בחזרה לנהר כבר: מחשבות נוספות על מקומו של יחזקאל

This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding Ezekiel’s exilic setting and to present new arguments according to which Ezekiel was a member of a community of Jude an exiles that was settled in Babylonia’s Southern agricultural periphery. Its first part investigates the cuneiform sources. In addition to their geographical setting, it defines what kind of socio-communal structure they reflect and what were the imperial motives to settle exilic minorities in the selocations. Its second part investigates the biblical sources, especially the book of Ezekiel, and pay special attention to new readings of numerous prophetic units which have not been discussed in this context thus far. These readings draws from the prophet’s words positive evidence about his daily life and his place, which shows that the geographical and social-community setting depicted in the book of Ezekiel corresponds to a certain pattern of community settlement in a peripheral rural are at hat is also known from the cuneiform sources. The last part of the article deals with the implications of these findings on the question of which literary and oral traditions from the Mesopotamian culture might have been accessible to Ezekiel.