1:1 thirtieth year. Ezekiel had just been invested fully as a priest on his thirtieth birthday (see Numbers 4), the age at which priests could begin their ministry, when he began to receive God’s Word.

1:1 among the captives. Ezekiel had been carried captive to Babylon when he was twenty-five years old, along with King Jehoiachin (Ezekiel 1:2).

1:1 Chebar. The river Chebar, where Ezekiel saw the Lord, in the land of the Chaldees, was probably a navigable canal, near the city of Nippur, along which a number of the Jewish exiles had been settled by the Babylonians.