Ezekiel 46:9 - Exposition

But when the people of the land shall come before the Lord. As the preceding verse referred to the prince's entrance into and departure from the inner gate, this was intended to regulate the movements of the prince's subjects when they should enter the outer court at any of the festal seasons—not the high festivals alone, such as the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, which are usually denominated חַגּים , but the ordinary appointed feasts ( מְוֹעֲדִים ), including, besides the high festivals, the sabbaths and the new moons and such other religions celebrations as were or should be prescribed in the new Torah. In order to prevent confusion, and that all might be conducted with propriety, no one should depart by the gate through which he had entered, but by the opposite, i.e. he who had entered by the north gate should retire through the south gate, and vice versa . Hengstenberg thinks the reason for this regulation "cannot be sought in the endeavor to avoid a throng," since "in that case it must have been ordained that all should go in by the same gate and go out by the opposite one;" it must, he holds, have been "a theological one," viz. "to signify that each should go out of the sanctuary another man than he came in."