Ezekiel 43:15 - Exposition

Noteworthy is the word altar, which in this verse renders two distinct Hebrew terms, הַרְאֵל and אֲרִיאֵל , which Gesenius, Hitzig, Ewald, Smend, and others, after the LXX . ( τὸ ἀριὴλ ), identify as synonymous, and translate by "hearth." But the first can only signify "the mount of God," while the latter may mean either "lion of God" or "hearth of God." Kliefoth, deriving the latter from אָרָה , "to consume," and אַיִך , "a ram," prefers as its import "ram-devourer;" Hengstenberg, resolving into אַיִל "a ram," and אְרַיִ , "a lion," proposes as its equivalent "ram-lion." i.e. "the lion that consumes the rams for God"—a ten-doting closely allied to that of Kliefoth. In any case, the terms allude to parts of the altar: the second, Ariel (equivalent to the hearth on which God's fire burns), according to Keil, Kliefoth, and the best expositors, meaning the flat surface of the altar; and the first, Harel (conveying the ideas of elevation and sanctity), the base on which it rested. The height of this base was four cubits, while from the hearth projected four horns, as in the altars of the Mosaic tabernacle ( Exodus 27:2 ; Exodus 38:2 ; Le Exodus 4:7 , Exodus 4:18 ; Exodus 8:15 ) and Solomonic temple ( Psalms 118:27 ). If the length of these be set down, as Kliefoth suggests, at three cubits, then the whole height of the altar will be in cubits—one for the ground bottom, two for the lower settle, four for the upper, four for the bases of the hearth, with three for the horns, equal to fourteen in all; or, omitting the horns, of which the length is not given, and the altar base, which is distinguished from the altar, ten cubits in all for the altar proper. As to the symbolic import of the "horns," Kurtz, after Hofmaun and Kliefoth, finds this in the idea of elevation, the "horns," as the highest point in the altar, bringing the blood put upon them nearer to God than the sides did the blood sprinkled on them (see 'Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament,' § 13); Keil, after Bahr, in the notions of strength, beauty, and blessing, the horns of an animal being the points in which its power, grace, and fullness of life are concentrated, and therefore fitting emblems of those points in the altar in which appears "its significance as a place of the revelation of Divine might and strength, of Divine salvation and blessing" ('Biblische Archaologie,' § 20).