Commento su Ezechiele 1:3

The word of the Lord was [revealed] Heb. הָיֹה הָיָה [lit. being was.] Our Sages said (Mechilta to Exod. 12:1): “[It] had already come,” because the Shechinah does not rest upon a prophet outside the [Holy] Land, except by having first rested upon him in the Land. We learned in a Baraitha of the Mechilta (Exod. 15:9): [The verse 2:1,] “Son of man, stand on your feet,” was the [actual] beginning of the Book, only there is no chronological order [in Scripture]. Others say that (12:1f.) “Son of man, compose a riddle,” is the [true] beginning of the Book. [Mechilta ends here.] I say that this prophecy was told to him before they were exiled, because it is appropriate to be said to him in the Land, for the community of the exile is not mentioned explicitly in it. It can be recognized as the beginning of his mission to them. Jonathan, too, paraphrased in that manner: The prophetic word from before the Lord was revealed to Ezekiel the son of Buzi the priest in the land of Israel; it returned a second time and spoke with him in the state of the land of the Chaldeans. Now Ezekiel was exiled with the “craftsmen and the sentries of the gates,” who were exiled with Jehoiachin.

the hand of the Lord Every expression of יַד mentioned in this Book or in any expression of prophecy is invariably an expression of compulsion, [implying] that the prophecy seizes him against his will, like a person going mad, destreze in Old French, compulsion.