(22) The hand of the Lord was there upon me.--The prophet's week of silent meditation being past, and the charge of responsibility given, the constraining power of God again comes upon him, and sends him forth to the final act of preparation for his work.

Verse 22. - And the hand of the Lord was there upon me, etc. There is obviously an interval between the fact thus stated and the close of the message borne in on the prophet's soul. Psychologically, it seems probable that the effect of the message was to fill him with an overwhelming, crushing sense of the burden of his responsibility. How was he to begin so terrible a work? What were to be the nearer, and the remoter, issues of such a work? Apparently, at least, he does not then begin it by a spoken warning. He passes, at the Divine command borne in on his soul, from the crowd that had watched him during the seven days' silence, and betakes himself to the solitude of the "plain," as distinct from the "mound" where the exiles dwelt, and there the vision appears again in all points as he had seen it when he stood on the river's bank.

3:22-27 Let us own ourselves for ever indebted to the mediation of Christ, for the blessed intercourse between God and man; and a true believer will say, I am never less alone than when thus alone. When the Lord opened Ezekiel's mouth, he was to deliver his message boldly, to place life and death, the blessing and the curse, before the people, and leave them to their choice.And the hand of the Lord was there upon me,.... At Telabib, Ezekiel 3:15. The Targum interprets "the hand of the Lord" of the spirit of prophecy, which remained upon him there; but it seems to design a fresh impulse of the Spirit, a powerful emotion of the split upon his spirit, stirring up to attention to what might be said unto him:

and he said unto me; the same glorious Person, the Lord Christ, described in Ezekiel 1:26;

arise, go forth into the plain; or "the valley" (w); the Arabic version renders it, "the desert"; a solitary place, free from noise and hurry, and from the company and conversation of men; and so more fit for retirement and contemplation, and for attention to divine orders. What plain this was is not certain; Kimchi thinks it was the plain in which Babel was built, and where the Lord showed the prophet what he had in his providence done in this place formerly, in confounding the languages of men, and causing their devices to cease;

and I will there talk with thee; when alone, sedate, and composed; so God sometimes brings his people into a low and humble state and condition, into the valley of humility, and there grants them communion with himself; see Hosea 2:14; perhaps the allusion to a custom among the Jews of revealing secrets to others in fields and deserts, and such like solitary places; see Genesis 31:4 (x).

(w) "in istam convallem", Junius & Tremellius, Polanus, "in vallem", Vatablus, Coeceius; "in vallem, quasi fissum locum", Starckius. (x) Vid. Menasseh Ben Israel, Spes Israelis, p. 110.