In the visions of God; i.e. in the clairvoyant state which had been superinduced upon him by the hand of God, and in which he became conscious both of bodily sensations and mental perceptions transcending those that were possible to him in his natural condition.
Upon a very high mountain (comp. Matthew 4:8; Luke 4:5). Schroder stands alone in taking אֶל as "beside" rather than "upon," other interpreters considering that אֶל has here the force of עַל, as in Ezekiel 18:6, and Ezekiel 31:12.
That this mountain, though resembling the temple hill in Jerusalem, was not that in reality, but "the mountain of the Lord's house" of Messianic times (see on Ezekiel 43:12; and comp. Ezekiel 17:22, Ezekiel 17:23; Ezekiel 20:40; Isaiah 2:2; Micah 4:6), may be inferred from its greater altitude than that of either Moriah or Zion, which pointed obviously to the loftier spiritual elevation of the new Jerusalem.
As the frame of a city on the south. What Ezekiel beheld was not "beside" or "by" (Authorized Version), but "on" the mountain, and was not, as Havernick, Ewald, and Kliefoth suppose, the new city of Jerusalem, though this might with a fair measure of accuracy be described as lying south of Moriah on which the temple stood, but the temple itself, which, with its walls and gates, chambers and courts, rose majestically before the prophet's view, with all the magnificence, and indeed (as the particle כִי.
indicates), with the external appearance of a city. That the prophet should speak of it as "on the south" receives sufficient explanation from the circumstance that he himself came from the north, and had it always before him in a southerly direction.
The idea is correctly enough expressed by the ἀπέναντι of the LXX; which signifies "over against" to one coming from the north.