Bible Commentaries

CHAPTER43

1And he led me to the gate, the gate that looks toward the east: 2And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the east, and its [His] voice 3 was as the voice of many waters, and the earth shone with His glory. And as the appearance [was] the appearance which I saw, as the appearance which I saw when I came to destroy the city, and [there were] sights like the appearance which I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell upon my face 4 And the glory of Jehovah came to the house by the way of the gate whose face [front] 5is toward the east. And the Spirit lifted me up, and brought me to the inner court, and, behold, the glory of Jehovah filled the house 6 And I heard one speaking to me from the house, and a man was standing beside me 7 And He said to me: Son of man, [behold] the place of My throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the sons [children] of Israel for ever, and the house of Israel shall no more defile the name of My holiness, they and their kings, by their whoredom and by the corpses of 8 their kings, their high places; When they gave their threshold beside My threshold and their post beside My post, and [only] the wall [was] between Me and them, and they defiled [so defiled they] the name of My holiness by their abominations which they did, and I consumed them in My anger [breath of 9 anger]. Now shall they put away their whoredom, and the corpses of their 10 kings from Me, and I dwell in their midst for ever. Thou, son of man, show to the house of Israel the [this] house, that they may be ashamed because of their iniquities, and they measure [so they measure] the harmony of proportion 11 And if they be ashamed because of all that they did, make them know the conformation of the house, and its arrangement, and its out-goings, and its incomings, and all its forms, and what relates to all its ordinances, and all its forms, and all its precepts [laws]; and write before their eyes, that they may keep its whole conformation and all its ordinances, and they do them 12 This is the law [the Thorah] of the house; on the head [top] of the mountain all its border round and round is most holy! Behold, this is the law of the house 13 And these are the measures of the altar [altar of burnt-offering] in cubits: the cubit a cubit and a hand-breadth, and [indeed] the [a] bosom (the girth) had the cubit, and [i.e.] one cubit broad [thick], and its border at its lip [its edge] round about was a span, and this is the elevation of the altar; And [namely] from the bosom [at] the ground to the lower rest were two cubits, and a breadth, of one cubit; 14and from the lesser rest to the greater rest, four cubits and a 15 breadth of one cubit. And the mountain of God four cubits; and from the 16 hearth of God and upwards were the four horns. And the hearth of God 17 twelve in length by twelve in breadth, square in all its four sides. And the rest fourteen in length by fourteen in breadth in its four sides, and the border round about it was half a cubit, and its bosom [girth was] a cubit round about, and its [the altar’s] steps toward the east 18 And He said unto me, Son of man, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: These are the ordinances of the altar on the day when it is made, to cause burnt-offerings to ascend upon it, and to sprinkle 19 blood upon it. And thou givest to the priests, the Levites, those who are of the seed of Zadok, who draw near to Me,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah,—20to minister to Me, a bullock, a young steer, for a sin-offering. And thou takest of its blood, and givest it upon its [the altar’s] four horns, and on the four corners of the rest, and on the border round about, and thou dost cleanse and 21 expiate it. And thou takest the bullock of the sin-offering, and one burns it in the assigned [appointed] place of the house, without the sanctuary 22 And on the second day thou shalt offer a kid of the goats without blemish for a sin-offering, and they cleanse the altar as they cleansed with the bullock 23 When thou hast completed the cleansing, thou shalt offer a bullock, a young steer 24 without blemish, and a ram of the flock without blemish. And thou offerest them before Jehovah, and the priests cast salt upon them, and make them ascend as a burnt-offering [Olah] to Jehovah 25 Seven days shalt thou prepare a kid for a sin-offering daily, and they shall prepare a bullock, a 26 young steer, and a ram of the flock without blemish. Seven days do they 27 expiate the altar, and purify it, and fill its hand. And they shall have completed the [these] days; thus it comes to pass on the eighth day and onwards, that the priests shall make upon the altar your burnt-offerings, and your peace-offerings; and I receive you graciously,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah.

Ezekiel 43:2. Sept.: ... κατα τ. ὁδον της πυλης τ. βλεπουσης προς … φωνη της παρεμβολησ ὡς φωνη διπλασιαζοντων πολλων … ὡς φεγγος ἀπο τ. δοξης κυριου κυκλοθες.

Ezekiel 43:3. Κ. ἡ ὁρασις ἡν ἰδον κατα τ. ὁρασιν ἡν ἰδον ὁτε εἰσεπορευομην του χρισαι τ. πολιν κ. ἡ ὁρασις του ἁρματος οὑ εἰδον,—Vulg.: Et vidi visionem secundum speciem, quam videram quando venit ut disperderet … et speciem secundum aspectum quem videram—(Another reading: בבאו, i.e. cum venit dominus.)

Ezekiel 43:4. … ingressa est templum—

Eze 43:6. Κ. ἐστην κ. ἰδου φωνη ἐκ … εἱστηκει ἐχομενος μου,

Ezekiel 43:7. ... Ἑωρακας, υἱε … του ἰχνους των ποδων … ἐν οἱς … το ὀνομα μου ἐν μεσω του οἰκου Ἰσρ … .; κ. ἐν τοις φονοις των ἡγουμενων ἐν μεσω αὐτων, (8) ἐν τω τιθεναι αὐτους το προθυρος μου ἐν τ. προθυροις αὐτων κ. τας φλιας μου ἐχομεςας των φλιων αὐτων, κ. ἐδωκαν τ. τοιχον μου ὠς συςεχομενον ἐμου κ. αὐτων, κ. … κ. ἐξετριψα αὐτος ἐν θυμω μου κ. φονω. Vulg.: … vestigiorum pedum meorum, ubi habito … et in ruinis regum suorum et in excelsis, (8) qui fabricati sunt … propter quod consumpsi eos—(Another reading: בְמותם, in morte eorum.)

Ezekiel 43:9. ... κ. τ. φονους—Vulg.: … ruinas regum … semper.

Ezekiel 43:10. Another reading: תבנית—ואתה pro חבנית.

Ezekiel 43:10. ... δειξον τω … κ. κοπασουσιν ἀπο των ἀμαρτιων … κ. την ὁρασιν αὐτου κ. την διαταξιν αὐτων (11) κ. αὐτοι ληψονται την κολασιν αὐτων περι παντων … Κ. διαγραψεις τ. οἰκον … κ. την ὑποστασιν αὐτου κ. παντα τ. προσταγματα αὐτου κ. παντα τα νομιμα αὐτου γνωριεις αὐτοις … κ. φυλαξονται παντα τα δικαιωματα μου κ. παρτα τ. προσταγματα μου—Vulg.: … ostende … templum … et metiantur fabricam (11) et erubescant … Figuram domus et fabricæ … et omnem descriptionem … præcepta … cunctumque ordinem … ostende eis … omnes descriptiones—(Desunt in nonnullis codd.: ואת כל חקתיו וכל צורתו, or only וכל צורתו. In fine versus legitur plur.: כל צורותיו.)

Ezekiel 43:12. Κ. την διαγραφην τ. οἰκου ἐπι της κορυφης του ὀρους. Παντα τα ὁρια—Vulg.: … domus in summitate montis.

Ezekiel 43:13. ... Το κολπωμα βαθος πηχυς ἐπι πηχυν, κ. πηχυς το εὐπος κ. γεισος ἐπι του χειλους αὐτου κυκλοθεν, σπιθαμης. Κ. τουτο το ὑψος—Vulg.: … In sinu ejus erat cubitus … hæc quoque erat fossa altaris.

Ezekiel 43:14. Sept.: ἐκ βαθους τ. ἀρχης του κοιλωματος … προς το ἱλαστηπιον το μεγα το ὑποκατωθεν … κ. ἀπο του ἱλαστηριου τ. μικρου ἐπι τ. ἱλαστηριον το μεγα—Vulg.: … usque ad crepidinem novissimam … a crepidine minore—

Ezekiel 43:15. Κ. το ἀριηλ … ἀπο του ἀριηλ … των κερατων πηχυς. (Another reading: וההדיאל, montes dei. Syr.: Adiel.—ומהאדיאל, litteris transpositis.)

Ezekiel 43:16. Κ. το ἀρινλ (eadem codicum varietas).

Ezekiel 43:17. Κ. το ἱλαστηπιον … το εὐρος τετραγωνον ἐπι τα τεσσαρα … κ. το γεισος αὐτου κυκλοθεν κυκλομενον αὐτω.—Vulg.: Et crepido … et corona in circuitu ejus—

Ezekiel 43:19. ... ὁ θεος του Αευι, … μοσχον ἐκ βοων περι ἁμαρτιας—Vulg.: … vitulum de armento pro peccato.

Ezekiel 43:20. Κ. ληψοντκι … κ. ἐπιθησουσιν … του ἱλαστηριου κ. ἐπι τ. βασιν κυκλω, κ. περιραντιεις αὐτο κ. ἐξιλασονται αὐτο. Vulg.: … angulos crepidinis et super coronam … et mundabis illud et expiabis.

Eze 43:21. Κ. ληψονται … κ. κατακαυθησεται ἐν τ. ἀποκεχωρισμενω του

Eze 43:22. ... ληψονται ἐριφους δυο ἀπο αἰγων ἀμωμους

Ezekiel 43:23. ... προσοισουσιν—Vulg.: … de armento et … de grege—

Eze 43:24. κ. προσοισετε—

Eze 43:25. ... ποιησουσιν (26) ἑπτα ἡμερας, κ.—

Ezekiel 43:26. Qeri: יְבַפּרוּ. Idem legunt quam plurimi codices.

Ezekiel 43:27. ... κ. προσδεξομαι ὑμας—Vulg.: … et placatus ero vobis—

EXEGETICAL REMARKS

Ezekiel 43:1-12. The Entrance of the Glory of Jehovah

The measuring is over, the house is in this respect finished as an actual house ( Ezekiel 42:15), that is, its measurements are completed. But heaven and earth are said to be finished ( Genesis 2.) only when the Eternal rested. And so the prophet’s guide leads him back

Ezekiel 43:1—to the gate (הַשָּׁעַד), to the one that principally comes into consideration (comp. what has been remarked in the foregoing chapters regarding the significance of this gate, and also the Doctrinal Reflections), to the east gate,—we will have to imagine Ezekiel standing before this gate,—that after all the measuring he

Ezekiel 43:2—may see the glory, sq. (see pp38 sq, 52), coming to its rest. Hengst.: a parallel to Exodus 40:34 sq, and 1 Kings 8:10 sq, and the counterpart to Ezekiel 11of our prophet (comp. Ezekiel 10:19; Ezekiel 11:1; Ezekiel 11:23). The gate of exit then is the gate of Revelation -entrance now.—וְקוֹלוֹ׳, comp. on Ezekiel 1:24. The voice might refer more to the manifestation of the glory; comp. however. Revelation 1:15 : His glory is at all events the glory of the God of Israel ( Luke 2:9; Revelation 18:1). The significant addition: and the earth, etc, is not sufficiently explained by a brilliant light cast upon the ground; but as the land of Canaan is hardly meant here, by this burst of light extending far beyond Israel is meant to be symbolized an enlightenment also of the face of the whole earth, that is, of the entire region of humanity, thus shown to have been in itself and hitherto dark, Isaiah 6:3; Isaiah 60:1 sq. It is like sunrise (אוֹר in the Hiphil, to “make” or “give” “light,” Genesis 1:15; Genesis 1:17) for the world through Israel’s temple-gate, and in so far is certainly something additional which was not in the tabernacle or Solomon’s temple; just as in general the temple of Ezekiel is a symbol of the future.

Ezekiel 43:3 in no way contradicts this. וּכְמַרְאֵה הַמַּרְאֶֹה אֲשֶׁר׳ may be translated: “and as the appearance of the appearance which, etc, as the appearance (closer definition) which I saw when,” etc, that is, quite as conspicuous as that was, was the appearance of glory this time also. Keil: “And the appearance which I saw was to look upon just like the appearance which I saw when I,” etc. כַּ is evidently a resumption of וּכְ. The former appearance (וּכְמַרְאֵה) comes first before the prophet’s mind when he wishes to describe what he saw, and seeks therefore for an appearance with which he can compare it; and then he characterizes more closely this appearance (כַּמַּרְאֶה), with which he compares that now seen. Keil’s observation against Hitzig does not meet the point, but neither is Hitzig’s alteration of the text necessary. In the first place, by means of this comparison the Revelation -entrance of the divine glory is attested in the strongest way, and therefore so circumstantially. It was the same glory then as now. For all this, the prophet does not intend to deny the anger in the execution of judgment then, for he expressly defines more closely בְּבֹאִי לְשׁחֵת, which alone is the correct text, since the Lord did not come, but rather went, giving over the city to destruction, and in reality Ezekiel was the person coming—of course in the vision of God, the subject to be spoken of immediately. The prophet did not come in order to see the destruction of the city, but his coming was a seeing which had for its aim and issue his announcement of the overthrow; and then this ideal destruction on the part of the prophet was also realized by the judgment of God fulfilling it. Ezekiel first, Nebuchadnezzar afterwards ( Ezekiel 30:11), but by both certainly Jehovah. In the second place, the prophet, as he had already done in Ezekiel 10:15; Ezekiel 10:20, compares the last visions (comp. Ezekiel 40:2), hence the coming of the glory with its individual manifestations, with the appearance which the manifestation had had on the Chebar ( Ezekiel 1).—On his falling down Hengstenberg observes: “In Ezekiel 1:28 it was before the majesty of the angry God; here before the majesty of God appearing in His grace ( Revelation 1:17).” Comp. also on Ezekiel 3:23.

Ezekiel 43:4. A continuation of Ezekiel 43:2; there: whence the glory of the God of Israel came; here: whither the glory of Jehovah came; there: from the east; here: to the house through the east gate, to its dwelling, to its rest.

Ezekiel 43:5. Comp. on Ezekiel 3:12. There is still less need of the “wind” here; to arrive at the inner court, the prophet needed only to go, as hitherto, in vision. But Ezekiel needs taking up by the Spirit, not only because the impression of Ezekiel 43:2 has cast him to the ground (Hengst.), but also in order to be able to follow, so far as was permitted to him as priest, the fresh revelation of the glory of Jehovah filling the temple. For the form of manifestation, 1 Kings 8:10 sq. might be compared, and so much the more as that becomes quite plain there, which indeed is already indicated in Exodus 40:35 sq, that the cloud is as significant in the manner of manifestation as the glory is in the actual fact, according as the cloud is one of fire or of light ( Matthew 17:5).

Ezekiel 43:6. Evidently, however, the מִדַּבֵּר אֵלַי [Häv. understands the Hithpael of a conversation in the interior of the sanctuary (?), of a command to the angel to communicate to the seer the revelation of God], that is, the one speaking to him from the house whom Ezekiel hears first, is meant to be represented as visible by וְאִישׁ הָיָה׳, so that the man is the medium between Jehovah and the prophet, and so must certainly be conceived of in analogy with Ezekiel 40:3 (which comp.), as Keil: ὁ λογος, John 1. Hengst. supposes: “the man has entered the door to speak to him.” ויֹאמֶר in Ezekiel 43:7 is certainly the אִישׁ of Ezekiel 43:6.—מְקוֹם אֶת־ denotes an accusative, and requires a “behold” to be supplied. What the man says identifies him entirely with Jehovah, wherefore the reference by the article back to the man in Ezekiel 40:3 is intentionally omitted. We no longer walk with the prophet through the courts of the sanctuary to the measurings of his guide, but the vision is interpreted to Ezekiel, and through him to us, from the most holy place. The man’s speech, legitimating itself as word of Jehovah, shows him to be essentially the glory of the God of Israel, so that we now know why nothing farther was said regarding the way and manner in which the glory of Jehovah filled the house ( Ezekiel 43:5), and the form of its manifestation. “Between the statement,” rightly remarks Hengst, “that one spake, and the speech that was spoken, stands the account of the person of the speaker, to which the prophet has his attention first directed by the speech; the seeing was first occasioned by the hearing.” We have before us in the man the essential revelation of Jehovah’s glory. Comp. on Ezekiel 1:26, pp55, 56; Revelation 1:10 sq. The Messianic-christological interpretation is the only explanation corresponding to the connection, so much the more significantly, as there is no mention in Ezekiel of the ark of the covenant, with which elsewhere the dwelling of Jehovah in the midst of Israel is wont to be connected; and hence also the לְעְוֹלָם here, and in Ezekiel 43:9, is to be taken as unconditionally literal ( Ezekiel 37:26; Ezekiel 37:28). Neither in the tabernacle nor in the temple of Solomon had Jehovah dwelt for ever, although these might be called the “place of His throne,” that is, of the ark of the covenant ( 1 Samuel 4:4; Exodus 25:22); see Bähr, Symb. der Mos. Kult. i. p387 sq, and parallel therewith מְקוֹם כַּפוֹת רַגְלַי, by which the lower part of the throne, more exactly the ground whereon it stands, is particularized. Comp. for the latter mode of expression, Isaiah 60:13. According to Isaiah 66:1 : place of the soles of My feet, hence the same footstool (the earth) as here, perhaps alludes to the most holy place of the temple, where the ark stood, while the ark which was set up upon the floor of the most holy place is to be compared to heaven, Isaiah 66:1; Psalm 99:5; Psalm 132:7. Reference is also made hereby to the ark of the covenant ( 1 Chronicles 28:2). Both modes of expression symbolize the temple in the traditional legal manner as the dwelling-place of Jehovah (אֲשֶׁד אֶשְׁבָּן־שָׁם),—the first referring chiefly to the ark, and the second chiefly to the most holy place (for which see Ezekiel 43:12). Bähr says: “What the dwelling is in a larger sense and generally, the ark of the covenant is in a narrower sense and in particular; in it the dwelling of Jehovah is concentrated in a single point,” etc.—In conformity with his theory of the conditionality of certain promises, Hengst. finds in the statement: shall no more, etc, reference to a condition, whereas it simply repeats negatively what the dwelling of Jehovah for ever has already said positively ( Ezekiel 37:23 sq, Ezekiel 39:24; Ezekiel 39:29; comp. John 10:28).—On: the name of My holiness, comp. on Ezekiel 36:20 sq. Ch16, 20.—פֶּגֶר is something “fallen down,” “flaccid,” a corpse. It cannot be proved that the burial-places of kings were in the neighbourhood of the temple. It will not do to take the corpses for dead idols, even although it should be a quotation from Leviticus 26:30, for that passage speaks of demolished idols, whereas flourishing idols are treated of here. Moreover, a closer definition could hardly be omitted ( Jeremiah 16:18), which Keil, indeed, finds here in the context. Häv. insists on finding the idols in the kings ( Amos 5:26; Zephaniah 1:5), holding it to be a contemptuous expression for: the lifeless idols. On the other hand, Keil and Hengstenberg remind us of kings like Manasseh and Amon, who took to do with dead bodies, which according to the law were to be avoided, as unclean and polluting, had built for them altars or high places in the courts of the temple ( 2 Kings 21:4-5; 2 Kings 21:7), and patronized the worship of idols. As whoredom designates idolatry in general, so what is meant to be said by the corpses of their kings applies to the worship of kings, the forgotten subjection to Jehovah under them, who, if kings, yet are perpetuated only as corpses; one might be allowed, to call to mind Schubert’s poem: “The Princes’ Vault.” To this the appositional, loosely strung בָּמוֹתָם the more fittingly attaches itself, as in בָּמוֹת the thought of the kings as also high points, points of worship in social life, easily connects itself with the worship on the high places, which was specially popular in the time of the kings, and tolerated even by the better kings; the worship of the king, and the worship favoured by the kings, would border on one another. As idolatry in general constitutes the defilement of the name of Jehovah, the doings on the part alike of the house of Israel in general, and of their kings in particular, so the figurative and literal worshipping on high places forms, with special reference to the kings, a contrast to the enthronement of the King Jehovah, and to His dwelling in the literal sense in the midst of Israel. [In the interest of the different explanation of בְּפִגְרֵי it has been proposed to read בְמוֹתָם, “in their death,” as the Chaldee paraphrase already interprets. Zunz makes בָּמוֹתָם dependent on יְטַמְּאוּ, but the בְּ wanting before בָּמוֹתָם can be easily supplied from the preceding בִּזְנוּתָם and בְּפִגְרֵי׳]

Ezekiel 43:8. (The subject in בְּתִתָּם is not the kings (Hengst.), but what was subject in Ezekiel 43:7, the house of Israel and their kings. The suffix in סִפָּם means, if any particular persons, the kings, but better, Israel in general. What is then said refers neither to the temples of the high places, which had been placed so close beside the temple of God (Keil), for their threshold cannot refer to their high places, nor to idol-chambers there (comp. for this Ezekiel 8.), and idol-altars in the courts of the temple, which the kings of Judah built (such things would require to be expressed more plainly); nor is this disparaging expression meant to condemn the building of royal palaces like that of Solomon ( 1 Kings 7.); but if kings are specially aimed at, then the figurative mode of expression, as given by the temple of Jehovah, will pronounce sentence on the conduct of the kings who assumed an equality with Jehovah ( 1 Kings 12:28; 1 Kings 12:32), by their idolatrous appointments and arrangements with respect to religion and worship. It is better, however, to hold that the defilement of the name of the holiness of Jehovah by the people and the kings consisted in this, that the consciousness of the distance between Jehovah and Israel had entirely disappeared from the life of the latter, the dwelling of Jehovah was as if it were not present in Israel, Israel performed his domestic and secret worship of idols as his worship of Jehovah, so that only the temple wall (הַקִּיר) still protested, and preserved, or at least marked to Israel the boundary between the Holy One and His people. [Keil understands הַקִּיר of the temple wall, which was “the only thing between Jehovah and the corpse-gods.”]—וָאֲכל, from כָּלָה imperf. apoc. Piel ( Exodus 32:10; Exodus 30:3!), signifies: to make the measure full, to finish sin by death ( James 1:15).—בְּאַפִּי, comp. on Ezekiel 38:18.

Ezekiel 43:9 resumes, in conclusion, the subject of Ezekiel 43:7, as also to the same purpose; “the eternal duration of the new and perfect revelation of God as distinguished from the Old Testament merely temporary one, which is at this time passing over into complete fulfilment and glorification” (Häv.), is repeatedly set forth.—יְרַחַקוּ (Piel: “to put far away”) מִמֶּנִי corroborates with respect to the corpses of kings the interpretation proposed ( Ezekiel 43:7) of idolatrous adulation and adoration of them and their edicts regarding worship.

Ezekiel 43:10. הַגֵּד, Ezekiel 40:4.—The Aim of the Announcement of the Temple-vision, and consequently of the Vision itself as regards Israel.

It is not said that Israel is again to build a temple of the kind; but neither is it said that he is to build up his phantasy on this architectonic interim phantasy. But with the perception that Jehovah still, and now first in the proper sense, desires to dwell in the midst of Israel,—a perception which will be brought about by the announcement of this house to the house of Israel,—shame shall come over them through the knowledge of their iniquities, from a comparison of these iniquities with the mercy and grace of God ( Ezekiel 36:31-32), so that the goodness of God leads them to repentance ( Romans 2:4). This moral-prophetic tendency is thoroughly in accordance with the Messianic acceptation of the templevision.—תָּכְנִית (comp. Ezekiel 28:12), not so much: “plan,” model (Hengst.), but ( “proportionality,” says Fürst): the harmony of the proportions, the regular character of the edifice. Keil: “the well-apportioned edifice.” Hengst. observes on this measuring: “not as architects, but as Abraham went through the length and breadth of the Promised Land ( Genesis 13:17) with the interest of the family belonging to the house, in a meditating and loving and thankful spirit, following the measures shown,” etc.

Ezekiel 43:11. And the announcement for this purpose is not, if they are ashamed of themselves, to be confined to the harmony of the whole, but will enter into particulars, which, being enumerated at the beginning, and in a profusion of words, are well fitted to produce from the outset the impression of something important. צוּרָה, from צוּר, “to form” ( Psalm 49:15, 14]), is the shape, the form, hence primarily the outside, with which is joined תְּכוּנָה, which Gesenius would derive from תָּכַן, and compares with תָּכְנִית. The word is derived from כּוּן, and signifies the inside plenishing of a dwelling-place, as also the dwelling-place itself ( Job 23:3), for which its out-goings and its in-comings, taking into account both the exterior and the interior, come above all into consideration. כָּל־צוֹּרתָו is everything that צוּרָה is in the particular, the individual forms; כָּל־חֻקֹּתָיו the regulations in regard to the particulars of the arrangement; according to Keil: “regarding what Israel has to observe, the ordinances of worship.” [Hengst.: All here has a practical import ( 2 Timothy 3:16). The high mountain, for example, on which the house is situated proclaims: “Hearts upward.” The wall which surrounded the whole ( Ezekiel 42:20) proclaims: “Ye shall be holy, for I am holy.” The guardrooms of the gates embody the word: “Without are dogs, whoremongers, murderers, idolaters.” The chambers for the people in the outer court preached: “Rejoice before the Lord always,” and: “Be ye thankful.” The arrangements for the priests reminded of sin, and demanded that one should consecrate himself to God in the burnt-offering, present to Him always the thank-offering and the meat-offering of good works. The altar of incense proclaimed to all: “Pray without ceasing.”] That the dwelling of the Holy One among His people has as its aim their sanctification in repentance and faith as to every part of them, is clear from the accompanying כָּל־חֻקֹּתָיו, which is, moreover, repeated by a parallel expression, and so strengthened (and all its forms and כָּל־תּוֹרֹתָו), that is, all instructions and directions, what has thereby been given in doctrine according to which a man should live. And thus the symbolical view of the section (see Doct. Reflec.) has no need to seek elsewhere for farther justification. By the command: write, etc, the: make them know, passes over from oral annunciation into a more abiding form, into the written outline we have before us of the new temple, into the description given of the vision.—The: do, corresponding to the preceding: all that they did, certainly does not mean that they are to build such a temple, and just as little that they were to console themselves therewith. They are to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The “doing” intended is a spiritual, ethical doing.

Ezekiel 43:12. The mention of the תּוֹרֹתָו leads to the summary of all doctrine and precepts in respect to this temple, which is significantly—in contrast with the law of Moses which Israel has not kept—one might indeed say: as the law of Christ—laid down repeatedly ( Ezekiel 43:13) as the Thorah of the house. For all is summed up in this, that what has been represented on the (going back to Ezekiel 40:2) top of the mountain ( “head” of the mountain and head article of the doctrine!), the whole boundary marked out for the house round and round, is most holy ( Ezekiel 45:3). The summary thought which underlies the whole, the holiness of Jehovah, the sanctification of Israel, is in a way set forth by this, that even the courts appear in the light of the most peculiar abode of Jehovah, so that the perfection of a new temple as the completion of the old is here proclaimed as a close to the temple-vision proper. Hengst. quite uselessly takes pains to tone down the קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים into “eminently holy.” For if it is conceded to him that “ideally” (as he says) such (a holy place) was already extant in the tabernacle and the temple of Song of Solomon, and all behoved in view of it to strive to be holy in their whole conversation (for which he appeals to 1 Peter 1:15), then he will have to concede that this “ideal” is set down here as a real, as the fulfilled law, since its ideality was nothing else than the idea of the future, the promised fulfilment in Christ. Numbers 18:10 rather proves this advance than furnishes ground for contending against it, with Hengstenberg; for what is said in that passage of the court of the tabernacle is expressly limited to the priestly families representing the people, and, moreover, to the male portion of them. The Old Testament form, indeed, still obtains on the top of the mountain here, but yet the novum quod in vetere latet is distinctly apparent. The question is not concerning the “world surrounding” the sanctuary, but when the vision here finishes with the temple, the mutual relation of its parts must be viewed—a view rendered possible just by this, that the most holy place still remains, as the prophet has shown. Certainly the point of view is a “practical” one; but when Hengst. says: “the passage serves as the foundation for the confident expectation expressed in Ezekiel 43:7; Ezekiel 43:9, that the people will in future lay aside all unholy dispositions,” then this looks forward to a future which points far beyond the immediatly post-exile period, namely, that God (to speak with Hengstenberg) “holds in prospect to the children of Israel a help against themselves, whereby they may succeed in conquering the enemy that makes the dwelling of God among them impossible,” this help being, of course, the Spirit of the Anointed One, of the fulfilling of the law, somewhat as in the passage cited by Hengst, 1 Peter 1:3 sq. Comp. 1 Corinthians 1:30 : ὁς ἐγενηθη ἡμιν και ἁγιαμος ( 2 Thessalonians 2:13 sq.; Ephesians 4:20 sq, and similar passages). Cocceius: “And the least on this mountain, within this wall of God, is greater than the high priest in the temple of Song of Solomon, Matthew 11:11; Revelation 1:6; Revelation 5:10; 1 Peter 2:9; comp. also Zechariah 14:20-21.”

Additional Note on Ezekiel 43:1-12

[ “In this striking passage we are first of all to note the character in which the Lord now appears to dwell and manifest Himself among His people. It is as their divine King, occupying that house as the throne of His kingdom. God had always claimed this position, and had at first resisted their desires to have an earthly sovereign, because this virtually implied a rejection of Him as the proper head of the State. Even when He consented to their request, it was with a solemn and earnest protest against the person chosen ruling in his own name, and for selfish purposes, or in any other way than as the Lord’s vicegerent. The protest, however, was soon forgotten. The king looked upon himself, and the people also looked upon him, as possessing an absolute title to the throne, and the earthly head came very much to occupy, in men’s eyes, the place of the true and proper King. But in the new and more perfect order of things now unfolded in vision to the prophet, this flagrant perversion of the past must be rectified; God must be known and honoured as alone properly ‘King in Jeshurun.’ And hence, not only here does He declare that He had come to occupy His throne in the house, but, as mentioned in the note on Ezekiel 43:7, the earthly head, when spoken of in a subsequent chapter, is simply called ‘the prince.’ The supremacy and glory of Jehovah were henceforth to appear in their full splendour. We have farther to notice in the preceding passage the essentially moral character of all that was here displayed in vision respecting the future things of God’s kingdom. It was not a pattern which God was going to carry out anyhow, and accomplish as by a simple fiat of Omnipotence. It depended upon the condition of the people, and only if they agreed to put away sin from among them, and give God the supreme place in their hearts, could He manifest Himself toward them in the manner described. And finally, while the whole scheme was fraught with lessons of instruction, and inlaid with principles of holiness, the grand and distinguishing peculiarity of this pattern of the future, as compared with the past, we are expressly informed, was to be a general and all-pervading sanctity. The law of the house—what was pre-eminently entitled to be called the law—consisted in the whole region of the temple-mount being most holy. Not, as hitherto, was this characteristic to be confined to a single apartment of the temple; it was to embrace the entire circumference occupied by the symbolical institutions of the kingdom,—the chambers allotted to the priest, and even the courts trodden by the people, as well as the immediate dwelling-place of Jehovah. All were to have one character of sacredness, because all connected with them were to occupy a like position of felt nearness to God, and equally to enjoy the privilege of access to Him. So that the pattern delineated is that of a true theocracy, having God himself for king, with the community in all its members for true denizens of the kingdom, and acceptable ministers of righteousness before the Lord.”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp473, 474.—W. F.]

Ezekiel 43:13-27. The Altar of Burnt-offering ( Ezekiel 43:13-17), and its Consecration ( Ezekiel 43:18-27)

[ “The remaining verses of this chapter ( Ezekiel 43:13-27) which contain a description of the altar of burnt-offering, and of the necessary rites of consecration connected with it, seem at first view somewhat out of place. But there is an historical reason for such a description being given here. Now that the Lord has taken possession of the house, the prophet goes on to show how the work of fellowship and communion with Him is to proceed on the part of the people. It must, as it were, commence anew, and of course be conducted after the old manner; for no other could here come into contemplation. But in ancient times the grand medium of divine intercourse was the altar, at which all gifts and sacrifices were to be presented for the divine favour and blessing. And therefore, the prophet here, to show that the way was open, and that the people might have free access to the fellowship of God, after having briefly sketched the dimensions of the altar, gives instructions for its consecration, and the consecration of the priesthood, which was all that was needed to complete the arrangements. … The seven days’ purification services for the altar have respect to the original directions of Moses for the same purpose, in Exodus 29:37, and are simply a preparation for the great end aimed at—that God might accept the sacrifices of the people, and be gracious to them ( Ezekiel 43:27). This indispensably required that there should first be a consecrated way of access—a holy altar, and a holy priesthood to minister at it.”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp474, 475.—W. P.]

Ezekiel 43:13, with which the vision already turns more expressly to the second particular, the service in the temple of Jehovah, has been prepared for by occasional references, such as Ezekiel 40:38 sq, Ezekiel 42:13 sq, but is introduced in particular by the “ordinances” and “precepts” commanded to be made known in Ezekiel 43:11 of our chapter. We remark, as regards the predominating evangelical tone of the vision, that the statement that Jehovah’s sanctuary, as well as Jehovah Himself, will dwell among His people, precedes any commandment or ordinance in regard to it. So the time of the wandering patriarchs was likewise before the time of the law, which simply came in between promise and fulfilment.—And these are the measures, the idea is symbolized in the “measure.”—הַמִּזְבֵּחַ is the altar of burnt-offering ( Ezekiel 40:47; Ezekiel 9:2; Exodus 30:28 sq.). Both on account of its significance in regard to the people in their relation to Jehovah,—since it is for the court what the ark which is wanting in Ezekiel is for the most holy place, and the altar of incense for the holy place (comp. Ezra 3),—and also because a fresh section of the vision announces itself here, the more exact statement of the measures is repeated in accordance with Ezekiel 40:5.—חֵיק, from חוּק, “to surround,” is the Song of Solomon -called bosom,—Gesenius: the hallowed part of the altar, where the fire burnt; Keil: its base; Hengst.: the same as its back (?), namely, the enclosure, which was of brass,—as being on the outside; “back,” because it formed the periphery of the altar; “bosom,” because it embraces and grasps the heart, since חֵיק properly means something that grasps. Evidently the whole circumference of the altar will be first given. Keil translates: “a bottom-frame one cubit high and one cubit broad” (?). In the case of that which encloses the earth and stone, the kernel of the altar, the breadth is the thickness.—גְבוּלָהּ (the feminine suffix here and in שְׂפָתָהּ, referring to חֵיק, has been explained from the transferred relation); more closely defined by אֶל־שְׂפָתָהּ סָבִיב, is, since anything else can scarcely be understood from the foregoing, the one span, that is, half cubit broad edging projecting over the circumference. הָאֶחָד, as noun: a span of unity, of the one = one span. Keil, who interprets from below upwards, places here a moulding a half cubit high.—וְזֶה נַּב הַמִּזְבֵחַ is commonly translated: the “back,” which גַּב must as little signify as it can denote the “socle” of the altar, the bottom-frame with its moulding. According to the fundamental idea of the root-word, to be “drawn together,” “heaped up,” גַּב may at least quite as well denote something elevated or high, which is so easily expressed by this object (altare), as what is bowed or bent, especially when circumference and edging have preceded, and when in this way the configuration in height was not yet touched on.

Ezekiel 43:14 would describe this from the bottom upwards; hence מֵחֵיק הָאָרֶץ = from the circumference (starting from that with which the description began in Ezekiel 43:13), where it rose above the earth, apparently as belonging to it and raising itself out of it. [And for this reason Hävernick already in Ezekiel 43:13 makes the bosom mean: the lowest part of the altar, the part immediately on the earth, the support of the whole. Keil understands הָאָרֶץ of the filling up of the חֵיק with earth (?).]—הָעֲזָרָה, Hengst.: “closing;” Keil: “walling round.” The Aramaicized word, which is derived as a softened form from עָצַר, denotes in 2 Chronicles 4:9; 2 Chronicles 6:13, the court (חָצֵר, the “enclosure”). If derived from עָזַר, “to hold off” (hence, “to protect,” “to help”), the word would indicate a rest or landing-place, as the courts formed such ascending landing-places or terraces. It can hardly be a third designation for the wall of the altar (Hengst.: “especially the external wall of the two cubits thick enclosure”). When, as here, the height of the altar is treated of, two rests are to be understood, one above the other,—first a lower one, because only two cubits high, and therefore called the lesser, in relation to the greater of four cubits high, the next and higher one. The repeatedly stated breadth of one cubit makes the detailed description of the more general description in Ezekiel 43:13 more intelligible. We make by addition the height six cubits; Keil, seven cubits, but where is his half cubit נְּבוּל?

Ezekiel 43:15. הַהַרְאֵל, “the mountain of God,” four cubits high, denotes after the two court-like rests, in the priestly mode of expression, the altar proper, as it were the sanctuary upon the very high mountain ( Ezekiel 40:2). The height of the altar which is being described suggested the expression; and accordingly the entire temple edifice, as it has been designated after the temple proper, “house” or “palace,” concentrates itself in the altar with its rests, designated as it is after its upper part: mountain of God. From this, however, the genuine priestly term: הָאֲרִאֵיל, is still to be distinguished. The Qeri reads: אֲרִיאֵל, adopting which Keil interprets, in conformity with Isaiah 29:1, not: “lion of God,” but, from אָרָה, “to burn” (ara Dei): “hearth of God.” Hengst. holds for the reading in the text: אֲרִי, “lion,” and takes איל, the י being elided by the Masoretes, as “ram,” while he thinks it possible that the original form was אראֵיל, instead of אראַיִל, so that a double sense had been intended. Lion of God and ram-lion, the lion that consumes the rams for God! At all events, what is meant is the upper surface, that is, in reality the fire-hearth of the altar from the four corners of which the four horns extended, and these, according to Jewish tradition, belonged to the essential requisites of the altar, and indicate the insignia of kingly dominion, hence the revelation of divine power and glory, etc. (Bähr, Symb. i. p473); with these our description is completed as regards extent upwards. The altar has, like that of Song of Solomon, a height of ten cubits.

Ezekiel 43:16. The account of the height is followed by that of the length and breadth, measured at the highest point of the altar, and given for the whole four sides from the ground up.

Ezekiel 43:17. Setting out now from that which is not a part of the altar proper (וְהָעֲזָרָה, collective, comp. Ezekiel 43:14), the lower ledge, in contrast and as complement to וְהָאֲרִאֵיל ( Ezekiel 43:16), the top surface, Ezekiel 43:17, measures fourteen instead of twelve cubits square, since it adds from Ezekiel 43:13-14 the thickness of the “bosom,” a cubit on each side, to the length and the breadth; this is referred to in what follows: and the border round about it, etc. = “and its border at its lip round about” ( Ezekiel 43:13), although for the sake of variety we have half a cubit here, instead of a span there.—And its bosom, etc. ( Ezekiel 43:13); this explains the difference in the measurement here from that of Ezekiel 43:16. The mention of the bosom and the border reverts to the beginning of the description of the altar ( Ezekiel 43:13), so that only גַּב there still needs to be mentioned, and this is now done by naming the steps, in distinction from Exodus 20:26, indicating the elevation of the altar of burnt-offering. [Bähr carries an inclined plane round the altar for a similar purpose as the two rests here.]—פְּנוֹת, infinitive = when one turns, equivalent to: toward; according to others, a noun, read by Hitzig as participle פֹּנוֹת.

Ezekiel 43:18 leads to the consecration of the altar of burnt-offering, forming an introduction to its ritual for the purpose stated, and to its service. In other words, as the entire temple-edifice was referred to the underlying idea by means of the measuring, that is, was set forth as to its symbolical signification, Song of Solomon, in accordance with its intention as respects the people, in whom the idea is to be realized, the altar of burnt-offering has been purposely described at such length; but this intention will be effected only by this means, that, strictly parallel with the entrance of the glory into the sanctuary, a formal act of sacrificial consecration in respect of the altar of burnt-offering is provided for beforehand. The clothing of the idea is a kind of dramatic transaction between Ezekiel and the priests of the new temple, an act of the future with which we can compare from the past Leviticus 8. ( Exodus 29:10 sq.); 1 Kings 8:62 sq.; 2 Chronicles 8:4 sq.—By the words: on the day when it is made, the ordinances of the altar are more closely defined as ordinances which are fulfilled (as to their idea) as soon as the whole temple, including this altar, will be in actual existence. A “being made” is also spoken of in the sense of the reference throughout to the people, just as the whole consecration points to men, who as such can do nothing pure or holy. Comp. Exodus 20:22; Leviticus 16:16. But the consecration of the altar, the ritual of which is told to the prophet in the Old Testament mode of expression, particularly by the solemn: “thus saith the Lord,” etc, holds out the prospect of a consecration of the people by Jehovah.—By the avowed purpose of the altar, “to cause ascendings” (as the burnt-offerings meant to be wholly burnt, specially fulfilling the view, are called) “to ascend upon it” (with reference to the altar, the raising up of the gift), and to sprinkle blood upon it (which precisely in these offerings was done merely on the altar round about), is therefore signified in the first instance, and corresponding at the same time to the act of consecration here, the consecration of the people to Jehovah, their entire surrender and presentation of themselves to Him. The burnt-offerings usher in the class of offerings which obtains in the state of grace. The justified man lives henceforth not to himself; the service of the Lord which is ministered in the Church is symbolized by this purpose of the altar of burnt-offering; hence there is no act of worship without burnt-offering. Its expiatory significance comes out only in a secondary way in referring to the altar, just as the sprinkling with blood in the case of the burnt-offering takes place in the most general form. But since, in the time before the law, the burnt-offerings were at the same time the sin-offerings,—just as their atoning nature reminds of the sin which continually adheres to us, although the awakened conscience is again hushed,—so likewise the history of sacrifice is represented to us by this oldest of all sacrifices; thus the self-surrendering reliance on grace continues to be taken into account, as in the past, so for the future, and so the burnt-offering may be called the perpetual offering of the Church of God.

Ezekiel 43:19 passes over from the altar as to its purpose to the priests and the appropriate victims. The former are simply presupposed as a body of priests descended from Levi, belonging through the tribe to the whole people as their natural and official representatives, and that without consecration, which took place at the tabernacle; nevertheless, instead of consecration the elective appointment is repeated (comp. Ezekiel 40:46), so that only the race of Zadok who draw near to Jehovah ( Ezekiel 42:13) are qualified for the service (comp. on Ezekiel 44:15 sq.). As to the second element, the victim, פַּר בֶּן־בָּקָר, a young bullock was fixed on. The male was the fitting victim for the burnt-offering, and the bullock was the most distinguished among the animals coming into consideration for a sin-offering; and so the high priest, as priestly head and representative of the community, offered for his cleansing a bullock still in the full flower of his strength ( Leviticus 4:3 sq, comp 13 sq.).

Ezekiel 43:20. Comp. Ezekiel 43:15; Ezekiel 43:14; Ezekiel 43:17; Ezekiel 43:13. The sprinkling of the blood is the sprinkling in detail of the particular parts characteristic of the sin-offering. The cleansing and expiation of the altar have a reflex influence on the people that made it, and that, at the word of God (in Leviticus 17:11 the altar is a place of God), raise themselves up there to God. That which the two words employed express (cleanse, and expiate), that which the procedure above and below and around the extremities symbolizes, will be a complete sanctification of the people. With such a strong representation of the cleansing, an anointing of the altar, etc. ( Leviticus 8:11) was not necessary in order to give expression to the idea.

Ezekiel 43:21. הַפָּר הַחַטָּאת, the article before the stat. constr. It is quite as unwarranted simply to suppose everything omitted, as from what is not said to make the prophet be in contradiction with the Mosaic ceremonial. The statements in this vision are mainly determined by the idea to be set forth, and which shows itself everywhere. Thus there was no need of saying anything about the blood which was not consumed, and which elsewhere was poured out at the foot of the altar of burnt-offering to prevent its being profaned, since the sanctification is so strongly expressed in that no mention is once made of the fat upon the inwards which came upon the altar, but it is so spoken as if the fire consumed the whole animal (comp. besides in Leviticus 4:12; Leviticus 8:17, the manner of expression) without the sanctuary; comp. Leviticus 4:21; Leviticus 6:23. Thus not within the house, and if in a place that may be supposed related to it, certainly (comp. what was remarked in speaking of the gizrah, Ezekiel 41) in the “off-place,” hardly Ezekiel 46:19 sq.

Ezekiel 43:22. The goat is the atonement for a prince ( Leviticus 4:23), but also the characteristic offering for the people on the great day of atonement ( Leviticus 16.). Thus the people might be looked upon as perfectly represented at the altar of the court, Ezekiel 43:19 sq. ecclesiastically, and here civilly, by their two heads the high priest and the prince (comp. Ezekiel 44:3 sq.), with reference at the same time to the great yearly atonement. At any rate, only the second day is marked at the beginning which is made with the bullock as sin-offering; the following days up to the seventh are, as respects sin-offering, introduced and indicated by the second.—תָּמִים, integer, which had to be the quality of every victim, but clearly more noteworthy here when the civil side is treated of.—וְחִטְּאוּ, the priests, or: one, etc, while at the same time Ezekiel 43:21 sq. is illustrated in this respect by כַּאֲשר׳. The prophet does it by instructing the priests to do it.—After what has been stated regarding these two days, that the bullock cleanses the altar, etc. ( Ezekiel 43:20), to which reference is expressly made in speaking of the goat of the second day ( Ezekiel 43:22), then בְּכַלּוֹתְךָ מֵחַטּא in Ezekiel 43:23 can be understood only of the completion of the two sin-offerings, to which the subordinate purpose of the altar, the mention of the sprinkling of blood ( Ezekiel 43:18), had led the prophet, so that he now comes to what is spoken of as the principal purpose, to the burnt-offering, which, in the indefiniteness as regards time with which the bullock and ram of which it consists are spoken of, can be quite as easily assigned to the first day as it is expressly assigned in Ezekiel 43:25 to seven days.

Ezekiel 43:24. What remained still indefinite in Ezekiel 43:22 now becomes quite clear by the mention of the priests.

Very significant, however, and exceedingly telling for the setting forth of the idea of sanctification already remarked in Ezekiel, is the casting of salt by the priests, which in the law is expressly demanded for the meat-offering, and appears here connected in a similar manner (שָׁלַךְ) with the burnt-offering, although salt ( Leviticus 2:13) was to be put on every oblation. Salt (especially in contrast with leaven and honey), by its seasoning and antiseptic power, with its hidden cleansing fire which consumes everything unclean, is meant to bring out the signification of the powerful truth which keeps off impurity and hypocritical legal sanctity, viz. the surrender to the service of the Lord symbolized in the burnt-offering. Perhaps its character as salt of the covenant of God, with reference to the eternity thereof ( Numbers 18:19; 2 Chronicles 13:5), comes additionally into consideration for the act of consecration. The quality of human nature, observes Hengst, is unsalted, and may not enter into relation with God.

Ezekiel 43:25. The seven days can be neither nine nor eight days, i.e. excluding the first two days, or at least the first day, for they are expressly seven; as also it is said again in Ezekiel 43:26, וְכִפַּרתָּהוּ (Qeri: יְכַפְּרוּ), with evident allusion to וְכּפַּרתָּהוּ in Ezekiel 43:20. Moreover, apart from the significance of the number seven as the number of the covenant, consecration, sanctification, etc, it is the basis of all solemnities in Israel, as Keil observes: prescribed in the law without exception for every act of consecration continuing over one day. Comp. particularly Exodus 29:37; 2 Chronicles 7:9. The one kid for a sin-offering daily cannot possibly be held to run counter to this, for it expresses what relates to the majority of these days, six days; and in respect of the first day, the bullock ( Ezekiel 43:19 sq.) stood clearly defined from the outset. The two victims appointed for burnt-offering ( Ezekiel 43:23 sq.) are also distinguished from the kid by the change from תַּעֲשֶׂה to יַעֲשׂוּ. And not without significance could the cleansing sin-offering, in distinction from the burnt-offering, be ascribed—although only formally—to the prophet; in this keeping separate he represents the sanctifying grace of God, and the priests the community sanctifying themselves to God.—As Ezekiel 43:23 sq. is supplemented by the שִׁבְעַת יָמִים placed at the beginning of Ezekiel 43:25, and qualifying the whole verse, the burnt-offering in question is to be offered daily during the seven days after the daily completion of the cleansing.

Ezekiel 43:26, concluding the act of consecration,—hence couched in general terms,—confirms both the merely seven days’ duration of the consecration of the altar (for nothing else is meant by טִהֲרוּ), and also, in virtue of the entire consecration above mentioned, its perfect purification, on the ground and in consequence of the expiation (וְכַפְּרוּ) of the altar, which according to Ezekiel 43:20 is its cleansing. We might translate; a pronouncing clean for the present use, treated of in Ezekiel 43:27. It is certainly also in harmony with this when, in making over to the altar thereby represented as entering personally on its functions, the peculiar phrase: fill its hand, is used. After the use previously in the description of the altar of the words “bosom” and “lip” in reference to it, its hand (יָדיָו, plur, is a needless gloss) can cause no surprise, especially in Ezekiel, who delights in bold symbols. The altar representing the people in the priests, even of itself, easily becomes a person, and still more readily if the idea of it is to be made prominent. But to “fill the hand” is the expression used in Leviticus 8. on occasion of the offering for consecrating the priests, inasmuch as those parts of the offering, which otherwise were heaved and waved in the thank-offering, were laid, along with the loaves and cakes, into the hands of the priests. With exception of the breast and shoulder, all this was laid on the altar as a sacrifice of consecration (מִלֻּאִם). The expression: מִלֵּא יָד, occurs similarly in Exodus 32:29; 1 Chronicles 29:5; 2 Chronicles 29:31 (יֶדְכֶם), in reference to Jehovah, so that the application to the priests in general denotes the giving of a present to them, which, although by the people, is yet as from Jehovah. It indicates in particular, however, their official right to their ministry, and the obligation of this ministry to offer to Jehovah in the fire of the altar. Since the expression, different from the consecration proper of priests, implies the conferring of the priestly office, the formal installation into it,—the making of it over to the altar here, corresponding to its purification, is designed to represent the making over of the altar of burnt-offering for the service assigned to it, as Ezekiel 43:27 farther describes. The use for which this altar will have to be employed henceforth, after the completion of what has to be completed in regard to it in the seven days, as, moreover, it is expressly said: on the eighth day and onwards, is intimated by the burnt-offering and the Shelamim, which, however, appear not exactly as the principal and most frequent offerings, instar omnium (Keil, Hengst.), but to make prominent the idea of a people of God in the state of grace, as the kinds of offering befitting such a relation to Jehovah. Hence also the Shelamim are not called here זְבָחִים, “slain offerings,” in order to give a general designation for offerings, or to mark the distinction from the burnt-offering, which falls entirely to Jehovah, but שְׁלָמִים, that is, salvation-offerings (peace-offerings), a designation well fitted to place them on a level with the “whole offering” (כָּלִיל), as the burnt-offering is also called: full surrender is met by full grace, salvation perfect in respect to the past and for the future, and the individual’s enjoyment of peace resting on and flowing from it (in which perhaps the more private character of this species of offering compared with the more official character of the burnt-offering should be noticed). The burnt-offerings mentioned first give the key-note, just as they are also strengthened through the bullock in the seven days’ consecration. As supplicatory offerings, the Shelamim, therefore, are also rather thank-offerings, because the praying Church knows on whom she believes (as John 11:41). Finally, the Shelamim were in the Old Covenant the oldest flesh-offerings after the burnt-offerings. Comp. also Exodus 10:25; Exodus 18:12 (in reference to the delivering of Israel out of Egypt), and Genesis 46:1.—רָצָא, thus only here, elsewhere רָצָה ( Ezekiel 20:40-41), refers to: “restraining,” so that the guilt presupposed in having recourse to the sacrifice is confessed; hence Niphal in Isaiah 40:2 ( Leviticus 26:41; Leviticus 26:43 : ר׳ עון) of guilt being recompensed, here: to receive as unrestrained by guilt (the idea of justification is perceptible in the word), equivalent to: to receive graciously.

HOMILETIC HINTS

On Ch43

Ezekiel 43:1. “Jerusalem, how gladly would our foot stand in thy gates!” ( Psalm 122.)—“Open to me the pearl gates, Thou who art the Ornament of heaven’s city, Light from Light, chosen as the Light before the world began,” etc. (Dessler).—To come to Christ is really to find out the bearings of this world.—“The entrance took place after the measuring of the temple and consideration of its adornment. So did Christ show His disciples, represented in the person of the prophet, the whole heavenly edifice by word and work ( John 17:6); and everything pertaining to the building of this spiritual temple was finished on the cross. The entrance of the glory from the east for lighting the temple took place when the apostles, on the day of Pentecost, were endued with power from on high,” etc. (Œcol.)—“When Jesus comes there is light; darkness must disappear, and all is pure joy and comfort, Psalm 97:11” (Cr.).

Ezekiel 43:2 sq. “The gracious advent of Jehovah indicates the visitation of grace in the forgiveness of all sins, in light, salvation, and blessedness” (Starck).—“The voice is that of Psalm 19, the voice of the gospel, which resounds through the whole world” (Starck).—Where the gospel is preached, the waters of life make a noise not only of themselves, but also from the stones which men cast in, and from the rocky banks of worldly hearts which make resistance; but the glory of eternity shines upon earth.—“The loud noise of the glory is the voice of them who praise the Lord with one heart and one voice, here on earth as there in heaven, Revelation 14:1” (Heim-Hoff.).—“We have here the hymn of praise and the triumphant joy of the saints as they cheer and encourage one another; the contradiction, confutation, and blasphemy of the wicked at the confessions of believers; the cries of the spectators expressing their various opinions, and the songs of the witnesses unto blood at the stake; just as in a triumphal procession the victors shout with joy, the vanquished howl. There is no more glorious victory than that of faith” (Cocc.).—“The creature has its voice only from the Creator; and therefore His voice must sound louder than its, however loud it is, Psalm 93:3-4 ( Daniel 10:6; Revelation 1:15). He who said: ‘Let there be light,’ Himself shines forth at His appearing in the clearest light, as He who dwelleth in light that is inaccessible, 1 Timothy 6:16; James 1:17 [ Psalm 50:12; Deuteronomy 33:2; Revelation 18:1]” (Hengst.).—“The justice and wisdom of God, kept secret since the world began, are set before the eyes of all. There was no corner in which the truth was not heard, whether it met with approval or contradiction. Thus no one perishes unless he is an enemy to the light. Christ is altar, priest, and sacrifice; hence they who are near the altar cannot but have a sight of His glory” (Cocc.).—“Let us pray God to enlighten the dark earth of our heart with that holy light of His glory!” (Œcol.)

Ezekiel 43:3. The terror of the prophet on account of the past and in the present; what will be the future terrors of the wicked!—“The thought of the perdition of the lost always causes pain and alarm to the true prophets” (Starck).—“The knowledge of God never causes pride, but humility, because it at the same time discovers the corruption of the heart. The more modest a man is, and the less he trusts to himself, the more is he endowed with the knowledge of God. The bowed down are, however, revived by the Lord and led by the Spirit to the place where the majesty of the God of glory shines” (Heim-Hoff.).

Ezekiel 43:4 sq. Whom the Spirit has cast down, the Spirit raises up again.—This is life in dying, rising up in falling.—“Yea, thus shall God’s temple be, full of divine spirit and life; but then it must consist of other materials than brick or stone” (Diedrich).—“What hinders this glory from filling also thy heart, provided it is not full of other things, and needs first to become empty, that thy hunger and desire may by the breath of the Spirit seek and find satisfaction in its fulness?” (Berl. Bib.)

Ezekiel 43:6 sq. “God does not relinquish mankind; He continually creates anew His Israel for Himself” (Diedrich).—“That Jesus aimed at the preservation of the temple is shown by His cleansing of the temple at the commencement of His ministry, whereby He intimated His intention to effect a wholesome reformation. Not until after this reformation was decisively rejected did Hebrews, at the close of His ministry, effect the second cleansing of the temple, which is the symbolical announcement of its destruction: Ye would not have reformation, therefore ye must have revolution. The sentence: ‘Behold, your house is left unto you desolate’ ( Matthew 23), immediately follows the saying: ‘How often would I have gathered thy children,’ etc. Had they let themselves be gathered, their house would not have been destroyed; it would have become ‘a house of prayer for all people’ ( Isaiah 56:7). Jesus speaks first in view of His passion in Matthew 24:2, when the stiff-necked obduracy of the people had been completely revealed. Had the Jews listened to Him, had they not imposed silence on His disciples, the stones of the temple would not have cried out ( Luke 19:40; comp. Habakkuk 2:11). Not until they had stopped up the mouths of the true witnesses did the preaching of the stones sound forth. But while the abolition of the form was brought on by the mass of the people, who once more, and in the most culpable manner, thrust away from them their Creator, and lightly esteemed the Rock of their salvation ( Deuteronomy 32:15), the election, far from being deprived of the blessing pertaining to them, found a glorious compensation for the loss of the temple in the Church of Christ, the legitimate continuation of the temple, John 2:19” (Hengst.).—“It is man in whom, as in a temple chosen for Himself, He sets the throne of His glory. This is a New Testament word of promise; for what else does it imply than that sins are forgiven, our heart renewed, confirmed, and made obedient to the truth?” (Heim-Hoff.)—“(1) This temple shall be the true temple; (2) this temple is different from the former temple. Into it nations and kings bring indeed their glory, but the kings and people of Israel no longer their abominations” (Cocc.).—False doctrine brings the threshold of God and the threshold of men close to each other.—“Where the government of the Church is conducted by and according to the spirit of the State” (Berl. Bib.).—In this way the divine becomes human, and the human looks as if divine; and this is the devil’s union-work.—Therefore the sanctuary of the king is still not Jehovah’s sanctuary.—“A table at once the Lord’s and the devil’s, Paul has expelled from the Church” (Starck).

Ezekiel 43:9. “God now first returns to the apostates; but His grace is designed to work repentance, and then He will never more depart from them” (Diedrich).

Ezekiel 43:10 sq. “Solomon’s temple left the people in their disobedience and worship of idols; but this house belongs to a higher order. He who lays it to heart will cease sinning, and duly examine the temple and its measurements. For the measuring of the temple, which is not visibly present, must be done in the Spirit, ‘which temple, however, are ye’ ( 1 Corinthians 3). And therefore each one should examine with abasement his heart and conscience, and be displeased with himself because he has lived so long in ingratitude toward God,” etc. (Œcol.)—The shame of the poor sinner finds in the temple, which is Christ, exactly the right measure.—The understanding of Ezekiel’s temple-vision from the self-knowledge of the heart.—The turning to repentance through the promises of the gospel.—“The contemplation of the goodness and the works of God ought to bring shame into our hearts” (Starck).—“The form of the divine economy of grace is, in outline, here described” (Berl. Bib.).

Ezekiel 43:11 sq. “They who repent of their sins are capable of knowing the temple and its arrangements, while those who wantonly pursue fleshly desires receive not the Spirit of Wisdom of Solomon, and are incapable of knowing the law of the Lord ( 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 John 3:3). For the law of the house is God’s law, that everything be most holy” (Heim-Hoff.).—“That the temple stood on the top of the mountain lets the whole land have it continually before its eyes in its midst, and not now and then only on occasional visits” (Diedrich).

Ezekiel 43:13 sq. “Christ is the true altar ( Hebrews 13:10); for He is the propitiation for our sins ( 1 John 2:2; Romans 3:25), and He has sanctified Himself for us, John 17:19” (Cŕ).—“No one could go into the temple without passing by the altar, and so no one can go into heaven without the sacrifice of the death of Christ, Acts 4:12” (Starck).—Golgotha the true altar of burnt-offering: “here hangs the antitype of all the sacrifices” (Lampe).

Ezekiel 43:18 sq. “Thus God comes first and gives grace; His grace makes ashamed, chastises, sanctifies, reconciles, and produces intimate eternal fellowship. This is always God’s way with us men, provided only we recognise it aright in these days of ours, when now it is set in the most glorious light; Christ and the apostles have given additional clearness to Ezekiel” (Diedrich).—“In the New Testament we no longer offer material, but spiritual sacrifices through Jesus Christ, etc, 1 Peter 2:5” (Tüb. Bib.).—“He who would bring an offering pleasing to God must be of the race of Zadok, Isaiah 1:15 sq.” (starke).—The prayer of a righteous man availeth much, because it is effectual, James 5:16.—“All true believers are priests who can draw near to God, for access to the throne of grace has been opened to us through Christ” (Starck).—The ministers of a king are glorious; how much more so are they who minister before the King of all kings!

Ezekiel 43:21. Comp. Hebrews 13:11 sq.—“All this only illustrates more clearly the sacrifice of Christ” (Richter).

Ezekiel 43:22. Golgotha the place of purification of all altars.

Ezekiel 43:23 sq. “A man can offer himself as a burn-sacrifice to the Lord, when he fully, entirely, and unreservedly devotes himself to Him in faith and love. The end of our creation, redemption, and sanctification, involves this” (Berl. Bib.).

Ezekiel 43:25 sq. Christ finishes His work in His people too.—“It is not enough to begin well in what is good; we must also stand fast in the Lord, and continue stedfast unto the end, 2 Thessalonians 3:13; Hebrews 3:14; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:11” (Cr.).—“But those who are sanctified to the Lord by the sacrifice of Christ ought to praise God’s benefits, and especially to remember them at the Holy Supper, according to the saying: This do in remembrance of Me, and: Show the Lord’s death till He come” (Heim-Hoff.).

Ezekiel 43:27. “They who were in Christ before others ought in this to serve as priests to the younger believers” (Berl. Bib.).

DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS ON CH40–46

1. Hävernick rightly finds “the nervous and lofty unity” in the prophecies of Ezekiel “manifested in this section also.” “The visions of the prophet find here their fairest completion and perfect rounding off.” Already in the exposition (on Ezekiel 40:1 sq.) the harmony with the former part of Ezekiel’s prophecy has been remarked. Ezekiel 43:3 expressly refers back to Ezekiel 1, 8. The free conformity in expression between our chapters and the whole closing portion generally, and the earlier chapters, has been often proved (comp. Philippson, p1294). The proof is the more striking when we consider the complete difference of the subject. That we have a vision here too harmonizes not only with Ezekiel 1, 8, but in general with the prophetic character of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 8, 15, 17. The prophet has repeatedly hinted at this close of his book. Thus Ezekiel 11:16; Ezekiel 20:40; Ezekiel 36:38; Ezekiel 37:26 sq. The last passage in particular might be regarded as the text for Ezekiel 40 sq. The eighth and following chapters required by the necessity of the idea our conclusion of the book.

2. In regard to analogies in the other prophets, Ezekiel’s contemporaries, as we may well conceive, will chiefly come into consideration. Hence, above all, Ezekiel’s fellow-labourer Jeremiah. Jeremiah represents the restoration and renewal of Israel as a rebuilding of Jerusalem, Jeremiah 31:38 sq. (with this comp. in our prophet, Ezekiel 47:13 sq, Ezekiel 48). Jeremiah 33:18 is similar to Ezekiel 44:9 sq. Haggai 2:7 sq. follows entirely the thought here of a new temple, insisting on its glory in view of a meagre present. But still more analogous are the night-visions of Zechariah ( Ezekiel 2:5, 1] sq, Ezekiel 4, Ezekiel 6:13 sq, Ezekiel 14).

3. The parallel between Isaiah and Ezekiel, as it stands in relation to the vision in Ezekiel 1 (p41), is not completed by citing Isaiah 60 as corresponding to the close of our book; but we shall have to seek the culminating point of Isaiah’s prophecy for the culmination of Ezekiel’s, in accordance with the office of this prophet to be the prophet of Jehovah’s holiness to obdurate Israel, —just as for the commencement Isaiah 6 is covered by Ezekiel 1—not so much in the close as in Ezekiel 53. The corresponding pendant to our closing chapters is the life-like description given there of the Messiah and His sacrifice of Himself. It is this self-sanctification of Jehovah through His servant Israel which in Isaiah corresponds to the self-glorification of Jehovah in Ezekiel ( Ezekiel 40 sq.) by means of the new sanctuary and the new nationality; and this, again, accords with Ezekiel’s office, to behold the glory of Jehovah in the misery of the exile. In this respect Ezekiel stands to Isaiah somewhat as Easter and Pentecost do to Good Friday.

4. The different views, especially regarding the vision of the temple, may be distinguished generally as subjective and objective. I. The views which derive the explanation of Ezekiel 40 sq. solely or chiefly from Ezekiel’s subjectivity: (1) Already Villalpandus saw everywhere here only reminiscences of Solomon’s temple and of Solomon’s era, and consequently a similar line of thought to that in Ezra 3:12. Similarly Grotius, only that he reconciled the differences between Ezekiel’s temple and that of Solomon by ascribing them to the temple at the time of its destruction, just as Bunsen refers in this connection to 2 Kings16. According to both these expositors, Ezekiel traced out from reminiscences a pattern for the future restoration. Thus, according to Ewald, Ezekiel becomes “a prophetic lawgiver.” “Such an undertaking, quite unusual in the case of earlier prophets,” is explained from the “predominating thoughts and aspirations of the better class of those days for the restoration of the subverted kingdom.” “Ezekiel probably meditated long, with passionate longing and lively remembrance, on the institutions of the demolished temple, etc.; what appeared to him great and glorious became impressed upon his mind as a pattern, with which he compared the Messianic expectations and demands, etc, until at length the outline of the whole arrangement which he here writes down pressed itself upon him!” “Above all, he sketches the holy objects, temple and altar, with the utmost exactness and vividness, as if a spirit (!) impelled him, now when they were destroyed, at least to catch up their image in a faithful and worthy form for the redemption that will one day certainly come; so that he must have diligently instructed himself in these matters from the best written and oral sources” (!). “Thus it is quite in keeping with Ezekiel’s way of prophesying, that he introduces everything as if he had been borne in spirit into the restored and completed temple, accompanied throughout by a heavenly guide, and had learned exactly from him all the single parts of this unique building as to their nature and use.” The paragraph Ezekiel 47:1-12, is, in Ewald’s opinion, “from its great, all-embracing sense, quite adapted to bring to a close briefly and pithily all these presentiments!” “Yet when precepts more moral are to be given, or the perfected kingdom has to be described in its extent, reaching even beyond the temple, this assumed form (!) easily passes over into the simple prophetic discourse.” (2) While the foregoing view looks to realization, Hitzig, for example, entirely rejects the idea that Ezekiel “considered such things (as our chapters contain) possible, feasible, or probable, and relatively commanded and prescribed them.” “One does not or did not reflect that the prophet’s calling was to express the demands of the idea, indifferent in the first instance about their realization.” All is pure fancy, a mere castle-in-the-air, a kind of “Platonic sketch,” as Herder expresses himself. The self-criticism of this view of our chapters can hardly be more suitably given than when Hitzig continues: “Inasmuch as this or that could be set in order otherwise than he imagines, he would not in regard to plans and proposals have resisted obstinately, but would have known how to distinguish the unessential of the execution from the essential of the thing itself. He sketches the future in the form he must wish it to take, in which it really would have the fairest appearance. If the reality falls short of the image, then the idea is defectively realized; but the fault lies in the reality, not in the idea, and Ezekiel is not responsible for it.” This, moreover, is merely what already Doederlein and others have held with respect to the closing portion of our book. Similarly Herder: “Ezekiel’s manner is to paint an image entire and at length; his mode of conception appears to demand great visions, figures written over on all sides, even tiresome, difficult, symbolical Acts, of which his whole book is full. Israel in his wandering upon the mountains of his dispersal, among other tongues and peoples, had need of a prophet such as this one was, etc. So also as regards this temple. Another would have sketched it with soaring figures in lofty utterances; he does so in definite measurements. And not only the temple, but also appurtenances, tribes, administration, land, etc. How far has Israel always, so far as depended on his own efforts, remained below the commands, counsels, and promises of God!” (3) Böttcher has attempted to combine both views, and after him Philippson, who expresses himself to the following effect: “Ezekiel the prophet, sunk in himself, brooding over matters in the distance and in solitude, had not, like Jeremiah, upon whom the immediate reality pressed, viewed the occurrences simply as punishment of defection and degeneracy, but was conscious also of their inward signification, which came to him in the appearance of a vision. Hence he represented the destruction of the temple as a suspension of the relation of revelation between God and Israel; and so much the more necessary was it to represent the restoration of that same relation as the return of God into the restored sanctuary. Now, from the peculiar character of Ezekiel, this necessarily had to assume a form at once ideal and real,—ideal in its entirety as something future, real as individual and special, matter of fact in its appearance.” As the “indubitable motive of the prophet,” the following is given: “to keep alive in the exiles in the midst of Babylonian idolatry the idea of the one temple, and the priestly institute consecrated to it, as the centre of the religion of the one God; and at the return into Palestine to confirm the life of the people in their calling, by the removal of all elements of strife, and by approximation to the Mosaic state of things.” Hengstenberg’s view is surprisingly near the above one; he says: “With the exception of the Messianic section in Ezekiel 47:1-12, the fulfilment of all (!) the rest of the prophecy belongs to the times immediately after the return from the Chaldean exile. So must every one of its first hearers and readers have understood it. Jeremiah, whom Ezekiel follows throughout, had prophesied the restoration of the city and temple70 years after the beginning of the Chaldean servitude, falling in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Thirty-two years had already elapsed. Forty years after the devastation of Egypt ( Ezekiel 29:13), the nations visited by the Chaldeans shall get back to their former state. According to Ezekiel 11:16, the restoration is to follow in a brief space after the destruction of the temple. We have before us a prophecy for which it is essential (!) to give truth and poetry (! !), which contains a kernel of real thoughts, yet does not present them naked, but clothed with flesh and blood, that they may be a counterpoise to the sad reality, because they fill the fancy, that fruitful workshop of despair, with bright (!) images, and thus make it an easier task to live in the word at a time when all that is visible cries aloud, Where is now thy God? The incongruity between the prophecy of Ezekiel and the state of things after the exile, vanishes at once by distinguishing between the thoughts and their clothing, and if we can rightly figure to ourselves the wounds for which the healing plaster is here presented, and at the same time the mental world of the priest (Ezekiel), and the materials given in the circumstances surrounding him, for clothing the higher verities which he had to announce to the people.” II. The views which above all look to and keep hold of the objectivity of the divine inspiration of Ezekiel. The very regard which must, in one way or other, be paid to the circumstances under which the people for whom, and the Babylonian exile in which, Ezekiel prophesied, objectivizes in some measure his subjectivity, so that not all the views hitherto cited of our chapters and the ones that follow are to be designated as purely subjective; the properly objective, however, will be, that “the hand of Jehovah was upon him,” that he was brought “in visions of God” to the land of Israel. Here the distinction is drawn by his own hand between the prophet of Israel and the fanciful Jewish priest; and not only this, but the unavoidable and irreconcilable alternative presents itself: either Ezekiel was a man of God, or a deceiver, for whom the fact that he had deceived himself also with assumed divine objectivity were no excuse, but would only be his self-condemnation. The case of Ezekiel, for the sake of truth, is too solemn for thinking of “poetic clothing” in the case before us. The subjective for the form before us, is to keep in mind when considering it what that form is. It has pleased God to speak to us through men. If we take full account of the national peculiarity of Israel in general during the whole old covenant, and of the peculiar personality in the case of our vision here, that is, that Ezekiel is the priest-prophet, that he above all other prophets is, as Umbreit says, a “born symbolist” ( “in the temple which he erects he makes known his greatness as a symbolist, as well by what he says as by what he passes over in silence”),—if we concede to Umbreit the “surprising skill in popularizing instruction” which he observes in Ezekiel, we shall have to accept as the ultimate ground why Israel was the mediator of the world’s salvation, and Ezekiel was chosen to behold the temple of the future, divine wisdom and its purpose for the world, that is, the objective κατ̓ ἐξοχην above everything subjective. In accordance with this principle, we have to judge of (1) the view objectivized in this sense of a model for the rebuilding of the temple after the return from the exile, the supporters of which assume a building-plan “issued under divine authority,” given by Jehovah through the prophet. Although there is a resemblance between Exodus 25:9; Exodus 25:40 and Ezekiel 40:4, yet it is not said to Ezekiel regarding Israel: “according to all that I show thee, the pattern of the dwelling, etc, even so shall ye make it;” the prophet is only to “convey,” announce (נָגַד) all that he sees to the house of Israel. From this circumstance, and not because the reality fell short of the idea (Hitzig, Herder), or, as Philippson adduces here, “the similar fate of so many Mosaic precepts,” the fact is explained that the post-exile temple was built without any regard to our vision. Only the fundamental reference to Solomon’s temple, which in general obtains in Ezekiel also, meets us in Ezra 3:12. This fact, the more remarkable considering the nearness of time, shows that Ezekiel 40:4, soon after it was written, and when fully known, was not regarded as a divine building-specification. We do not need, therefore, to express, as Hengst, “the obvious impossibility of erecting a building according to the specifications here given.” The circumstance that the building materials are not given has at least not prevented the temple of Ezekiel from being, with more or less success, constructed and fashioned after his statements. Bunsen says that “the temple here forms a very easily realized, congruous whole, of which an exact outline may be made, as the prophet also has evidently done.” Umbreit, too, holds this latter view. And although we have to do not with an architect but with a prophet, yet nothing stands in the way of our believing that the subjectivity of Ezekiel was preeminently qualified for this vision, from the fact that he possessed architectural capacity” (Introd. § 7). (2) The symbolical view. It corresponds generally to the character of Holy Writ. (Comp. Lange, Rev. Introd. p11.) In particular it pays due regard to the law of Moses, to the part of it relating to worship, the subject here. Especially when the whole worship of Israel is concentrated in the temple, a symbolical view respecting a vision thereof will be quite in place. Thereby only its due right is given to this objective, to the divine idea, in the shape which it has above all assumed in

Israelitish worship. The symbolical character, moreover, is specially appropriate for the prophetic writings. As has already been often said and pointed out, the symbolical predominates in Ezekiel; and as to these concluding chapters, Hävernick adduces, as indicating their general character, the description of the circuit of the new temple ( Ezekiel 42:15 sq.), the representation of the entrance, etc. of the divine glory ( Ezekiel 43:1 sq.), the river ( Ezekiel 47:1 sq. etc.), and observes that “it is just such passages that form the conclusion to the previous description, and hence cast a light on it.” Comp. on Ezekiel 43:10 sq. But everything architectonic is not a symbol, although everything of that nature will indeed primarily relate to the building to be erected, and will thereby at the same time in some way serve the idea of the whole. This character comes out clearly even in individual statements of number, yet all such measurements are not therefore to be interpreted symbolically. Nay, as the exposition shows, there are here bare Numbers, resisting every attempt to trace them back to the idea. It is sufficient in respect to the Numbers, that (comp. Umbreit, p259 sq.) 4, as “signature not only of regularity but also of the revelation of God in space,” e.g. in the quadrangle of the temple; 3, “the signature of the divine,” e.g. in the sets of three gates; 10, “perfection complete in itself,” occurring often; likewise the “sacred number” 7; and the number 12 in the tables for preparing the offerings ( Ezekiel 40), represent symbolism. (On the symbolism of Numbers, comp. Lange on Rev. Introd. p14.) Umbreit rightly maintains: “It is a symbolical temple, notwithstanding the arid and dry description, in which only exact specifications of the number of cubits and the apparently most insignificant calculations and measurings occur;” as he says, “quite in keeping with the poverty of the immediately succeeding age and the dignity of the most significant inwardness.” (3) The Messianic view (for which comp. Lange on Kings, p60 sq.) is only the taking full advantage of and applying the symbolic view in general. Symbol and type, emblem and pattern, must mutually interpenetrate one another in a law like that of Israel. What separates Israel from the heathen is its law; what qualifies Israel for the whole world is its promise. But now, because of sin, the law has come in between the promise and the fulfilment; that sin becoming the more powerful as transgression may make manifest for faith the grace which alone is still more powerful, and that consequently the necessity of the promise should be the more apparent; that is, the pedagogy of the law (and especially of its ethical part) to Christ. Thus the law of Israel is the theocratic expression of Israel, the servant of God, as he ought to be, and hence prefigures the servant of Jehovah who is the fulfilling of the law, as He is the personal fulfilling of Israel, inasmuch as in Him who was delivered for our transgressions, and raised again for our δικαιωσις, Israel after the Spirit is represented; so that here out of the law relating to worship rise up, as on the one hand sacrifice and the priesthood, so on the other the concentration of the whole of worship in the temple, this parable of the future, with reference to which Christ, John 2, gives the σημειον: Destroy (λυσατε) this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (ἐγερω), saying this of the temple of His body; as also the disciples remembered when He had risen from the dead, and as the accusation against Him ran ( Matthew 26:61). Accordingly the law, and especially the temple and its service, is σκιαν ἐχων των μελλοντων: the future σωμα is given in the σωμα του Χριστου (σωμα δε κατηρτισω μου, Hebrews 10). “This reference to the future,” says Ziegler (in his thoughtful little work on the “historical development of divine revelation”), “is the most dynamical among all the references of the law; its significance for its own time is so weak and unimportant, that it seems to exist solely for the sake of the future, although its office is the opposite of the office of the New Testament, which is formed and abiding in the hearts of men (διακονια της δικαιοσυνης, του τνευματος); still it was a sensible type, a strongly marked and distinctly stamped shadow of the coming substances, and yet, moreover, a veil which concealed it.” What has been said shows the typical signification of the vision of Ezekiel, in which the symbolical view of it is completed, and the pedagogic and providential necessity of that form borrowed from the legal worship in which it is enshrined. Here is more than what (as Hengstenberg can say) “suffices to employ the fancy.” For the anointed one is τελος του νομου. But as the Messianic view of our chapters is thus justified by the symbolic view, when we have taken into account the law, particularly the law of worship in Israel, so likewise the already (Doct. Reflec1) noted connection of Ezekiel 40 sq. with the previous chapters, especially with Ezekiel 37:26 sq. (p351), yields the same result, as also the position after Ezekiel 38, 39 and the relation to this prophecy will have to be taken into consideration. What holds good of Ezekiel 37:26 sq. will also be a hint for our chapters. But even the Talmudists saw themselves compelled (principally because of the treatment of the law of Moses, to be spoken of presently) to acknowledge “that the exposition of this portion would be first given in Messianic times,” as the “best” (according to Philippson) Jewish expositors recognised here “the type of a third temple.” The saying of Jesus in John ii. possibly alluded to the exegetical tradition of the Jews. Hävernick accommodates as follows: “The shattered old theocratic forms rather than new ones were above all cognate to the priestly mind of Ezekiel;” so “he sees nothing perish of that which Jehovah has founded for eternity; those forms beam before him revivified, animated with fresh breath, and lit up in the splendour of true glory; he recognises their full realization as coming in first in Messianic times.” As errors are still committed, e.g. by Schmieder, in the symbolizing of particulars, so the Messianic typology of a Cocceius has deserved, although only in part, the anathema on “mystical allegories,” which above all modern criticism utters; for our defect in understanding in respect of many particulars will always have to be conceded. The Christian idea, however, the Old Testament typical symbolizing of which we have here to expound, is not only the idea of Christ, but also the idea of the Christian Church, the kingdom of God in Christ. If the resurrection of the Anointed One comes into consideration in the first respect, so in the latter does the consummation of the kingdom of grace, after its last affliction, into the kingdom of glory; comp. Revelation 21:22. The one is as eschatological in the wider, that is, christological in the narrower sense, as the other is eschatological in the narrower, or christological in the wider sense. By the translating of our passage into the higher key of John’s Apocalypse, the relation of Ezekiel 40 sq. to Ezekiel 38, 39 must be so much the more evident. Comp. Doct. Reflec. on xxxviii. and xxxix. We refer, finally, to what has been said in the Introduction, § 7, that Jehovah’s building in Ezekiel here (still more in its already actual reality for the seer, so that what already existed had only to be measured to him) forms the architectonic antithesis to the buildings of Nebuchadnezzar. As the figure of Gog with his people may have presented itself to our prophet through means of Babylon (comp. Doct. Reflec. on Ezekiel 3839, p375), so from that same quarter may have been derived the representation given of the kingdom of God in its victorious opposition to the world. Hitzig, too (as we now first see when treating of the closing chapters), supposes that there probably “flitted before the eyes of the author living in Chaldea, when describing his quadrangle, the capital of the country and the temple of Belus,—the former, like the latter, forming a square, with streets intersecting one another at right angles.” Umbreit says of the vision of Ezekiel as a whole: “It is a great thought, which presents itself unadorned to our view in the prophetico-symbolic temple: God henceforth dwells in perfect peace, revealing Himself in the unbounded fulness of His glory, which is returning to Jerusalem, in the purest and most blissful unison with His sanctified people, making Himself known in the living word of progressive, saving, and sanctifying redemption. Everything is placed upon the ample circuit of the temple, whose extended courts receive all people, and through whose high and open gates the King of Glory is to enter in ( Psalm 24:7; Psalm 24:9), and then upon the order and harmony of the divine habitation, the well-proportioned building ( Ezekiel 42:10); and the revelations of the holiest are stored up in the pure, deep water of His word, which in life-giving streams issues from the temple. The stone tables of the law are consumed (?), and the fresh and free fountain of eternal truth streams forth from the temple of the Spirit, quickening and vivifying in land and sea, awakening by its creative and fructifying power a new and mighty race on earth. And thus hast thou, much misjudged yet lofty seer, in the unconscious depth of thy mysteriously flowing language, set up upon the great, undistinguishing (comp. Jeremiah 31:34), well-proportioned, and beautifully compacted building, a type of the simple yet lofty temple of Christ, from which flows the spiritual fountain of life !” From this Messianic view of the section we have to reject (4) the chiliastic-literal view, according to which Ezekiel describes what may be called either the Jewish temple of the future, or the Jewish future of the Christian Church. It is interesting to observe what kind of spirits meet together here in the flesh; e.g. Baumgarten and Auberlen, Hofmann and Volck (who acts as champion for him, and that partly with striking power of demonstration against Kliefoth), are combined here only in general because they make the community of God at our Lord’s Parousia to be an Israelite one. Comp. moreover, p357 and § 10 of the Introduction. Auberlen (Daniel and the Revelation of John, p348 sq, Clark’s tr.) expresses the apocalyptic phantasm as follows: “Israel brought back to his own land becomes the people of God in a far higher and more inward sense than before, etc.; a new period of revelation begins, the Spirit of God is richly poured forth, and a fulness of gracious gifts is conferred, such as the apostolic Church possessed typically” (!). (One can hardly go farther in the delusion of “deeper” knowledge of Scripture than to make primitive and original Christianity a type of Judaism!) “But this rich spirit-imparted life finds its completed representation in a priestly as well as in a kingly manner. That which in the ages of the Old Covenant obtained only outwardly in the letter, and that which conversely in the age of the Church withdrew itself into inward, hidden spirituality, will then in a pneumatic (!) manner assume also an outward appearance and form. In the Old Covenant the whole national life of Israel in its various manifestations—household and state, labour and art, literature and culture—was determined by religion, but only in an external legal manner; the Church, again, has to insist above all on a renewal of the heart, and must leave those outward forms of life free, enjoining it on the conscience of each individual to glorify Christ in these relations also; but in the millennial kingdom all these spheres of life will be truly Christianized from within outwardly. Thus looked at, it will no longer be offensive (?) to say that the Mosaic ceremonial law corresponds to the priesthood of Israel, and the civil law to its kingship. The Gentile Church could adopt only the moral law; so certainly the sole means of influence assigned to her is that which works inwardly,—the preaching of the word, the exercise of the prophetic office.”

(The Romish Church, however, has known how to serve itself heir satis superque to the Jewish ceremonial law!) “But when once the priesthood and the kingship arise again, then also—without prejudice to the principles laid down in the Epistle to the Hebrews (?)—the ceremonial and civil law of Moses will unfold its spiritual depths in the cultus and the constitution of the millennial kingdom ( Matthew 5:17-19). The present is still the time of preaching, but then the time of the liturgy shall have come, which presupposes a congregation consisting solely of converted people,” etc. etc. When Hengstenberg calls such interpretation “altogether unhappy,” that is the least that one can say about it; but even that could not have been said if Ezekiel’s descriptions really had the “Utopian character” which Hengstenberg attributes to them. Hebrews, however, justly animadverts upon the incongruity of expecting the restoration of the temple, the Old Testament festivals, the bloody sacrifices (!!), and the priesthood of the sons of Zadok, within the bounds of the New Covenant. Comp. Keil, p500 sq, who, both from the prophetic parts of the Old Testament and from the New, refutes at length the notion of a transformation of Canaan before the last judgment, and a kingdom of glory at Jerusalem before the end of the world. (Auberlen, who looks on the “first resurrection” as a “bodily coming forth of the whole community of believers from their hitherto invisibility with Christ in heaven,” makes the now “transformed Church again return thither with Christ, and the saints rule from heaven over the earth;” and from this he concludes that “the intercourse between the world above and the world below will then be more active and free,” etc. Hofmann’s transference of the glorified Church to earth, and his further connecting therewith the national regeneration of Israel, Auberlen declares to be “incompatible with the whole of Old Testament prophecy, to say nothing of its internal improbability.”)

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON Ezekiel 40-46

[Dr. Fairbairn’s classification of the views which have been held of Ezekiel’s closing vision generally, and in particular of the description contained in it respecting the temple, is as follows: 1. The historico-literal view, “which takes all as a prosaic description of what had existed in the times immediately before the captivity, in connection with the temple which is usually called Solomon’s.” 2. The historico-ideal view, that “the pattern exhibited to Ezekiel differed materially from anything that previously existed, and presented for the first time what should have been after the return from the captivity, though, from the remissness and corruption of the people, it never was properly realized.” 3. The Jewish-carnal view, held by certain Jewish writers, who maintain that Ezekiel’s description was actually followed, although in a necessarily imperfect manner, by the children of the captivity, and afterwards by Herod; but that “it waits to be properly accomplished by the Messiah, who, when He appears, shall cause the temple to be reared precisely as here described, and carry out all the other subordinate arrangements,”—a view which, strangely enough, is in substance held also by certain parties in the Christian Church, who “expect the vision to receive a complete and literal fulfilment at the period of Christ’s second coming.” 4. The Christian-spiritual or typical view, “according to which the whole representation was not intended to find either in Jewish or Christian times an express and formal realization, but was a grand, complicated symbol of the good God had in reserve for His Church, especially under the coming dispensation of the gospel. From the Fathers downwards this has been the prevailing view in the Christian Church. The greater part have held it, to the exclusion of every other; in particular, among the Reformers and their successors, Luther, Calvin, Capellus, Cocceius, Pfeiffer, followed by the majority of evangelical divines of our own country.”

To this fourth and last view Dr. Fairbairn himself strenuously adheres, expounding, illustrating, and defending it at considerable length, and with marked ability and success. We give his remarks in a somewhat condensed form.

“1. First of all, it is to be borne in mind that the description purports to be a vision,—a scheme of things exhibited to the mental eye of the prophet ‘in the visions of God.’ This alone marks it to be of an ideal character, as contradistinguished from anything that ever had been, or ever was to be found in actual existence after the precise form given to it in the description. Such we have uniformly seen to be the character of the earlier visions imparted to the prophet. The things described in chap, 1–3,8–11, which were seen by him ‘in the visions of God,’ were all of this nature. They presented a vivid picture of what either then actually existed or was soon to take place, but in a form quite different from the external reality. Not the very image or the formal appearance of things was given, but rather a compressed delineation of their inward being and substance. And such, too, was found to be the case with other portions, which are of an entirely similar nature, though not expressly designated visions; such, for example, as Ezekiel 4, 12, 21, all containing delineations and precepts, as if speaking of what was to be done and transacted in real life, and yet it is necessary to understand them as ideal representations, exhibiting the character, but not the precise form and lineaments, of the coming transactions. … Never at any period of His Church has God given laws and ordinances to it simply by vision; and when Moses was commissioned to give such in the wilderness, his authority to do so was formally based on the ground of his office being different from the ordinarily prophetical, and of his instructions being communicated otherwise than by vision ( Numbers 12:6). So that to speak by way of vision, and at the same time in the form of precept, as if enjoining laws and ordinances materially differing from those of Moses, was itself a palpable and incontrovertible proof of the ideal character of the revelation. It was a distinct testimony that Ezekiel was no new lawgiver coming to modify or supplant what had been written by him with whom God spake face to face upon the mount.

“2. What has been said respecting the form of the prophet’s communication, is confirmed by the substance of it—as there is much in this that seems obviously designed to force on us the conviction of its ideal character. There are things in the description which, taken literally, are in the highest degree improbable, and even involve natural impossibilities.” Thus, for example, “according to the most exact modes of computation, the prophet’s measurements give for the outer wall of the temple a square of an English mile and about a seventh on each side, and for the whole city [i.e. including the oblation of holy ground for the prince, the priests, and the Levites] a space of between three and four thousand square miles. Now there is no reason to suppose that the boundaries of the ancient city exceeded two miles and a half in circumference (see Robinson’s Researches, vol. i.), while here the circumference of the wall of the temple is nearly twice as much.” And then, taking the land of Canaan at the largest, as including all that Israel ever possessed on both sides of the Jordan, it amounted only to somewhere between ten and eleven thousand square miles. Surely “the allotment of a portion nearly equal to one-half of the whole for the prince, the priests, and Levites is a manifest proof of the ideal character of the representation; the more especially, when we consider that that sacred portion is laid off in a regular square, with the temple on Mount Zion in the centre. … The measurements of the prophet were made to involve a literal incongruity, as did also the literal extravagances of the vision in chap38, 39, that men might be forced to look for something else than a literal accomplishment. …

“3. Some, perhaps, may be disposed to imagine that, as they expect certain physical changes to be effected upon the land before the prophecy can be carried into fulfilment, these may be adjusted in such a manner as to admit of the prophet’s measurements being literally applied. It is impossible, however, to admit such a supposition. For the boundaries of the land itself are given, not new boundaries of the prophet’s own, but those originally laid down by Moses. And as the measurements of the temple and city are out of all proportion to these, no alterations can be made on the physical condition of the country that could bring the one into proper agreement with the other. Then there are other things in the description, which, if they could not of themselves so conclusively prove the impossibility of a literal sense as the consideration arising from the measurements, lend great force to this consideration, and, on any other supposition than their being parts of an ideal representation, must wear an improbable and fanciful aspect. Of this kind is the distribution of the remainder of the land in equal portions among the twelve tribes, in parallel sections, running straight across from east to west, without any respect to the particular circumstances of each, or their relative numbers. More especially, the assignment of five of these parallel sections to the south of the city, which, after making allowance for the sacred portion, would leave at the farthest a breadth of only three or four miles a piece! Of the same kind also is the supposed separate existence of the twelve tribes, which now, at least, can scarcely be regarded otherwise than a natural impossibility, since it is an ascertained fact that such separate tribeships no longer exist; the course of Providence has been ordered so as to destroy them; and once destroyed, they cannot possibly be reproduced. … Of the same kind, farther, is ‘the very high mountain’ on which the vision of the temple was presented to the eye of the prophet; for as this unquestionably refers to the old site of the temple, the little eminence on which it stood could only be designated thus in a moral or ideal, and not in a literal sense. Finally, of the same kind is the account given of the stream issuing from the eastern threshold of the temple, and flowing into the Dead Sea, which, both for the rapidity of its increase and for the quality of its waters, is unlike anything that ever was known in Judea, or in any other region of the world. Putting all together, it seems as if the prophet had taken every possible precaution, by the general character of the delineation, to debar the expectation of a literal fulfilment; and I should despair of being able in any case to draw the line of demarcation between the ideal and the literal, if the circumstances now mentioned did not warrant us in looking for something else than a fulfilment according to the letter of the vision.

“4. Yet there is the farther consideration to be mentioned, viz. that the vision of the prophet, as it must, if understood literally, imply the ultimate restoration of the ceremonials of Judaism, so it inevitably places the prophet in direct contradiction to the writers of the New Testament. The entire and total cessation of the peculiarities of Jewish worship is as plainly taught by our Lord and His apostles as language could do it, and on grounds which are not of temporary, but of permanent validity and force. The word of Christ to the woman of Samaria: ‘Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father,’ is alone conclusive of the matter; for if it means anything worthy of so solemn an asseveration, it indicates that Jerusalem was presently to lose its distinctive character, and a mode of worship to be introduced capable of being celebrated in any other place as well as there. But when we find the apostles afterwards contending for the cessation of the Jewish ritual, because suited only to a church ‘in bondage to the elements of the world,’ and consisting of what were comparatively but ‘weak and beggarly elements;’ and when, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we also find the disannulling of the Old Covenant, with its Aaronic priesthood and carnal ordinances, argued at length, and especially ‘because of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof,’ that is, its own inherent imperfections, we must certainly hold, either that the shadowy services of Judaism are finally and for ever gone, or that these sacred writers very much misrepresented their Master’s mind regarding them. No intelligent and sincere Christian can adopt the latter alternative; he ought, therefore, to rest in the former. And he will do Song of Solomon, in the rational persuasion, that as in the wise administration of God there must ever be a conformity in the condition of men to the laws and ordinances under which they are placed, so the carnal institutions, which were adapted to the Church’s pupilage, can never, in the nature of things, be in proper correspondence with her state of manhood, perfection, and millennial glory. To regard the prophet here as exhibiting a prospect founded on such an unnatural conjunction, is to ascribe to him the foolish part of seeking to have the new wine of the kingdom put back into the old bottles again, and while occupying himself with the highest hopes of the Church, treating her only to a showy spectacle of carnal superficialities. We have far too high ideas of the spiritual insight and calling of an Old Testament prophet, to believe that it was possible for him to act so unseemly a part, or contemplate a state of things so utterly anomalous. And we are perfectly justified by the explicit statement of Scripture in saying, that ‘a temple with sacrifices now would be the most daring denial of the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ, and of the efficacy of the blood of His atonement. He who sacrificed before, confessed the Messiah; he who should sacrifice now, would most solemnly and sacrilegiously deny Him.’¹

“5. Holding the description, then, in this last vision to be conclusively of an ideal character, we advance a step farther, and affirm that the idealism here is precisely of the same kind as that which appeared in some of the earlier visions,—visions that must necessarily have already passed into fulfilment, and which therefore may justly be regarded as furnishing a key to the right understanding of the one before us. The leading characteristic of those earlier visions, which coincide in nature with this, we have found to be the historical cast of their idealism. The representation of things to come is thrown into the mould of something similar in the past, and presented as simply a reproduction of the old, or a returning back again of what is past, only with such diversities as might be necessary to adapt it to the altered circumstances contemplated; while still the thing meant was, not that the outward form, but that the essential nature of the past should revive.” In this connection, Dr. Fairbairn refers to the vision of the iniquity-bearing in Ezekiel 4; to the sojourn in the wilderness spoken of in Ezekiel 20; to the ideal representation given of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:11-19; and to the prediction of Egypt’s humiliation in Ezekiel 29:1-16. “Now in all these cases,” he goes on to remark, “of an apparent, we should entirely err if we looked for an actual repetition of the past. It is the nature of the transactions and events, not their precise form or external conditions, that is unfolded to our view. The representation is of an ideal kind, and the history of the past merely supplies the mould into which it is cast. The spiritual eye of the prophet discerned the old, as to its real character, becoming alive again in the new. He saw substantially the same procedure followed again, and the unchangeable Jehovah must display the uniformity of His character and dealings by visiting it with substantially the same treatment. If, now, we bring the light furnished by those earlier revelations of the prophet, in respect to which we can compare the prediction with the fulfilment, so as to read by its help, and according to its instruction, the vision before us, we shall only be giving the prophet the benefit of the common rule, of interpreting a writer by a special respect to his own peculiar method, and explaining the more obscure by the more intelligible parts of his writings. In all the other cases referred to, where his representation takes the form of a revival of the past, we see it is the spirit and not the letter of the representation that is mainly to be regarded; and why should we expect it to be otherwise here? In this remarkable vision we have the old produced again, in respect to what was most excellent and glorious in Israel’s past condition,—its temple, with every necessary accompaniment of sacredness and attraction—the symbol of the divine presence within—the ministrations and ordinances proceeding in due order without—the prince and the priesthood—everything, in short, required to constitute the beau-ideal of a sacred commonwealth according to the ancient patterns of things. But, at the same time, there are such changes and alterations superinduced upon the old as sufficiently indicate that something far greater and better than the past was concealed under this antiquated form. Not the coming realities, in their exact nature and glorious fulness—not even the very image of these things, could the prophet as yet distinctly unfold. While the old dispensation lasted, they must be thrown into the narrow and imperfect shell of its earthly relations. But those who lived under that dispensation might get the liveliest idea they were able to obtain of the brighter future, by simply letting their minds rest on the past, as here modified and shaped anew by the prophet; just as now, the highest notions we can form to ourselves of the state of glory is by conceiving the best of the Church’s present condition refined and elevated to heavenly perfection. Exhibited at the time the vision was, and constructed as it is, one should no more expect to see a visible temple realizing the conditions, and a reoccupied Canaan, after the regular squares and parallelograms of the prophet, than in the case of Tyre to find her monarch literally dwelling in Eden, and, as a cherub, occupying the immediate presence of God, or to behold Israel sent back again to make trial of Egyptian bondage and the troubles of the desert. Whatever might be granted in providence of an outward conformity to the plan of the vision, it should only be regarded as a pledge of the far greater good really contemplated, and a help to faith in waiting for its proper accomplishment.

“6. But still, looking to the manifold and minute particulars given in the description, some may be disposed to think it highly improbable that anything short of an exact and literal fulfilment should have been intended. Had it been only a general sketch of a city and temple, as in the 60 th chapter of is, and other portions of prophecy, they could more easily enter into the ideal character of the description, and understand how it might chiefly point to the better things of the gospel dispensation. But with so many exact measurements before them, and such an infinite variety of particulars of all sorts, they cannot conceive how there can be a proper fulfilment without corresponding objective realities. It is precisely here, however, that we are met by another very marked characteristic of our prophet. Above all the prophetical writers, he is distinguished, as we have seen, for his numberless particularisms. What Isaiah depicts in a few bold and graphic strokes, as in the case of Tyre, for example, Ezekiel spreads over a series of chapters, filling up the picture with all manner of details,—not only telling us of her singular greatness, but also of every element, far and near, that contributed to produce it, and not only predicting her downfall, but coupling it with every conceivable circumstance that might add to its mortification and completeness. We have seen the same features strikingly exhibited in the prophecy on Egypt, in the description of Jerusalem’s condition and punishment under the images of the boiling caldron ( Ezekiel 24) and the exposed infant ( Ezekiel 16), in the vision of the iniquity-bearing ( Ezekiel 4), in the typical representation of going into exile ( Ezekiel 13), and indeed in all the more important delineations of the prophet, which, even when descriptive of ideal scenes, are characterized by such minute and varied details as to give them the appearance of a most definitely shaped and lifelike reality.

“… Considering his peculiar manner, it was no more than might have been expected, that when going to present a grand outline of the good in store for God’s Church and people, the picture should be drawn with the fullest detail. If he has done so on similar but less important occasions, he could not fail to do it here, when rising to the very top and climax of all his revelations. For it is pre-eminently by means of the minuteness and completeness of his descriptions that he seeks to impress our minds with a feeling of the divine certainty of the truth disclosed in them, and to give, as it were, weight and body to our apprehensions.

“7. In farther support of the view we have given, it may also be asked, whether the feeling against a spiritual understanding of the vision, and a demand for outward scenes and objects literally corresponding to it, does not spring, to a large extent, from false notions regarding the ancient temple and its ministrations and ordinances of worship, as if these possessed an independent value apart from the spiritual truths they symbolically expressed? On the contrary, the temple, with all that belonged to it, was an embodied representation of divine realities. It presented to the eye of the worshippers a manifold and varied instruction respecting the things of God’s kingdom. And it was by what they saw embodied in those visible forms and external transactions that the people were to learn how they should think of God, and act toward Him in the different relations and scenes of life—when they were absent from the temple, as well as when they were near and around it. It was an image and emblem of the kingdom of God itself, whether viewed in respect to the temporary dispensation then present, or to the grander development everything was to receive at the advent of Christ. And it was one of the capital ‘errors of the Jews, in all periods of their history, to pay too exclusive a regard to the mere externals of the temple and its worship, without discerning the spiritual truths and principles that lay concealed under them. But such being the case, the necessity for an outward an literal realization of Ezekiel’s plan obviously alls to the ground. For if all connected with it was ordered and arranged chiefly for its symbolical value at any rate, why might not the description itself be given forth for the edification and comfort of the Church, on account of what it contained of symbolical instruction? Even if the plan had been fitted and designed for being actually reduced to practice, it would still have been principally with a view to its being a mirror in which to see reflected the mind and purposes of God. But if Song of Solomon, why might not the delineation itself be made to serve for such a mirror? In other words, why might not God have spoken to His Church of good things to come by the wise adjustment of a symbolical plan? … Let the same rules be applied to the interpretation of Ezekiel’s visionary temple which, on the express warrant of Scripture, we apply to Solomon’s literal one, and it will be impossible to show why, so far as the ends of instruction are concerned, the same great purposes might not be served by the simple delineation of the one, as by the actual construction of the other.²

“It is also not to be overlooked, in support of this line of reflection, that in other and earlier communications Ezekiel makes much account of the symbolical character of the temple and the things belonging to it. It is as a priest he gives us to understand at the outset, and for the purpose of doing priest-like service for the covenant-people, that he received his prophetical calling, and had visions of God displayed to him (see on Ezekiel 1:1-3). In the series of visions contained in Ezekiel 8-11, the guilt of the people was represented as concentrating itself there, and determining God’s procedure in regard to it. By the divine glory being seen to leave the temple was symbolized the withdrawing of God’s gracious presence from Jerusalem; and by His promising to become for a little a sanctuary to the pious remnant in Chaldea, it was virtually said that the temple, as to its spiritual reality, was going to be transferred thither. This closing vision comes now as the happy counterpart of those earlier ones, giving promise of a complete rectification of preceding evils and disorders. It assured the Church that all should yet be set right again; nay, that greater and better things, should be found in the future than had ever been known in the past,—things too great and good to be presented merely under the old symbolical forms; these must be modelled and adjusted anew to adapt them to the higher objects in prospect. Nor is Ezekiel at all singular in this. The other prophets represent the coming future with a reference to the symbolical places and ordinances of the past, adjusting and modifying these to suit their immediate design. Thus Jeremiah says, in Ezekiel 31:38–40: ‘Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the city shall be built to the Lord from the gate of Hananeel to the corner gate. And the measuring line shall go forth opposite to it still farther over the hill Gareb (the hill of the leprous), and shall compass about to Goath (the place of execution). And the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, and all the fields to the brook Kedron, unto the corner of the horse-gate toward the east, shall be holy to the Lord.’ That is, there shall be a rebuilt Jerusalem in token of the revival of God’s cause, in consequence of which even the places formerly unclean shall become holiness to the Lord: not only shall the loss be recovered, but also the evil inherent in the past purged out, and the cause of righteousness made completely triumphant. The sublime passage in Isaiah 60 is entirely parallel as to its general import. And in the two last chapters of Revelation we have a quite similar vision to the one before us, employed to set forth the ultimate condition of the redeemed Church. There are differences in the one as compared with the other, precisely as in the vision of Ezekiel there are differences as compared with anything that existed under the Old Covenant. In particular, while the temple forms the very heart and centre of Ezekiel’s plan, in John’s no temple whatever was to be seen. But in the two descriptions the same truth is symbolized, though in the last it appears in a state of more perfect development than in the other. The temple in Ezekiel, with God’s glory returned to it, bespoke God’s presence among His people to sanctify and bless them; the no-temple in John indicated that such a select spot was no longer needed, that the gracious presence of God was everywhere seen and felt. It is the same truth in both, only in the latter represented, in accordance with the genius of the new dispensation, as less connected with the circumstantials of place and form.

“8. It only remains to be stated, that in the interpretation of the vision we must keep carefully in mind the circumstances in which it was given, and look at it, not as from a New, but as from an Old Testament point of view. We must throw ourselves back as far as possible into the position of the prophet himself. We must think of him as having just seen the divine fabric which had been reared in the sacred and civil constitution of Israel dashed in pieces, and apparently become a hopeless wreck. But in strong faith in Jehovah’s word, and with divine insight into His future purposes, he sees that that never can perish which carries in its bosom the element of God’s unchangeableness; that the hand of the Spirit will assuredly be applied to raise up the old anew; and not only that, but also that it shall be inspired with fresh life and vigour, enabling it to burst the former limits, and rise into a greatness and perfection and majesty never known or conceived of in the past. He speaks, therefore, chiefly of gospel times, but as one still dwelling under the veil, and uttering the language of legal times. And of the substance of his communication, both as to its general correspondence with the past and its difference in particular parts, we submit the following summary, as given by Hävernick:—‘1. In the gospel times there is to be on the part of Jehovah a solemn occupation anew of His sanctuary, in which the entire fulness of the divine glory shall dwell and manifest itself. At the last there is to rise a new temple, diverse from the old, to be made every way suitable to that grand and lofty intention, and worthy of it; in particular, of vast compass for the new community, and with a holiness stretching over the entire extent of the temple, so that in this respect there should no longer be any distinction between the different parts. Throughout, everything is subjected to the most exact and particular appointments; individual parts, and especially such as had formerly remained indeterminate, obtain now an immediate divine sanction; so that every idea of any kind of arbitrariness must be altogether excluded from this temple. Accordingly, this sanctuary is the thoroughly sufficient, perfect manifestation of God for the salvation of His people ( Ezekiel 40:1 to Ezekiel 43:12). 2. From this sanctuary, as from the new centre of all religious life, there gushes forth an unbounded fulness of blessings upon the people, who in consequence attain to a new condition. There come also into being a new glorious worship, a truly acceptable priesthood and theocratical ruler, and equity and righteousness reign among the entire community, who, being purified from all stains, rise indeed to possess the life that is in God ( Ezekiel 43:13 to Ezekiel 47:12). 3. To the people who have become renewed by such blessings, the Lord gives the land of promise; Canaan is a second time divided among them, where, in perfect harmony and blessed fellowship, they serve the living God, who abides and manifests Himself among them’³ ( Ezekiel 47:13-23).”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp436–450.—W. F.]

5. In connection with the wall with which the description begins, mention is forthwith made ( Ezekiel 40:5) of the “house.” This makes clear in the outset what is the principal building, to which all else is subordinate, although the wall is called a “building.” However large, then, that which the wall comprehends may appear to be,—and it is said in40:2 to be “a city-like building,”—the “house” is still the kernel. Comp. the measuring from it in40:7 sq. Hence the symbolized idea is the dwelling of Jehovah as a permanent one, especially when we compare Ezekiel 37:26 sq. As type, the realization of the idea is to be found in the Word become flesh ( John 1:14), as also the χαι νυν ἐστιν ( John 4:23) farther shows that the worship in spirit and in truth, and thereby the fulfilling of the worship at Jerusalem, has come with Christ. Salvation (ἡ σωτηρια) is of the Jews, as our vision also sets forth in an architectonic form; they worship what they know. But as the law was given by Moses, so grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The original influence of the sanctuary on the first constituting of Israel as a people through the making of a divine covenant is still held by in Ezekiel 37:26 sq. (Yes, Israel is Jehovah’s family, His house, εἰς τα ἰδια ἠλθε, John 1:11; Jehovah’s covenant with Israel is a marriage-covenant, Ezekiel 16.) The visibility of Jehovah’s dwelling, even in the vision here, although spiritual, must be looked on as a pledge of the entire relation of Jehovah to Israel, and especially of the promise of the Messiah. This is the sacramental character of Ezekiel’s vision of the temple specially insisted on by Hengstenberg. But the temple as the abode of Jehovah is a place of farther Revelation, for Jehovah is the Self-revealing One. The very name Jehovah contains a pledge for the whole future of the kingdom of God, the Church of the future. Now this name, as is well known, coincides most essentially and intimately with the destination of this “house;” Ezekiel repeatedly emphasizes the fact that it is the name of His holiness, just as in connection therewith the sanctification of Israel is again and again expressed. Now, as this expresses also the ultimate aim of all Jehovah’s revelation in Israel, we must have got before us in the sanctuary the perspective to the end of God’s way with Israel and mankind in general, the vision of Israel fulfilling its destiny of being God’s tabernacle with men, and the consummation of the world in glory, Revelation 21, 22. But the holiness of Jehovah, the sanctification of Israel, is signified forthwith by the wall “round about the house.”

6. The significance of the wall, however, comes first info consideration in respect to the court of the people, so that in special the sanctification of Israel as the end and object of Jehovah’s dwelling in their midst is before all thus symbolically expressed. If the “house” is the central point of the whole, still the court completes the idea of the house; as we have the temple in its entirety, as it was meant to be, only when it has the two courts conjoined with it. The reference to the city, and farther to the whole land, which undoubtedly was always contained in the idea of the court, is moreover expressly given shape to in Ezekiel (comp. Ezekiel 48). The court here represents the Israel in the widest extent that appears before Jehovah, as it lives in the light of His countenance and of intercourse with Him; that is to say, it refers to the idea proper of a holy people. When, accordingly, the visionary-prophetic description in Ezekiel exhibits a striking difference from the brevity, incompleteness, and indefiniteness of the historical account in the books of Kings and Chronicles, this indicates, as respects the idea, another Israel than the people had hitherto been. Hävernick remarks on “the wide compass, in order to contain the new community,” and “the sanctuary extending itself on all sides of the temple indiscriminately,” “that which was formerly undefined is now,” as he says, “to receive a higher, a divine sanction.” Bähr, speaking of Solomon’s temple, says that the “almost total indefiniteness” of its court is owing to its “human character” in contrast to the idea and purpose of the house, and that even the court of the tabernacle, although measured and defined more exactly than that of the temple, shows numbers and measurements which indicate “imperfection and incompleteness.” This latter statement might possibly give a hint as to Ezekiel’s description of the courts of the temple, which is, on the contrary, so exact and detailed, and would at least be plainer than what Bähr says of the human as “not divine,” etc, while yet he must concede to the court a mediate divineness. Israel in the wilderness might, as Jehovah’s host, as the people under His most special guidance, still in some measure stamp this relation on the court of the tabernacle. In Solomon’s temple, on the contrary, the self-development, left more to the freedom of the people, especially as they now had kings like other nations, and when their position under Solomon was so influential, would be expressed in the characteristic indefiniteness of the people’s part in the sanctuary. But the Israel of the future, Ezekiel in fine would say, will be exactly and distinctly Jehovah’s possession. Hävernick (and Bähr too) cites for the conformation of the court, “shaping itself according to the need of the people and the times,” its well-known division by Solomon into two courts. After referring to 2 Chronicles 20:5, and the various annexes, the cells, and the frequent defilement of this locality ( 2 Kings 23:11-12), he concludes thus: “The treading of the courts ( Isaiah 1:12) has now come to an end; the repentant people are ashamed of their sins, and draw near to their God in a new spirit, Ezekiel 43:10. The new condition of the courts is a figure, an expression of the new condition of the community. (Comp. Zechariah 3:7; Revelation 11:2.) Thus in Ezekiel’s symbolism the new garnishing of the courts comes to view as the quickening anew, the glorious restoration of the community of Israel.” [Comp. additional note on p388.—W. F.]

7. But the description in our vision begins with the gates, dwelling specially on the east gate. For the copiousness with which the gates are described, comp. Ezekiel 43:11; Ezekiel 48:31 sq. Hävernick, against Böttcher, dwells on their significance (p 641 sq.); makes them since Solomon have acquired under his successors the “disturbing character of the incidental;” remarks that the law says nothing definitely regarding them; points out the profane use to which they were put ( Jeremiah 20:2); and maintains that, on the contrary, “the prophet assigns to them a definite relation to the whole of the building, so that they are thoroughly in conformity with the idea of the building.” But the contrast to Ezekiel 8 and those that follow is to be very specially observed. “Brought to the gates of the temple, the prophet had been witness of the idol-worship prevalent there. And he had seen the Shechinah departing out of the east gate. To this we have now a beautiful and complete contrast. Henceforth Jehovah will no longer see the holy passages in and out so contemptuously desecrated and defiled ( Ezekiel 43:7 sq.); on the contrary, the holy bands that keep the feast and offer sacrifice shall go in and out with the prince of the people in their midst ( Ezekiel 46:8 sq.; comp. Revelation 21:25 sq.). But above all, the glory of Jehovah shall enter in by the east gate ( Ezekiel 43:1 sq.). Hence this gate is the pattern for all the others,” etc.

8. From the relation on the whole to the temple of Song of Solomon, Bunsen thinks that “in general the old temple was the model;” only, on the one hand, the disposition of the parts was “simpler and less showy,” and on the other, “an effort was exhibited to attain to symmetry in the proportions and regularity in general.” While Tholuck and others remark on “the colossal size” in different respects, as indicating the pre-eminence of the future community, Hengstenberg finds throughout “always very moderate dimensions.” Unmistakeably there is a reference throughout to the temple which Ezekiel had seen with his own eyes; this explains the brevity and incompleteness partially attaching to the description, although in respect to the sanctuary proper this peculiarity of Ezekiel, who is otherwise so pictorial, demands some farther explanation. That the knowledge of the temple, whenever it could be supposed, is supposed in our vision (comp. on Ezekiel 41), especially when what was seen presented itself, as it were, in short-hand to the prophet, is only what we should naturally expect. But it corresponded also to the typology of Solomon and the glorious age of Song of Solomon, which had entered so deeply into the consciousness of Israel, and was so popular, when Solomon’s temple forms the foil for the still future revelation of glory and the form it assumes. Ezekiel’s vision presupposes, indeed, that which it passes over in silence, but certainly not always that which it suppresses, as having to be supplied from the days of Solomon. A supposition of this kind is least of all permissible for the metallic ornaments, of which nothing whatever is said in passages in which, on the contrary, e.g. Ezekiel 41:22, what is made “of wood” is particularly mentioned, or when explanations are made, such, for example, as: “This is the table which is before Jehovah.” The old is presupposed, and also something new and different is inserted in the old when not put in its place. What Hävernick observes generally regarding the use made of the sacred symbols of the Old Testament and the allusions to the law by our prophet, may be applied to the way in which reference is made to Solomon’s temple and the knowledge of it supposed: “He lives therein with his whole soul, but by the Spirit of God he is led beyond the merely legal consciousness, he rises superior to the legal symbolism,” etc. In the prophetic description in the chapters before us, we can perceive a struggle as of a dawning day with the clouds of morning; and if something testifies to the derivation of our vision from a higher source than a fancy, however pious, would be, we may take that something to be the sudden advent of peculiar and quite unexpected lights, which have in them at least something strange and surprising in the case of Ezekiel, who was not only familiar with ancestral tenets and priestly tradition, but strongly attached to both. One might sometimes say a less than Solomon is here ( Matthew 12:42), and yet not be satisfied with Hengstenberg’s reference to the troublous times in which temple and city were to be rebuilt, but (as Umbreit beautifully says) will feel constrained to take still more into consideration the “worth of the most significant inwardness” for “the poverty of the immediately succeeding times,” in view of “the new temple for the new covenant,” so that whatever of “apparently meagre simplicity” attaches to our temple-vision may have to be read according to the rule given in Matthew 6:29. Umbreit aptly says: “In the interior of the abode of the Holy One of Israel, quite a different appearance indeed is presented from that in Solomon’s temple, and the splendour of gold and brilliant hues is in vain sought for therein; no special mention is made of the sacred vessels, and only the altar of incense is changed into a table of the Lord, which, instead of all other symbols, simply suggests the purely spiritual impartation of the divine life. The ark of the covenant was destroyed by the fire of God, and our prophet no more than Jeremiah cared to know about a new one being made, as also, indeed, it was actually wanting in the Song of Solomon -called second temple. It is enough that the cherubim resume their place in the sanctuary, and, entering through the open doors, now fill the whole empty house, in which the distinctions of the old temple are very significantly left out; for we no longer see the veils, and the whole temple has become a holy of holies.” In the same strain Hävernick says: “If Jehovah wills to dwell among a new people, He must do so in a new manner, although in one analogous to the former. It is the same temple, but its precincts have become different, in order to contain a much more numerous people; and all the arrangements and adjustments here testify to the faithfulness and zeal with which the Lord is sought and served. The whole sacred temple area has become a holy of holies; in this temple there is no place for the ark of the covenant ( Jeremiah 3:16), instead of which comes the full revelation of the Shechinah.” On the one hand, the legal form of worship is retained in every iota, or tacitly supposed; on the other, a new element, as with Ezekiel 41:22, almost exactly what Christendom calls “the Lord’s table,” sheds its light over everything previously existing. On the one hand, the numbers and proportions express a magnitude and beauty, a majestic harmony, surpassing both the “tent” and the “temple” ( Ezekiel 41:1); on the other, there are unmistakeable indications, as respects the μορφη θεου, in the simplicity and plainness of the whole and the parts, of an ἐν ὁμοιωματι ἀμθρωπων γωνομενος, a χενωσις, and ταπεινωσις and here and there even a hint is perceptible of the outward poverty of the Church in the last times. Moreover, as the temple of Ezekiel consolingly presented to those who returned from the exile, approaching the more closely to them as respects its human character, its divinity and spirituality in their temple building, so again it contained a sacred criticism on the splendid edifice erected by Herod500 years later (of the immensa opulentia of which the Roman Tacitus speaks),—a criticism which He who walked in this last temple of Israel, and who was Himself the fulfilling of the temple, completed κατα πνευμα, and as κρισις, κριμα.

9. The treatment of the side-building ( Ezekiel 41:5 sq.), especially in its connection with the temple-house, and the detailed description, kept now first in due correspondence with the sanctuary, of the building on the gizrah ( Ezekiel 41:12 sq.), are worthy of observation, although not so important as Hävernick makes them. With a touch of human nature, Hengstenberg connects the side chambers with Ezekiel’s dearest youthful reminiscences, reminding us at the same time of Samuel, who, as well as Eli, had even his bedroom in such a side-chamber of the tabernacle. According to Hävernick, Ezekiel’s description is meant to keep the annexe in fairest proportion to the sanctuary itself, etc.; it is the perfect building, instead of the still defective and imperfect one described in 1 Kings6. The side-building and the gizrah are evidently distinguished in relation to the temple as addition and contrast. The description, too, given of both, suggests a still farther realization of the temple-idea, as regards priestly service and other modes of showing reverence to God, and also of the “in spirit and in truth” for this future worship.

10. As to the temple of Ezekiel’s vision considered æsthetically, Bähr’s thoughtful analysis (Der sal. Tempel, pp7 sq, 269 sq.) is so much the more applicable, as this visionary temple is still more animated and dominated by the religious idea of Israel, which in its futurity is the Messianic idea. The temple before us is in the highest sense of the word music of the future, although only a variation of an old theme. The import of this old theme, Solomon’s temple and the original tabernacle, will first find full expression in Ezekiel’s temple, whether its measures and numbers are the old ones or different. We must not employ here the classical criterion of the beautiful; sensuous beauty of form is not to be found here. The adornment of the edifice is limited to cherubim and palms, either together or separate; and of the cherubim it must be granted that, æsthetically considered, they are figures the reverse of beautiful. We meet, however, with nothing tasteless or repulsive, like the dog or bird-headed human forms, the green and blue faces of the Egyptian gods, or the many armed idols of the Indian cultus. But what a difference is there between the temple of Ezekiel’s vision and the fancy edifice, for example, the description of which is to be found in the younger Titurel (strophe311–415, edited by Hahn; comp. Sulp. Boisseree on the description of the temple of the Holy Grail, Munich1834),—the wondrous sanctuary on Mont Salvage, in which the ideal German architecture consecrates its poetic expression under the influence of reminiscences of Revelation 21:11 sq.! (The chapel of the Holy Cross at Castle Karlstein, near Prague, presents to this day a partial imitation, and on a reduced scale, of the temple of the Grail.) A large fortress with walls and innumerable towers surrounds the temple of the Grail, like an extensive and dense forest of ebony trees, cypresses, and cedars. Instead of the guard-rooms ( Ezekiel 40) and the express charge of the house ( Ezekiel 44) of Ezekiel, are the guardians and protectors of the Grail,—the templars, a band of spiritual knights of the noblest kind, humble, pure, faithful, chaste men. And whatever of precious stones, imagery, gold, and pearls the poetic fancy was able to imagine, is collected around the shrine of the Holy Grail. In the heathen temple, with its attempts to represent the divine, and especially in the Greek temple, conformably to the innate artistic taste of the Greeks, with such beautiful natural scenery cherishing and demanding this taste, where sky, earth, and sea on every side suggest the divine as also the beautiful, the execution, form, and shape, distribution and arrangement of the parts, as well as all its decorations, correspond to the demands of æsthetics; but already in Solomon’s temple the ethical-religious principle of the covenant, and consequently of the theocratic presence of Jehovah among His people, penetrates and pervades everything else. Thus the tabernacle, and also the whole temple building, culminates in the holy of holies, which contains the ark of the covenant with the tables of the law, and in which the atonement par excellence is completed. A relation like this, then, is served by any form which rather fulfils its office than strives after artistic configuration, and the form has answered its purpose, provided it only is a religiously significant form. “Solomon’s temple,” says Bähr, “cannot stand as a great work of art before the forum of the æsthetic.” Human art in general goes along with nature, hence its mainly heathenish, its cosmic (κοσμος, “decoration”) character. Jehovah, on the contrary, is holiness, and no necessity of nature of any kind, no nationality as such, no deification of nature, no magic consecration binds Him to Israel, but the freest covenant grace, which has as its aim the sanctification of Israel as His people, with a view to all mankind. That Phœnician artists executed the building of Solomon’s temple (comp. for this the exhaustive critique of Bähr in the work quoted above, p250 sq.)—although (Krause, die drei ältesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurer-brüderschaft, Dresden1819) freemasonry makes grand masters after Song of Solomon, who is held to represent the Father (omnipotence), King Hiram as Son (wisdom), and Hiram Abif as Spirit (harmony, beauty)—concerns chiefly the technical working in wood and metal. If the artistic execution, thus limited, of the temple decoration bore on it a Phœnician character, and the employment of table work coated with silver showed signs of Hither Asia in general, yet the Phœnician element, this mundane configuration, would not amount to much more than what the Greek language was, in which the gospel of the New Covenant, as well as that of the Old, came before the world. But a specifically Christian element, the really fundamental element in the first and oldest Christian church architecture, namely, that what is also called (it is true) “God’s house” is simply an enclosure of the congregation (οἰκο; ἐκκλησιας, των ἐκκλησιων οἰκος, domus ecclesiœ), is an approximation to the extension of the outer court in Ezekiel, which extension is quite in unison with the Christological method of our prophet, with the peculiar regard he pays to the people of the Messiah (Introd. § 9). Comp. 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:20 sq.; 1 Peter 2:4. The Christian community forms in future the house of God, the temple; as also its development, externally and internally, is in the New Testament called edification, building. Voltaire has declared that he could remember in all antiquity no public building, no national temple, so small as Solomon’s; and J. D. Michaelis held that his house in Göttingen was larger; whereas Hengstenberg ascribes to Solomon’s temple, “inclusive of the courts, an imposing size.” The prominence given in Ezekiel to the east gate of the new temple, although the holy of holies still lies towards the west, may remind us of the projecting eastward of Christian church buildings from the earliest age, and especially of the Concha closing them on the east. As the glory of the God of Israel comes from the east ( Ezekiel 43), so in the east is the Dayspring from on high ( Luke 1:78; the Sun of Righteousness, Malachi 3:20, 4:2]), the Light of the world ( John 8:12; Isaiah 4), which has brought a new day, the precursor and pledge of the future new morning and day of eternal glory ( Romans 13:12; 2 Timothy 4:8). If the light-concealing stained windows of the Middle Ages are not to be traced back to the parts shut up and covered in Ezekiel’s temple, still the powerful tendency to elevation upwards, so appropriate to the Gothic style, has at least some support in the pillars ( Ezekiel 40:14), and even suggests an ἀνω τον νουν ( Philippians 3:20; Colossians 3:1 sq.).

11. The designation of the temple in Ezekiel 43. as the place of Jehovah’s throne, etc, might make us suppose the existence of the ark of the covenant, unless its significance as (to borrow Bähr’s words) “centre, heart, root, and soul of the whole edifice” necessarily demanded an express mention, when, for example, we have in Ezekiel most exact accounts of the altars; comp on Ezekiel 41:22. Solomon’s temple ( 1 Kings 8) first became what it was meant to be from the fact that the ark of the covenant came into it. But the post-exile temple had an empty holy of holies, as Tacitus (Hist. v9) relates of Pompey, that “he by his right as conqueror entered the temple, from which time it became known that no divine image was in it, but only an empty abode, and that there was nothing in the mystery of the Jews.” (Comp. Josephus, Bell. Jud. v55) The most probable supposition is, that the ark of the covenant disappeared at the destruction of Solomon’s temple, that it was consumed by fire. For the traditions of what became of it are mere myths; e.g. in 2 Maccabees2, that Jeremiah, among other things, by divine command hid the ark in a cave in Mount Nebo, but when they who had gone with him could not again find the place, he rebuked them, and pointed to the future, when the Lord would again be gracious to His people and reveal i to them, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud would appear as formerly. [The Mishna makes it be hid in a cave under the temple, a statement which the Rabbins endeavour to confirm from 2 Chronicles 35:3. Carpzov supposes the ark included in 2 Chronicles 36:10, and holds that it was restored by Cyrus, Ezra 1:7; a statement which Winer rightly cannot find in that passage, but rather the reverse; while at the same time he is unable to agree with Hitzig, who concludes from Jeremiah 3:16 that the ark of the covenant was no longer in existence even in the days of this prophet. According to the Mishna (Joma v2), there had been put in its place an altar-stone rising three fingers above the ground, on which the high priest on the great day of atonement set the censer.] That the symbolical designation of the temple expressed in Ezekiel with reference to the ark of the covenant is simply a legal technical term may be the more readily believed, as in certain respects in contrast thereto, at least in distinction therefrom (although this is strangely denied by Hengst.), the whole precincts of the temple, in consequence of the Revelation -entrance of the glory of Jehovah, became a holy of holies in accordance with the law of this house; comp. on Ezekiel 43:12. W. Neumann expounds Jeremiah 3:16 of the new birth of Israel, when Jehovah will be glorified in the midst of His saints, that these shall no longer celebrate the ark of the covenant. He rejects the opinion of Abendana, who, from43:17 of the same chapter, inferred that the whole of Jerusalem is to be a holy dwelling-place, and holds to Rashi’s view, that the entire community will be holy, and that Jehovah will dwell in its midst as if it were the ark of the covenant. “For the ark of the covenant as such is a symbolical vessel. As it contains within it the law, which testifies to the covenant ( Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 26:17 sq.), so the covenant-people are represented in it, the bearers of the law through worldly life, until the days when it shall be written on the hearts of the saints ( Jeremiah 31:31 sq.). The Capporeth represents the transformation of the creature transformed by Israel’s perfection in the Lord (?), the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, Isaiah 66:22-23. If this is the thought which lies at the root of the symbolism, then when the ark of the covenant is no longer kept in commemoration, the shadows of the Old Covenant have passed away, all has become new, and the redeemed are the holy seed ( Isaiah 6:13), to whom Jehovah’s law has become the law of their life.” The eloquent silence in our prophet regarding the ark of the covenant will, moreover, be understood in respect to the man who speaks as Jehovah (comp. on Ezekiel 43:7), that is, in a Messianic-christological sense, notwithstanding that Ezekiel’s Christology (Introd. § 9) has the Messianic people principally in view.

12. Ezekiel’s vision rests throughout on the law of Moses. Were it otherwise in our chapters, Ezekiel could have been no prophet of Israel, nor the Mosaic law the law of God. This legal character was, moreover, well adapted to put an arrest on a mere fancy portraiture, if not to make it altogether impossible. As to the departure from the law of Moses, which, however, he must concede, Philippson maintains that it is “not great,” and “is limited to the number of victims” (? ?). Hengstenberg denies any difference, calling it merely “alleged.” On the other hand, Hävernick, with whom many agree, speaks of Ezekiel’s “many differences and definitions going beyond the law of the Old Covenant,” while at the same time he rejects the idea that the prophet forms the transition to the farther improved system of the Pentateuch (Vatke), and affirms against J. D. Michaelis the unchangeable character of the law of Moses. Hävernick says: “These discrepancies rather show with so much the more stringent necessity, that a new condition of things is spoken of in the prophet, in which the old law will continue in glorious transformation, not abrogated, but fulfilled and to be fulfilled, coming into full truth and reality.” Bunsen speaks to this effect: “Ezekiel’s design was to make the ritual more spiritual, and to break the tyranny of the high-priesthood. For mention is nowhere made of a high priest, whereas a high-priestly obligation, although slightly relaxed, is laid upon the priests ( Ezekiel 44:22). The daily evening sacrifice falls away, and among the yearly feasts we miss Pentecost and the Great Day of Atonement, all which accords with the absence of the high priest and the ark of the covenant; instead of these comes an additional feast of atonement at the beginning of the year ( Ezekiel 45:18 sq.), and the amount of the morning sacrifice and the festal sacrifices is enhanced. There is, indeed, much reference to the original law throughout, and it is anew set forth with respect to transgressions and abuses that had crept in, special weight being laid on the precepts concerning clean and unclean ( Ezekiel 44:17 sq.; comp. Ezekiel 22:26); but still more does Ezekiel go beyond the law, and gives additional force to its precepts.” We must call to mind the position generally of prophecy to the law of Moses. As prophecy is provided for in the law in the proper place (comp. our Comment on Deut. p134), namely, when Moses’ departure demanded it, so its foundation is traced back in Deuteronomy 18:16 sq. to Sinai, and thus it is thenceforth comprehended historically in the legislation. But although it thus stands and falls with the law, having by its own account, like all the institutions of Israel, its norm in the law, yet it rejoices in its extraordinary fellowship with God, its divine endowment and inspiration. And this not in order, like the priesthood, to teach after the letter, and to serve in the ceremonial; but the provision made and charge given already on Mount Sinai, as they make the official duty of prophecy to be the representation of God’s holy will against every other will, so they give to it the character of a legitimate as well as legitimatized officiality, which, like Moses, has to serve as the chosen means of intermediation in relation to the will of the Most High Lawgiver revealing itself; the calling is ordained in Israel for the continuity of the divine legislation. This latter qualification of the prophets of Jehovah in Israel afforded a foundation for their deepening of the legal worship, as opposed to hypocrisy and torpid formality, for their spiritual interpretation of the ceremonial; as, in view of their position towards the future, a consideration of the ecclesiastical and civil law in their bearing on the future followed as a matter of course. The idea which for this end dominates Ezekiel’s closing vision is the holiness of Jehovah, and the corresponding sanctification of Israel, their separation to Jehovah as a possession. It is the root idea which the law expresses and symbolizes in all its forms, whether of morality, worship, or polity. And as it is said already in Exodus 19 : “Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests,” so it is also said in 1 Peter2of the Christian community, that they who are lively stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (comp. 1 Peter 2:9). Peter thus makes a New Testament use of the same mode of expression regarding worship, which, carried out in Old Testament form, is Ezekiel’s representation of Jehovah’s service of the future, when Jehovah shall dwell for ever in His people. Comp. Ezekiel 20:40. Ezekiel’s position, therefore, to the law of Moses is not that of freedom from legal restraints,—a position which might be subjective and arbitrary,—but what he applies from the law for the illustration of the future, and the way in which he does Song of Solomon, passing by some things, more strongly emphasizing others, or putting them into new shapes, derives its legal justification from the idea of the law as it shall be realized in a true Israel, that is, the Messianic Israel. That the Messiah, who says in John 17 : “And for them I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth,” remains as a person in the background, is quite in correspondence with Ezekiel’s Christology (Introd. § 9), which, as already said, characterizes the times and the salvation of the Messiah through the Messianic people.

13. “The proper significance of the new temple lies in the full revelation of Jehovah in His sanctuary, in the new and living fellowship into which God enters with His people by this His dwelling among them” (Häv.). As being a return, which it is in relation to Ezekiel 11, the entrance of the glory of the Eternal has, although with a New Testament application, corresponding to the: ἐγω μεθʼ ὑμων πασας τας ἡμερας ἑως της συντελειας του αἰωνος ( Matthew 28:20), also its Apocalyptic significance, as John says before the close of his Revelation ( Ezekiel 22): ναι ἐρχου, Κυριε ʼΙησου.

14. If the idea of the court is unquestionably that of the people, whose Messianic perfection as Israel Ezekiel is to behold, then, since everything on the mountain of the vision here is “most holy” ( Ezekiel 43:12), the immediately following detailed description of the altar of burnt-offering and its consecration can only point to the future manifestation of Jehovah’s holiness and the sanctification of His peculiar people ( 1 Peter 2:9). “What holds good of the altar refers also to the whole court; the blessing of the altar includes in it that of the community. By means of the expiation of the altar, the purpose of the divine love, to see a holy people assembled, is effected. The first Acts, consequently, in which the significance of the new sanctuary is expressed, is the complete expiation of the people, and its efficacy in this respect far surpasses in extent and glory that of the old sanctuary” (Häv.). Accordingly, if they who are sanctified are perfected εἰς το διηνεκες by the προσφορα μια ( Hebrews 10:14), the full and complete offering on Golgotha, then the idea also of this altar of burnt-offering upon the very high mountain must be fulfilled. But as the offering which fulfils is the most personal priestly offering, so the sanctification of the people in Ezekiel’s typical temple takes place on the altar of burnt-offering in the priests’ court, which therefore still remains separated from the court of the people, as in Solomon’s temple, whereas in the tabernacle there was only one court. The symbolical representation of the dominant idea of the sanctification of the people was, from their being represented by the priests, rightly localized in a priests’ court, which gives it due prominence here, where everything hinges on locality and arrangement. Thus also, as Bähr observes, in the camp of Israel the priestly family in its four main branches encamped close around the sanctuary on its four sides. [Comp. with this section the Additional Note on Ezekiel 43:13-27, p410.—W. F.]

15. As the shutting of the east gate ( Ezekiel 44) for the future puts the key of Ezekiel’s temple into the hand of Him who, according to the typology of the law and the prediction of the prophets, is the Coming One of Israel, so the prince’s sitting and eating in the east gate must be taken as throwing light on the Messianic future of the people of the promise. It is very evident that by the “prince” is not to be understood the high priest of Israel. This interpretation, which was a Maccabean prolepsis, has now been abandoned. Kliefoth, Keil, and Hitzig justly dispute the indefinite sense which Hävernick gives to the נָשִׂיא, yet they do not sufficiently attend to what may be said in defence of Hävernick’s indefiniteness, and which certainly tells against those who make the future theocratic ruler to be one with the King David of Ezekiel 34, 37, because he too is called נָשִׂיא, as indeed he is also called רֹעֶה. They must own, however, that there is a difference between: “My servant David shall be king over them,” between the “one shepherd” who is “prince for ever,” and the הַנָּשִׂיא here, who comes into consideration quâ נָשִׂיא. Now if this must be granted, then it is only with justice that Hävernick observes that the designation נָשִׂיא sets before us the original, or, as he calls it, “the purely natural constitution of the Israelites” ( Exodus 22:27, 28]), although not so much because “the time of the exile had again limited the people to this original constitution, or left them only a poor remainder of it,” as because, looking, as in our vision we always should do, at the Messiah and His times, the discrepancy between theocracy and kingly power, which showed itself at the rise of the latter under Samuel, is to be adjusted on the original ground of the peculiarity of Israel. The נָשִׂיא is the prince of the tribe, as the tribal constitution of Israel put the juridical power and the executive into the hands of the natural superiors, the heads, of families and tribes. And even when in time of need, as in the days of the Judges, a dictatorship, the power of one over all others, is had recourse to, it is potestas delegata, and is on both sides considered as nothing else. With a tribal constitution such as the natural constitution of Israel was, the want of an outward centrum unitatis might in itself be painfully felt, and the instituting of one be looked on as a political necessity; but that for Israel the necessity of the time as such should have demanded a permanent institution of the kind, is strikingly refuted by the days of the Judges, for the present aid of Jehovah answered to the momentary distress, and raised up the competent helper from out of the tribes of Israel,—“then when they entreated and wept, the faithfulness of God helped them, and sooner than they supposed all distress was over,”—just as the former examples of Moses and Joshua showed that in the Israelitish theocracy the right men were not wanting at the right time. Jehovah alone, as on another side the fundamental canon of the priesthood still held up before the people, claimed as His due to be Israel’s king in political respects also. Originally there could be beside Him no other political sovereign, but merely the institution, in subordination to Him, of the princes of the tribes, and a sort of hegemony of a single tribe. The unity of the religious sentiment, which made the twelve externally separate tribes internally one community, had in earlier times made up for the want of an external centrum unitatis, and the free authority of certain individual representatives of this sentiment was quite in harmony therewith. Hence Jehovah says in 1 Samuel8 : “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” Thus the demand of the people requesting a king must, having regard to Samuel, who occupied in Israel a position similar to that of Moses, be looked on as a symptom of disease, although the disease was one of development. We may concede to the elders of Israel who come before Samuel, Samuel’s age, which they urge; and still more, as the occasion of their demand, the evil walk of his sons. We can point to the picture exhibited in the later period of the Judges, when everything, even the temporary alliance of individual tribes, appears to be in a state of dissolution; we can along therewith take into account the pride of Ephraim, in whose midst the sanctuary stood, and to whose claims of superiority, even over Judah, all the tribes were more or less compelled to bow. Nay, even in the law ( Deuteronomy 17:14 sq.), where it refers to the future taking possession of Canaan, the future development of an Israelitish kingdom is taken into view by Jehovah Himself, and the very form foreseen in which the demand came to Samuel: “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are about me.” But although this possible desire of the people, because tolerated, is not expressly blamed, yet neither the self-derived resolution there: “when thou sayest: I will,” etc, nor the pattern: “like all the nations that are about me,” is spoken of approvingly; nor can there be behind the emphatic command: “thou shalt in any wise set him to be king over thee whom Jehovah thy God shall choose,” anything but a presupposed conflict with the kingly authority of Jehovah, against which provision must be made in the very outset. Accordingly, when Jehovah Himself takes into view the earthly kingship for Israel, He does so in a way not very different from what Christ says in Matthew 19 regarding the Mosaic permission of divorce because of Israel’s hard-heartedness: ἀπ’ ἀρχης θε οὐ γεγονεν οὑτω. But Jehovah is the Physician of Israel, who ( Numbers 21) made Moses set the brazen serpent on a pole, as a remedy against the bite of the fiery serpents. That which expresses to the full the sentiment of the people under Samuel is also the undisguised: “like all the nations;” with this their request before Samuel closes emphatically as its culminating point. Although to Samuel the thing that personally concerned him: “that he may judge us,” which they gave as their object in the case of the king to be appointed, was displeasing, was in his eyes the bad element in the request, Jehovah first set the matter before him in the light that in His eyes the request for the “king” (מֶלֶךְ) was rather a rejection of His reigning over them, and explained to him the: “like all the nations,” in the mouth of the elders of the people, by their hereditary disposition: “they forsook Me, and served other gods.” Kingly power, such as the heathen nations have from early times, is a necessary self-defence of polytheism against its own divisive and centrifugal elements in the realm of politics; it is a socialistic attempt to arrange a life in community, and that is to unite, both to make the internal unity and order strong and powerful externally, and to keep them so. For מֶלֶךְ, from מָלַךְ, is derived from: “judging,” as still attested by the Syrian signification: “to advise,” and also by the fact that the kingly power in Israel arose from that of the judges: the ruler is he who stands over the opposing parties, over the strife, he who unites; very different from whom is מוֹשֵׁל, the tyrant, עָרִיץ, the coming to power by the right of the strongest. Thus kingly power is from the first peculiar to heathenism;

and because the boundary between the human and the divine is to the heathen consciousness a fluctuating one, kingship, especially in connection with the idolatrous worship thereof which grew up among the heathen nations, comes to be regarded as the contrast to the theocratic relations of the monotheistic people of Israel. Accordingly, when the people of Jehovah ask a king such as all the nations have (comp. [See also Additional Note on p417.]

16. In regard to the priests of Ezekiel’s temple, Hengstenberg thinks the prophet “wishes to draw away the view from the dreary present,—the priests without prospect of office, the ruins of the priesthood,—and, on the contrary, presents to the eye priests in office and honour, in whom the Mosaic ordinances are again in full exercise and authority; and next he wishes to labour for the regeneration of the priesthood.” It is only surprising, when in accordance with Hengstenberg’s general view of our chapters the fancy is worked on here too by ideas of Mosaic priests, that the idea of the high priest is wanting, that this most powerful impression is disregarded. But as regards the removal of the degradation of the pre-exile priesthood, the mention of Zadok sets forth too prominently for this end just the age of David and Solomon. Ezekiel’s priests certainly are Mosaic priests, but the Mosaic priests had a people to represent of whom it is said in Exodus 19:6 : “Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (at the passover the whole people acted as priests); so that it is certainly Mosaic, although according to the inmost idea of the Mosaic law, when the people of the future are in Ezekiel specially represented by the priests. But it is quite peculiar to Ezekiel, that, in order duly to set forth the sanctification of the people by the lofty holiness of their priests, the high priest appears in certain respects absorbed into the priests, and these are represented in a high-priestly aspect. As the people are dealt with in Ezekiel 44:6 sq. for the bad priests set to keep the charge of Jehovah’s holy things (44:8), so the exemplification of priestly instruction of the people given in44:23 is that of the true priests’ teaching to discern the difference between the holy and the profane, the unclean and the clean: the high-priestly sanctity of the priests is to serve for a high-priestly sanctification of the people; the high-priestly idea is to become a national reality, just as the aggregate of these Old Testament letters (for which comp. Zechariah 6) is the fulfilling word of the “body of Christ” as the Church. For the figure of Zadok, the typical high priest, taken from the very specially Messianically-typical age of David and Song of Solomon, corresponds to only such a Messianic prospect. Zadok’s sons are called the true priests of the people, just as the true Shepherd of the people ( Ezekiel 34, 37) is a descendant of David. And here we have a parallel exactly similar to that of Jeremiah 33, where the continuance of the Levitical priesthood is guaranteed in like manner as the continuance of the race of David, and similarly as to the increase of both,—in which respect there shall, according to Isaiah 66, be taken of the Gentiles for priests and for Levites; and so in this way the position of priests among the Gentiles, promised to Israel in Isaiah 61, fulfils itself as a universal priestly position. Hävernick makes a “special” blessing for the priesthood be connected with the “general blessing of the theocracy,” inasmuch as “not its hitherto meagre (?) form,” but the priestly office, “as a faithful expression of the idea inherent in it, will be established in perpetuity;” and he compares Malachi 3:3 : “A new priesthood, made anew by the power of the Lord, arises on the soil of the Old Testament priesthood in the new theocracy;” just as Ezekiel’s main concern is “the priestly office in general,” so also the idea “of a really spiritual priesthood” comes to light in his writings, etc. When Hengstenberg compares Psalm 24for the reformation of the priesthood, we observe that the “demands on His people,” spoken of there “from the coming of the Lord of glory,” are no specially priestly demands, but are addressed to the whole house of Israel; and the same is really the case with Isaiah 40, which he also cites. The Messianic references of the priesthood of the sons of Zadok, whereby (neither by Zadok personally, nor by Samuel) the prophetic word spoken to Eli ( 1 Samuel 2:27 sq.) is fulfilled, is not only maintained by the Fathers, but also by Keil;² comp. on 1 Samuel 2:35 sq. The Berleburg Bible observes: “As in the person of Solomon the Spirit of prophecy pointed to the true and anointed Song of Solomon, so also in this priest it points to the great High Priest, Jesus Christ.” Hengst. remains “quite on the ordinary priestly ground; the prospect into the New Testament relations remains completely closed.” According to him, the prophet has to do only with what is “to be accomplished after brief delay,” etc. On the other hand, Umbreit says: “The priesthood is quite in accordance with the transformation of the house of God. The old class of mediators between Jehovah and His people, consecrated by descent, has disappeared, and we no more find the high priest than we find the ark of the covenant. Instead of the Levites, who, together with the people, have to bear the guilt of the profanation of the covenant, there have come now only the inwardly worthy, the sons of Zadok, who should fulfil their significant name by maintaining fidelity in this ideal sense; and the supreme enhanced law of the new priesthood is the maintaining of inward purity from every outward stain, etc. Their outward support is the holy gift of Jehovah, so that they can say with the godly man in Psalm 16 : ‘Jehovah is my portion and my cup; my lot has fallen to me in pleasant places’ ( Psalm 16:5 sq.).” [Comp. Additional Note at pp419, 420.]

17. The temple building, with its sacred architecture on the basis of the first tabernacle, as Solomon’s temple most richly displays it, symbolizes essentially the same as that which in the priesthood of the temple of Ezekiel’s vision is illustrated liturgically by the ministrations in this temple. For the accomplished dwelling of the Holy One in Israel proclaims His people to be a sanctified, and therefore a holy people. These are the worshippers that the Father desires ( John 4), a kingdom of priests, or a royal priesthood ( 1 Peter 2); just as the “prince,” representing the people civilly and politically, fulfils his idea in King-Messiah; while the priests, the “sons of Zadok,” represent them ecclesiastically and spiritually. This is the purpose and constitution of Israel, the people of God. What the temple is “in spirit,” the representation by the priesthood of the new temple gives “in truth,” that is, in faithfulness and trueness of life. In the former, everything is most holy; in the latter, all are high-priestly. But in Christ the idea to be represented is realized in so much the more priestly a manner, because we have here the community of the Lord, the κυριακον, where, in the case of Israel, was the congregation of the people, the עֵדָה, the קָהֵל. We might, moreover, find some difficulty in reconciling the omissions, and also the occasional so pregnant additions and stricter definitions taken from the idea of the law, in the ordinances regarding the priesthood, with what Hengst. maintains, namely, that the aim is, “by a few well-chosen strokes, to bring out the thought of the restoration of the Mosaic priesthood in its customs and its rights,” while it has been so easy for the exposition (which comp.) to show the prominence given throughout to the priestliness and sanctity of the priests’ office and the priestly order with reference to the people to be represented. As, moreover, the prince is, in Ezekiel 44, advanced to a privileged relation to the sanctuary (comp. Ezekiel 45:13 sq.), so along with teaching, instruction, especially in holiness (בֵּין קֹדֶֹש לְחֹל) and sanctification (וּנֵין־טָמֵא לְטָהוֹר, Ezekiel 44:23), the settlement of disputes by the judgment of God, the establishing of righteousness (as is perhaps indicated in the name “Zadok”), is specified in44:24 among the official duties of the priests. The prince eats in the east gate in the enjoyment of peace; the priests have always to restore peace.

18. As, on the one hand, the burnt-offering is the predominant note in this temple-system of the future, Song of Solomon, on the other, in Ezekiel 45 “oblation” is said in reference to the whole land. It is the same idea of devotion to Jehovah which is expressed by both,—the national life consecrated to the Lord in fellowship with Him (comp. the sacrificial feasts, in the east gate, of the prince of this people), Israel’s state of grace. The disquisition on the oblation of holiness, etc, preliminary to Ezekiel 47, 48, and for which Ezekiel 44:28 sq. furnishes the occasion, is significant from the very fact of being thus occasioned. For where priests and Levites are taken account of expressly according to their ministry in relation to Jehovah ( Ezekiel 45), there the whole house of Israel (45:6), and the prince in particular, with their portions of land, appear in the light of sacred property belonging to Jehovah, and also as His servants, who, while His more peculiar servants, the priests, are to see to holiness and sanctification, have to endeavour after judgment and righteousness. In this way the new nationality dedicated to the Lord (chiefly by the burnt-offering, and symbolized by the “oblation”) has to exhibit itself in civil, social, and secular life. It is actually a new nationality in relation to land and people; but, considered by itself, and apart from Ezekiel 44:28 sq, it appears to mean the division of the land, and especially the “oblation.” Spring has come, yea, the fields are now already white for the harvest ( John 4). The “oblation of holiness” announces itself as the commencement of the future harvest. Ewald: “The holy portion, which is previously taken from the rest of the land (like the tithes from the fruits of the field), and set apart for its own special purpose, is here very expressively mentioned in the outset, and with manifest reference to the now completed description of the temple (44:2; comp. Ezekiel 42:20); while the prophet evidently hastens more quickly over the portions connected therewith of the common Levites and the city of Jerusalem, in order to come to the portion and duties of the prince,” etc.

19. Hävernick says on Ezekiel 45 : “After the description of a so newly reviving order of things in church matters, it appears as a matter of course that the land itself must be treated as a new land, and stand in need of a new special division. This division stands in a converse relation to that under Joshua. While at that time the people before all, each particular tribe, receive their portion, and not until afterwards was a fixed seat in the land assigned to Jehovah, here Jehovah first of all receives a holy gift, which is presented to Him. A portion of land is separated for the sanctuary and the priests, and one of equal size for the Levites. The new temple is moreover kept separate by a kind of suburb, in order to point out its special holiness.”

20. The design of the Mosaic regulation, according to which priests and Levites, especially the latter, were to dwell dispersed among all the tribes, whereby the curse formerly uttered with respect to Levi by Jacob in his blessing of the patriarchs ( Genesis 49) became fulfilled as a blessing for Levi and for all Israel, was to settle the tribe among Israel in accordance with its calling. Bähr says: “If the Levites were to preserve the law and word of God, and thereby spread religious knowledge, promote religious life, pronounce judicial decisions in accordance therewith, etc, then it was not only suitable, but necessary, that they should not all dwell in one place, in one district. Their dwelling dispersed reminded them to spread the light of the fear of God and piety among the whole people, to give preference to no tribe, and to neglect none.” On this we observe, that it is certainly not to be looked on as an abolition of the Mosaic ordinance that in Ezekiel priests and Levites are all concentrated in one place,—the negation of the former would necessarily have to be formally announced,—but the fulfilment simply comes in place of the former arrangement, inasmuch as the end proposed by that arrangement and regulation is present with and in the future Church. Hengst. thinks the relation of the priests and Levites to the sanctuary is meant to be made clear by their concentration in its neighbourhood. But already before this the cities of the priests at least were to be found in those tribal districts which lay nearest to the place of worship. The idea from which the grouping of the priests and Levites around the sanctuary has to be understood is rather what Jeremiah predicts: that they shall no more teach every man his brother, etc, that from the least to the greatest they all shall know Jehovah ( Jeremiah 31:34). The aim of dividing Levi among all the tribes, viz. to care for, preserve, and spread abroad everywhere the law and the testimony, is thus attained. The people of the future will be such that their liturgical representation and the dwelling of their priests and Levites in the neighbourhood of the temple suffice; and besides, this significantly brings out the thought that Levi, this election from the elect people, is a “people of God in the people of God” (Bähr). For, what was designed by the appointed cities, in which we already see them collected while they were dispersed among all the tribes, is fully accomplished in the land of the priests and the Levites ( Ezekiel 45); and if Bähr’s interpretation of the number of the48 cities of the priests and Levites as referring to the sanctuary (Symb. d. mos. Kult. ii. p51) needed confirmation, it might have it here, where what this interpretation makes of Levi’s dwelling in the midst of Israel is expressly stated of the dwelling-place of the priestly Levites: “a holy place for the sanctuary” (45:4). Accordingly it is with this diversity as respects the Mosaic law, which Philippson calls “the real” diversity, exactly as Christ says in Matthew 5.: “I am come not to destroy (καταλυσαι), but to fulfil,” and that: “not one jot or one tittle shall pass from the law till all be fulfilled.”

21. The sanctuary, the land of the priests and Levites, and the prince’s portion, form almost the centre of the land. The city does not include the sanctuary, but is situated beside it, also in the midst of the land. “No jealousy about the possession of them can any longer separate the tribes” (Häv.). “This whole district,” says Bunsen, “is not to lie in the territory of a single tribe, which might thereby appear privileged, but, as accords with its sanctity, is separated from the tribal territories. In other words, the union-authority of the confederacy is to have a special seat for manifesting its activity. No wiser political idea could be devised. Hence Jerusalem still remains Jerusalem, but it no longer belongs to Benjamin.” The central sanctuary is that which unifies also the tribes of Israel, just as the priesthood, royalty, and public property grouped around it give local expression to the unity and oneness of the whole. Instead of the “violence-inflicting and heaven-assailing tower of Babel” (Neteler), “the tabernacle of Shem” has become “a divine sanctuary,” which then no longer symbolizes solely Jehovah’s dwelling in Israel, but is at the same time a type for mankind in general of His tabernacle with men ( Revelation 21:3), and of their being united to and under Him. Comp. the Doct. Reflec. on Ezekiel 47, 48.

22. Chiliasm—and this is conceivable of the Jewish Chiliasm, whereas such a final Judaism cannot but prove injurious to modern Christian Chiliasm ( Galatians 3:3)—forgets, while studying these closing chapters of our prophet, the beginning of his prophecy, the cosmic character of Ezekiel 1, which relates to creation generally, and on which the whole book is based. But indeed if πας ʼΙσραηλ in Romans 11is the people, i.e. Israel after the flesh, then it is only logically consistent to interpret the requickening in Ezekiel 37 as a bodily resurrection of all dead Jews. Those who are raised become by this fact, or as at one stroke, converted to Christ; those who are alive are Christians already, or will become so in consequence of this; and this whole Israel returns to Palestine, and forms in a transformed state, as it is already marked out for being by this awakening, the focus of the “millennial kingdom” for fresh salvation to all nations. It is illogical to wish to pick out one piece here, and to understand another merely spiritually; but he who here says A must also say B. Whether the converted Jews are to live in their own land, “under kings of the house of David, as a people who are to be preserved and finally also converted,” as Kliefoth allows to be the doctrine of Scripture, or whether King David will then return and rule over Israel in glory, is rather an antiquarian than a theological question. Scripture teaches none of these fancies; nor does it speak of a kingdom of glory in the earthly Jerusalem, in which the Gentile Church is to be joined to Israel under the dominion of the then reappeared Christ-Messiah (as Baumgarten). According to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, it has been the destination of Israel, as the people separated from all nations from the time of their first fathers, to be a blessing to mankind. And the more its national theocracy expanded itself to universal Christocracy, which comprehended also the Gentiles under the blessing of the Messiah, the more evidently there becomes exhibited in Israel, with its ecclesiastical and political forms, the preformation of an Israel which wholly is what Israel exhibits only in type,—a people of God that comprehends the redeemed, the saints of all mankind; in which accordingly, as to its worship, and as to its nationality in general, traced back to its original idea, and also viewed with respect to its future realization, the whole and (what is specially emphasized) every part always exhibits holiness and sanctification, the service of the holy God in spirit and in truth ( Psalm 22:28 [ Psalm 22:27] sq, Psalm 47:10 [ Psalm 47:9], Psalm 102:16 [ Psalm 102:15] sq.; Isaiah 26:2; Isaiah 51, 60; Luke 1:17; Romans 9:24 sq.; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:5 sq, 1 Peter 2:9-10, etc.). Nation and nationality are historical and hence perishable colourings of the idea of mankind, which have entirely faded since the eternal idea of Israel has been fulfilled in Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek ( Galatians 3), but man, the new man ( Ephesians 2) ἐν δικαιοσυνη και ὁσιοτητι της ἀληθειας. What could be fulfilled according to the letter—which, however, is the expression borne by the spirit of fulfilment—has been fulfilled in the people of Israel by their rising and revival from the graves of the exile, by their return thenceforth to Canaan under Judah as “Jews,” by the period of the Maccabees, certainly in historical prelude only to the ideal, the entire, true fulfilment of the spirit-letter in the kingdom of God through Christ; according to which fulfilment the elect people are the people of the elect from all mankind, and the Jewish people now neither exist as a people, nor have a future such as Kliefoth would assign to them, namely, to be “holy in the same way that every Christianized nation (!) now is,” for ἐφθασε ἐπʼ αὐτους ἡ ὀργη εἰς τελος ( 1 Thessalonians 2:16). For the Church of God in Christ, so far as it belongs to this world, the representation of its spiritual life in a service of atoning sacrifices and cleansings, as here in Ezekiel, can be no antithesis; for still, according to Hebrews 12, the εὐπεριστατος ἁμαρτια has to be laid aside, and ( James 3:2) πολλαʼ πταιομεν ἁπαντες (comp. Ezekiel 45:20). But to Ezekiel no other representation of the future could be given than in types of the sacred past of Israel—as of its law, so of the Davidic royalty and of Canaan as the land of promise. “But however prominent,” observes Keil, “is the Old Testament clothing of the Messianic prophecy in Ezekiel, yet even in this guise lineaments are found by which we recognise that the Israelitish-theocratic guise is only the drapery in which is concealed the New Testament form of the kingdom of God;” and he very justly refers to 1 Peter 1:10 sq, while he farther says: “Even although the prophets, in their uninspired meditations on what they had prophesied as moved by the Holy Ghost, may not have known the typical signification of their own utterances, yet we who live in the times of fulfilment, and know not only the beginning in the appearing of our Lord, etc, but a considerable course of the fulfilment too in the eighteen hundred years’ spread of the kingdom of heaven on earth, have not so much to inquire after what the Old Testament prophets thought in their searching into the prophecies with which they were inspired by the Holy Ghost,—if these thoughts of theirs could be in any way ascertained,—but we have to inquire, in the light of the present measure of fulfilment (comp. 2 Peter 1:19), what the Spirit of Christ, which enabled the prophets to behold and prophesy the future of His kingdom in figures of the Old Testament kingdom of God, has announced and revealed to us by these figures.” Apart from the occasional references of Ezekiel’s representation to paradise, to the first creation (comp. on Ezekiel 36:35; Ezekiel 16:53), to which there is a return in Christ through God’s new creation, the whole handling of the Mosaic law in Ezekiel, of its forms of worship as hieroglyphs of the future to be prophesied of the true Israel, can be understood only from the point of view of a transmutation of the law into its fulfilment.

Footnotes