Just to remind all that we are starting sefer Yechezkal tomorrow pG.
Here’s a short intro to the sefer…
Though the psukim refer to Yechezkal as Yechezkal ben Buzi (1:3), Chazal tell us that his father’s name was not Buzi, in fact. Rather, he was to go down in history with the word Buzi, because it comes from the root levazot (to be embarrassed/shamed), and refers to the commitment to his prophecies; that he continued his prophetic mission despite being shamed and embarrassed by the people (see Redak end of 1:3). Indeed, the aforementioned Redak cites the Targum Yerushalmi, which says that Yechazkal was Yirmiyah’s son. Yechezkal’s first prophecy was in Eretz Yisrael, and the sefer opens with his second prophecy; his first in Bavel – where he was exiled with the rest of the vast majority of the Jews from the Land of Israel (Rashi 1:3). His most famous prophecy is the cryptic sefer-opening prophecy of the ‘merkava,’ which the gemarra says should not be studied in too much depth by the inexperienced/novice to these kind of areas.
We will end with the Gemarra Megilla that we normally use in introducing a sefer. The gemarra (Megillah 14a) tells us that there are 55 recorded Jewish prophets in our history; 48 men and 7 women. However, says the gemarra, there were over a million prophets across our history whose prophecies were not recorded. What was the criteria for which prophecies would go down in history as recorded? Says the gemarra that only those prophecies which had relevance for [all] future generations were recorded. One can see from here that our approach to learning the prophecies here is not to regard the messages as archaic, out of date, and irrelevant, but on the contrary, to realise that the reason for these prophecies having been written down is that they are relevant to us.
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