Why was Ezekiel called "Son of man"?

Question from Mark:

Kimberly and I are doing the daily reading in Ezekiel together.... Just one comment: I couldn’t help notice that God actually called Ezekiel “Son of Man”. I remember that Jesus called himself this many times, so I wondered if there was any significance to Ezekiel being called this. Did God call other prophets by this name?

Answer from Pastor Bob:

You made a good observation about Ezekiel's use of "son of man." This term is used by God to address Ezekiel over 90 times in the book, but "son of man" is rarely used anywhere else in the Old Testament.
In Hebrew, to say "son of ..." is a way of saying it belongs to something or to emphasize its association with something. For example, Isaiah 5 describes a fertile hill literally in the Hebrew as "a hill, the son of fatness." The phrase "son of fatness" is a Hebrew idiom for "very fat" or very fertile. So when God calls Ezekiel "son of man," it is a way of saying he is completely a man, a mere human creature in contrast to the Creator. So the term "son of man" in Ezekiel stresses Ezekiel's humility in contrast to God's glory.
Daniel 7:13 uses the term "one like a son of man" when describing a person coming in glory as God on the clouds, to stress that the Messiah is both divine and human. When Jesus used the term "the Son of Man" to describe himself, Jesus was referring to Daniel 7:13, not Ezekiel's use of the term.