Ezekiel 45:16 - Exposition

All the people of the land shall give (literally, shall be for ) this oblation (or, terumah ) for the prince in Israel . Assuming that the prince here refers to the ordinary civil magistrate, Hengstenborg founds on this an argument in support of state Churches: "This is also the general doctrine, that the magistrate shall take first of all from the taxes levied the means for the proper observance of Divine worship." But if the oblations above referred to were not properly taxes, and if the prince was not properly an earthly sovereign of the ordinary type, this argument falls to the ground.