroyed (Ezekiel 33:21).

‘And so it was that in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month one who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me saying, “Jerusalem is smitten”.

If we accept this dating, and accept it as being calculated on the same basis as others in Ezekiel, then it means that the first news of the fall of Jerusalem arrived eighteen months after Jerusalem's fall which was in the fourth month of the eleventh year. Ezra would later make the journey in four months (Ezra 7:9). It is thus seen as strange that it took so long for the news to come through. But it may rather be that this was the first eye witness to tell them of what had happened, and that until that was so they were unwilling to accept it. Rumour was one thing, an eye witness who had experienced it another. With a ravaging army possibly still around Jerusalem it may not have been possible for any to escape who had the purpose of reaching the exiles, survival would have been their first consideration, and they may have remained hidden in the mountains and waited until it was possible to move freely again.

Alternately it has been suggested that we read the twelfth year as ‘the eleventh year' (with some LXX manuscripts and the Syriac. The difference in Hebrew would be only one consonant). Another suggestion is that the calculation was based on a different calendar using the autumnal reckoning. This would then also make for a much shorter period.

Whatever the solution the arrival of one who had actually escaped from the ruined city would have been a momentous event. The depth of feeling conveyed is indicated by the brevity of the announcement, ‘the city is smitten'. Nothing more needed to be said. What had seemed to many so incredible, and to Ezekiel so certain, was now a reality. It would change their whole way of thinking. Indeed they would have to rethink their whole theology.