Catholic Commentary
Return of the Spirit and Report to the Exiles
24The Spirit lifted me up, and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the captives. So the vision that I had seen went up from me.25Then I spoke to the captives all the things that Yahweh had shown me.
Ezekiel 11:24–25 describes the prophet's visionary transport back to the exiles in Babylon after witnessing God's glory depart from Jerusalem, where he delivers to them the complete revelation he received from the Lord. The passage emphasizes that the Spirit of God, not Ezekiel's own power, controls his extraordinary mobility, and that he faithfully communicates both divine judgment and mercy to the deportees.
The Spirit carries Ezekiel back to the exiles not to abandon them, but to prove that God's presence follows His people even into captivity—and the prophet delivers the entire word, judgment and mercy together, without editing.
Ezekiel 11:24 — "The Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the captives."
The Hebrew verb nasa' ("lifted me up") is the same used throughout Ezekiel's transportation sequences (cf. 3:12, 14; 8:3), binding this conclusion tightly to the chain of visionary movement that opened in chapter 8. Ezekiel had been carried — first in the Spirit, away from the Babylonian exile — to Jerusalem, where he witnessed the progressive departure of the kavod (the Glory of God) from the Temple. Now the circuit is completed: he is returned to where he physically resides, among the golah, the community of deportees (shevuyim) in Chaldea (Babylon). The double identification of the empowering agent — "by the Spirit" and "by the Spirit of God" — is not redundant; it is emphatic. The prophet's extraordinary mobility is entirely God's doing. Ezekiel is not a shaman controlling ecstasy; he is a vessel moved by divine initiative. The phrase "in the vision" (b'mar'eh) is important: it reminds the reader that the journey to Jerusalem in chapters 8–11 was visionary, not physical. Ezekiel's body never left Babylon; his prophetic consciousness was the locus of the divine revelation. This distinction preserves the integrity of the experience — it is genuine divine communication — while resisting any naïve literalism about the prophet's transport. The destination, "to the captives," is theologically charged. The exiles in Babylon were widely assumed, even by themselves, to be cut off from God — their Temple destroyed, their land lost, the cultic apparatus of covenant worship inaccessible. Ezekiel's return in vision to them is itself a proclamation: God has not abandoned those in exile. The kavod that departed Jerusalem (11:23) is the same Spirit that now accompanies Ezekiel back to Babylon. God goes with His people into captivity.
Ezekiel 11:25 — "Then I spoke to the captives all the things that Yahweh had shown me."
The verse is structurally simple but theologically massive. The verb dibber ("I spoke") places Ezekiel firmly in the line of classical Israelite prophecy: the prophet speaks what God has shown. The word "all" (kol) is deliberately total — Ezekiel does not edit, soften, or selectively transmit the revelation. He has witnessed the abominations in the Temple (chapters 8–9), the divine executioners, the slaughter of the unfaithful, the departure of God's Glory (10:18–19; 11:22–23), and the oracle of judgment against the wicked leaders (11:1–13), alongside the promise of restoration and the new heart (11:14–21). All of it — both the terrible judgment and the tender mercy — is communicated to the exiles. This comprehensive fidelity marks Ezekiel as the model prophetic servant. He does not preach only the comforting oracle of the new heart (11:19) while suppressing the judgment passages; nor does he deliver only doom. He is faithful to the whole counsel of God.
The typological sense anticipates Christ, the supreme Word made flesh, who delivers without diminishment everything the Father has given Him to say (cf. John 17:8; 12:49–50). In the spiritual sense, this passage images every authentic preacher and bishop: moved by the Holy Spirit, returning to the people entrusted to him, and delivering the full deposit of divine revelation.
Catholic tradition reads these two verses through the lens of both pneumatology and ecclesiology, drawing out two interlocking theological convictions.
The sovereignty of the Spirit in prophetic ministry. The Catechism teaches that "God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets" (CCC 65, citing Heb 1:1) and that the Sacred Scriptures were composed under the motion of the Holy Spirit — who is their true principal Author (CCC 105). Ezekiel 11:24 is a vivid, almost physical dramatization of exactly this teaching: the Spirit is the agent of both transport and revelation. Origen, in his Homilies on Ezekiel, marveled at the prophet's passivity before the Spirit, seeing in it an icon of the soul that has emptied itself of self-will to become a pure instrument of grace. St. Gregory the Great, whose Homiliae in Hiezechielem remains the most influential patristic commentary on this book, read the Spirit's movement in Ezekiel as a type of the Church's own animation by the Paraclete — the same Spirit who moved over the waters (Gen 1:2) now moves the prophet, and later moves the Church, across the waters of history.
The prophetic vocation as total self-gift in service of the Word. The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§7) insists that what was entrusted to the Apostles was to be transmitted "in its entirety" — plene. Verse 25, with its emphatic "all the things," prefigures this apostolic integrity. St. Jerome, commenting on the prophets, linked this comprehensive fidelity to the courage (fortitudo) required of true shepherds, who do not trim the Word to suit the ears of the congregation. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§94), called the prophet's role one of docilitas — docility to the divine word — which must precede and govern all proclamation. Ezekiel's return to the exiles, fully reporting what he had seen, models the bishop or priest who does not reserve the harder truths of the Gospel for himself.
Contemporary Catholics are often tempted toward a selective reception of Scripture and Tradition — embracing the promises of mercy and the new heart (Ezek 11:19) while quietly setting aside the passages that speak of judgment, accountability, and the seriousness of sin. Ezekiel 11:25 is a rebuke to that tendency: the prophet delivered all that God showed him, without editorial mediation. For the Catholic in the pew, this passage is an invitation to examine how honestly we receive the whole of Catholic moral and spiritual teaching — not only the passages that console, but those that challenge us to conversion. For catechists, deacons, priests, and bishops, it is a sharper summons still: to preach the full Gospel, as Evangelii Gaudium (§39) warns against a "watered-down" proclamation that empties the Cross of its power. On a personal level, the image of being "lifted up by the Spirit and returned to one's community" can animate our understanding of prayer: we are called out of ourselves in contemplation precisely so we can return to others with something genuine and God-given to give.
Commentary