Ezekiel 40:1

It should be noted what he says: "In the fourteenth year after the city was struck, on that same day." For what does it mean that through this final vision almighty God deigned to show the mercy of His promise on that very day on which He fulfilled the wrath of justice upon the stricken city, except that that power of divinity, which is not drawn into any movement of change or mutability, by that same light of justice gives life to the afflicted and penitent by which it strikes down the proud and obstinate?

Your prayers, daughter Eustochium, and the Lord's promises have overcome my fear of explaining the temple of Ezekiel, or rather my determination to remain silent, as it says: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. And as we made excuses in the conclusion of the previous volume, it is better to say nothing than to say little; you have turned it around so that you consider it better to say little than to say nothing: because in the former, the will is eager, in the latter, there is despair of the entire work... Therefore, I will comply with your will, and with the Holy Spirit blowing, I will hoist the sails, ignorant of the shores I will reach, and along with this same prophet I exclaim, 'Come, spirits, from the four winds'...

About to speak of mystical things, he sets forth the historical narrative first, so that he may establish from the time what is to be believed from the revelation. It should be noted that at the beginning of this book he indicated in what year he began to prophesy; but at the end he inserted when he saw the final vision, so that it might be known over how many years he composed the book of his prophecy. For the time when he began to prophesy, he placed at the beginning of his speech, saying: The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of the Lord on the fifth of the month; this is the fifth year of the captivity of King Jehoiachin. But now he speaks, saying: In the twenty-fifth year of our captivity. For the same prophet had been carried off to Babylon in the first captivity with King Jehoiachin. For concerning the second captivity of Jerusalem he adds: In the fourteenth year after the city was struck. For Zedekiah had reigned in the city of Jerusalem for eleven years after the first captivity, in which the prophet Ezekiel was led to Babylon with King Jehoiachin. But in the fourteenth year after the captivity of that same Zedekiah, which was now the second captivity of the city, the prophet was seeing the final vision. Thus eleven and fourteen joined together make twenty-five. If therefore he spoke the first vision in the fifth year of the earlier captivity, and he describes this final one as having occurred in the twenty-fifth year, it is clearly evident that in twenty years he extended the delays of his speech up to the words of his final vision. Nor should it disturb anyone that in the middle of the volume of his prophecy, when he was speaking about the Babylonian king, he makes mention of the twenty-seventh year. In that place, since he inserts nothing about the time of his own captivity, he clearly demonstrates that he is describing the times of that king about whom he had received the commission to prophesy. But as for his saying: At the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month, he simply expresses the time, so that from that very time also he may fix in the hearts of his hearers, according to the letter, the root of the word, from which he may afterward bring forth spiritual fruits.