Ezekiel 48

The substance of what has been ascertained in the foregoing Exposition may thus be set forth.

1. According to the vision shown to the prophet, on returning to take possession of their Own land in accordance with promises previously given ( Ezekiel 34:13 ; Ezekiel 36:24 : Ezekiel 37:12 , Ezekiel 37:21 , Ezekiel 37:25 ), the tribes of restored and reunited Israel should first separate from the soil a holy heave, or terumah, as a portion for Jehovah ( Ezekiel 45:1-8 ). This terumah they should divide into three parallel tracts: assigning that on the north, two-fifths of the whole, to the Levites for chambers anti for lands; that in the middle, also two-fifths of the whole, to the priests, for the sanctuary, which should occupy its center, and for houses in which they might reside; and that in the south, one-fifth of the whole, for the city, which also should stand in its middle, for dwellings and for suburbs ( Ezekiel 48:15 ). Two strips of equal area on either side of the terumah, one extending westward to the Mediterranean and another eastward to the Jordan, should be handed over as a portion for the prince, out of which he should provide burnt, meat, and drink offerings in the feasts, new moans, sabbaths, and other solemnities of the house of Israel ( Ezekiel 45:17 ). The remainder of the laud they should partition among themselves, allotting to each tribe an equal portion, which should extend from east to west across the entire breadth of the territory between the river and the sea, and be parallel to the holy oblation, but locating seven tribes north and five south of the terumah.

2. On returning to their own land, they should find that Jehovah had again, according to premise, established amongst them his sanctuary ( Ezekiel 37:26 , Ezekiel 37:27 ), a description of which the prophet gives. It is noticeable that no indication is furnished by the prophet that the people should erect an edifice after the pattern and according to the measurements of the house shown, but simply a statement made that such should be the sanctuary in which they should Worship.

3. On finding themselves once more in possession of the land which had been given to their fathers, and of a sanctuary prepared for them by Jehovah, the people of Israel should thenceforward serve him in accord-ante with the ordinances prescribed in the new Torah (Ezekiel 44-46.); should appear before him in the yearly feasts of the Passover and Tabernacles, in the monthly feasts of the new moon, in the weekly feasts of the sabbath, and in the daily ritual of sacrifice; should devolve upon the Zadokite ( i.e. upon faithful) priests the duty of ministering at the altar, upon the Levites, to which rank the apostate (or unfaithful) priests of the monarchy should be reduced, that of attending to the sanctuary, or of serving the priests; and upon the prince that of providing the requisite sacrificial victims for the public festivals; the people for this purpose paying him the sixtieth part of their corn, the hundredth part of their oil, and the two-hundredth head of their flocks annually as a heave offering.

4. When Israel, thus revived and regenerated, restored and reunited, should serve Jehovah with a pure cultus, faithfully per. forming his commandments and walking in his ways, there should flow from the temple, as the habitation of Jehovah and the central institution of the land, down to the Jordan valley and into the Dead Sea, a miraculously increasing river, which should clothe the banks along its course with never-fading beauty and never-failing fertility, and on reaching the sea should render its waters salubrious, so that living creatures and fishes of every kind should swarm therein.

The question , therefore, which remains is—What significance should be attached to this temple-vision? The answer will de-pond on whether the principle of interpretation applied to it is literal or metaphorical, historical or typical, actual or symbolical. Round these two methods of interpretation the different views that have been entertained of this temple-vision may with sufficient accuracy be grouped.

I. VIEWS WHICH GROUND THEMSELVES ON A MORE OR LESS LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE VISION . The only point which all the views in this class have in common is that they regard Ezekiel as having furnished the sketch of a new constitution for Israel, civil as well as, but chiefly, religious, to be actually put in force at some time in the future, either immediately subsequent to the exile or afterwards, by the erection of a temple, the institution of a worship and a division of the land in accordance with the specifications furnished by Ezekiel.

1. That the "temple-vision" was designed, in whole or in part, to provide a new constitution for the exiles who should return from Babylon when the seventy years of captivity had run their course, is a view which has always commanded support.

2. A second view deserving mention, if less extended, is that of those who, while finding in the temple-vision a new constitution for restored and reunited Israel, and while conceding that in some small measure or degree it may have been put in force subsequent to the exile, nevertheless anticipate the coming of a golden age , when it will receive an exact and complete fulfillment , when the soil of Palestine will be divided, the temple erected at Jerusalem, and the worship of Jehovah established therein precisely as here outlined by Ezekiel.

II. VIEWS WHICH GROUND THEMSELVES ON A SYMBOLIC INTERPRETATION OF THE VISION . A literal interpretation being impossible, the only alternative is to have recourse to the method of symbolic exposition; and, in addition to what has been already said, some things suggest themselves as strongly corroborative of this conclusion. First , there is the circumstance that the temple-plan, the ritual Torah, and the land act formed three successive parts of one extended "vision," which was shown to the prophet while in a state of "trance" or ecstasy, and were thus, as to mode of communication at least, totally unlike the tabernacle model, the Levitical code, and the land arrangements which were directly exhibited or imparted to Moses without the intervention of a "vision." Besides, the obvious correspondence of this closing vision to the earlier vision or visions (Ezekiel 8-11.), in which were represented the desecration and destruction of the first temple, lends countenance to the inference that here also, as there, the tableaux presented to the prophet's inward eye were designed as symbols. Secondly , there is the absence of any instruction to the prophet, like that given to Moses, to see that all things were made, either by himself or others, according to the pattern which had been shown to him in the mount, From the beginning to the end no hint is discoverable that the prophet or his countrymen were expected to replace the building Nebuchadnezzar had overthrown by one fashioned after the pattern now disclosed. Thirdly , without emphasizing as strongly as Kliefoth does the numbers three , seven , and twelve , that run through the whole, the obvious symmetry maintained alike in the temple-buildings, sacrificial ordinances, and land arrangements, speaks for a symbolic as against a literal interpretation; and this impression is confirmed rather than weakened by observing that in respect both of the temple and the city, only (or principally) ground-measurements are recorded, while no allusion whatever is made to either building materials or architectural details. Fourthly , there are portions of this "vision" to which a symbolic interpretation must of necessity be assigned, as e.g. the temple-river and the healing of the waters of the sea; and this fact alone should be held as decisive, unless it should emerge that there are other portions to which a symbolic exposition is inapplicable. Fifthly , antecedent passages in Ezekiel, to which this temple-vision palpably looks back, declare more or less strongly for a symbolic interpretation. One of these has already been referred to, Ezekiel 8-11. Another is Ezekiel 20:40-41 , concerning which it may suffice to quote Plumptre's words in this Commentary: "The fact that Israel itself is said to be the 'sweet savor' (Revised Version) which Jehovah accepts, suggests a like spiritual interpretation of the other offerings, though the literal meaning was probably dominant in the prophet's own thoughts." A third is Ezekiel 37:26-28 , in which a literal interpretation can be maintained only at the expense of truth, Sixthly , the analogy of similar prophetic adumbrations of Israel's future supports the idea that here also the writer's thought clothes itself in a symbolic dress. Let the pictures given by Jeremiah, Ezekiel's contemporary ( Jeremiah 31:38-40 ; Jeremiah 33:17-22 ), by Isaiah ( Isaiah 60:1-22 ), Joel ( Joel 3:18 ), Haggai ( Haggai 2:7-9 ), and Zechariah ( Zechariah 6:9-15 ; Zechariah 8:1-8 ; Zechariah 14:8-21 ) be attentively studied, and the conviction will be hard to resist that one and all they were designed in figurative language to foreshadow the spiritual blessings of a future time; and if such was the prophetic style generally, it seems reasonable to infer that Ezekiel. like his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, was accustomed to use the same. Seventhly , the symbolic interpretation admits of being carried out, which is more than can be affirmed of the literal; and this consideration should decide the question as to how the "vision" should be understood in favor of the former rather than of the latter mode of exposition.

But now assuming the symbolic method of interpretation to have been fully vindicated as the only one properly applicable to the temple-vision, a fresh inquiry rises—Of what was the vision meant to be symbolic? And the reply to this may be stated in terms so general as to unite all who favor the ideal or allegorical method of interpretation. It may be said that the vision was designed to symbolize the great and gracious blessings Jehovah purposed at a future time, when he had turned again the captivity of Israel, to bestow upon his Church. So far as the terminus owl quern of this period of blessing is concerned, it is agreed by all expositors that that is the consummation of all things, when Israel's last and mightiest enemies, Gog and Magog, shall have been destroyed; only then do interpreters fall out when the terminus a quo is required after. Some, like Diedati, Greenhill, and Hengstenberg, find the point of departure in the return from Babylon; others, as Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Pfeiffer, Fairbairn, Havernick, Kliefoth, and Currey, begin with the Incarnation; while a third group, of whom Keil may be regarded as the representative, restrict the "vision" to the times of the consummation, i.e. to the perfect service of God in the heavenly world.

1. It seems impossible to doubt that the "vision" had a reference to the times immediately subsequent to the exile. Without conceding to Hengstenberg that the whole prophecy, with the exception of Ezekiel 47:1-12 , was destined then to receive fulfillment, or to Wellhausen that it was expressly composed as a new constitution for pest-exilic Judaism, it may be granted that the exiles in Babylonia were intended to derive from it the hope and promise of a return to their own land, a re-erection of their fallen temple, and a reinstitution of their ancient worship. Indeed, it is hard to see how they could have failed to deduce such an inference from a perusal of the prophet's words. Forming, as the "vision" did, the last and culminating note of crenellation addressed to the exiles, if the picture it held up before their minds was not a mere ignis fatuus intended to mislead—if it represented (even symbolically) any underlying reality—then that reality could only have been that in the future, it might be Aim and distant, Israel and Judah, once more united and enlarged by accessions from the Gentiles, or the Church of God whom they represented, should serve Jehovah with a pure cultus in a land he had prepared for and given to them: and not a large amount of insight would be required to conclude that if Israel and Judah had any such destiny before them in the future, then assuredly their exile must terminate and their divided tribes be once more united in the old country. Whatever may have been the true significance of that picture, if it symbolized anything in which Israel and Judah were to have a share, it could not but occur, at least to the prophet himself and the more thoughtful of his first readers, that it prognosticated the dawning of brighter days, when Jehovah should turn again the captivity of his people, and re-establish them in their own land.

2. Similarly, the view of those who find in the vision a symbol of the Christian Church as a whole, or, in the words of Kliefoth, "the Christian Church in its origin, its development and influence in the world, and its completion in the hereafter," has much to support it. That Ezekiel perfectly understood the significance of his own "vision" is not asserted, and is not likely to have been the case (see 1 Peter 1:11 ); all that is wished to be affirmed by those who adopt this view is that Ezekiel's picture of a new temple, a new worship, and a new land pointed to a state and condition of things which first began to be realized when the Christian dispensation was established by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and certainly there are few particulars in which the import of the symbol (looked at in this light) cannot be at once and clearly traced. Without claiming it as a point in favor of this view that the vision makes no mention of any building materials, inasmuch as the Christian Church is composed of "lively stones," or believing and gracious souls ( 1 Peter 2:5 ), the entrance into the temple of the glory of God ( Ezekiel 43:1-6 ) found and still retains its counterpart in the perpetual inhabitation of the Church by the Spirit of Christ ( Ephesians 2:21 , Ephesians 2:22 ). The awful sanctity with which the temple was surrounded, increasing as one approached it from the outside, beginning with the holy terumah, and advancing successively to the priests' portion in the midst of which the temple stood, to the precincts five hundred reeds square which encompassed the court, to the suburbs or "void places" which ran round the outer wall, to the seven steps which conducted into the gateway, to the outer court, to the eight steps leading up to the inner court, and finally to the ascent by which access was gained to the "house,"—all this fitly symbolized the superior holiness which should belong, and in point of fact does belong, to the Church of God under the gospel. So the absence of both high priest and great Day of Atonement in Ezekiel's temple was an adumbration of the time when the ever-living High Priest of the house of God having put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, all Jehovah's worshippers should be priests in their own right, whose services should be acceptable through Jesus Christ. The daily sin offering, and the similar offerings on the solemn feast-days, meant that in the Church of the future there should be a constant remembrance of the great Propitiation that had been offered once for all, and an ever-renewed appropriation of the same by those who worshipped. The greater symmetry and fullness in the burnt offerings and meal offerings served to typify the more thorough self-consecration of Jehovah's worshippers, and their more intimate fellowship with him in the new dispensation. That the prince should be charged with the responsibility of providing victims for all the public festivals, and on the occasion of their celebration should enter and retire from the temple courts in their midst, was a foreshadowing of the truth that all the offerings of s Christian worshipper must be presented through Christ, who thus, as it were, ideally approaches the heavenly throne surrounded by his people. The miraculously flowing river rising in the temple, and increasing in width and depth as it flows, creating life and beauty wheresoever it comes, was an easily understood picture of the spiritually healthful and vivifying influences of the gospel The equal division of the land among the tribes, and the introduction of the sons of the stranger to equal privileges with the Israelite, may have been designed to intimate that when the new condition of things arrived to which the vision looked forward, i.e. when the Christian era dawned, the distinction between Jew and Gentile should no more exist ( Ephesians 2:14-16 ), and all the members of the new Israel should share alike in the inheritance of which Canaan was the earthly emblem. The separation of the temple from the city may have pointed to the fact that in that coming age the Church should be an institution altogether distinct from and no longer identical with the state, as under the Hebrew dispensation it had been. These, with other instances that might be given, show how easily the whole symbol may be understood of the Christian Church on earth, which was the view commonly entertained by the Reformed theologians, who did not, except indirectly, employ it as typical of the kingdom of God in its perfect or heavenly condition.

3. This, however, is the view taken of the vision by both Kliefoth and Keil, the first of whom does not, while the second does, exclude all allusion to the present or historical condition of the Christian Church. In the vision Kliefoth, while discovering some things, as for instance the sin offerings, that can only be applied to the present or temporal form of the Church, finds others, as e.g. the temple-river, which he holds can only have its counterpart in the river of the Apocalypse ( Revelation 22:1 ). On the other hand, Keil argues that only one thing presupposes that Israel has still to take possession of (the heavenly) Canaan, viz." the directions concerning the boundaries and the division of the land," and proceeds to say, "It fellows from this that the prophetic picture does not furnish a typical exhibition of the Church of Christ in its gradual development, but sets forth the kingdom of God established by Christ in its perfect form." In short, Keil regards the whole "vision" as a symbolic representation, in Old Testament language and ideas—the only way in which such representation could have been given so as to be intelligible to Ezekiel's readers—of the introduction of God's spiritual Israel into their heavenly Canaan, and of the perfect service they shall there render to Jehovah. That the heavenly condition of the Church of God was designed to be depicted it seems necessary to hold, both from the position of the vision in Ezekiel's book and from the contents (in part) of the vision itself. The vision occurs, as the last note of consolation offered to the exiles, after the vision of their moral and spiritual resuscitation and establishment in their own land, with David, Jehovah's Servant and King, ruling over them, and in close connection with, if not immediately after, the final conflict with Gog, which leads up, one should say, quite naturally to the complete blessedness of the future life. Then the correspondence between the river in John's description of the heavenly Jerusalem, and this temple-stream in Ezekiel's vision, renders it impossible to exclude from the latter all allusion to the heavenly state. At the same time, there are points, even on Keil's showing, that cannot well be harmonized with the theory that only the heavenly and glorified form of the Church is symbolized by the vision. One of these has been mentioned, the perpetuation of the sin offering; another is the precept concerning the hereditary property of the prince and its transmission to his sons; a third is the separation between the temple and the city; a fourth is the invasion of Gog, which, as Keil has observed, is represented as occurring after Israel has taken possession of the land. Hence probably it is wrong to restrict the significance of the "vision" so exclusively as Keil does to the heavenly world.

Upon the whole, it seems best to find a place for each of the above views in any interpretation of the vision; and this may be done by supposing that the vision was designed by its real Author—the Spirit of Christ ( 1 Peter 1:11 )—to set forth, by means of Old Testament imagery, a picture of that perfect service which ought to have been rendered from the first by Israel (after the flesh) to Jehovah, but was not, and which it was Jehovah's promise to the exiles would ultimately be rendered by that new Israel (according to the Spirit) he was soon to call out of the ruins of the old. In this way, as setting forth the ideal of a perfect worship which will not be completely realized until Israel reaches the heavenly Canaan, the "vision" admits of Keil's interpretation; but inasmuch as this ideal worship will not be attained to there unless the worship itself begins on earth in the Christian Church—to which not a few features in the symbol point—the vision is also susceptible of Kliefoth's exposition; while as the first step towards the calling out of the new Israel was taken when God turned again the captivity of the exiles, the view of Hengstenberg cannot be excluded.

A few words may be added on the bearing which the view just taken of the significance of the temple-vision has upon the chief critical question of the day as to the structure of the Pentateuch. The modern theory, begun by Graf and Reuss, but per-leered by Kuenen and Wellhausen, it is well known, is that, while the book of the covenant (Exodus 21-23 originated in the early years of the monarchy, and Deuteronomy not later than the reign of Josiah, the priest-code, as it is styled (Exodus 24-40. with some exceptions, the whole of Leviticus, and the most of Numbers), is a work of post-exilic origin, and that Ezekiel (40-48.) constituted, as it were, the bridge by which the law-making spirit of the Hebrew religion passed over from the popular legislation of the Fifth Book of Moses to the highly developed and minutely articulated system of Leviticus. Into the general question it would be out of place in this work to enter; the most that can be (lone is to indicate how far the theory is entitled to claim support from the temple-vision which has just been expounded and interpreted. Nor is it needful, in doing so, to dwell upon the alleged evidence of Ezekiel's priority to Leviticus, derived from Ezekiel's language and the contents of his sacrificial Torah—this has been more or less done in the course of exposition—since the validity or invalidity of such (so-called) evidence depends entirely on the correctness or incorrectness of the presupposition which is commonly made, viz. that Ezekiel designed to draft a new constitution for the post-exilic Church. Could this have been made out, it would by no means have followed that Ezekiel's Torah, by its divergences from that of Leviticus, proved the later origin of the latter, since Ezekiel, having himself been prophet, no less than Moses, was at liberty to abrogate or modify any pre-existing law if impelled to do so by the Spirit that originally taught Moses; but inasmuch as it has not been and cannot be made out beyond reachable doubt—rather, inasmuch as strong grounds exist for holding that Ezekiel had no such intention, but designed to provide a complex symbol of the perfect relations which should subsist between God and his (spiritual) Israel, it is clearly not permissible to argue that Ezekiel was suggesting for the first time the course which temple-legislation should pursue in the new era which should commence when the exile was ended and the restoration begun. If all that Ezekiel had in contemplation was to furnish a symbol of the sort already indicated, it is manifestly an inference not warranted by the premises that he desired to initiate a distinction which should afterwards be put in force between the priests who should serve the altar and the Levites who should serve the tabernacle, and to assign the former honor to the sons of Zadok, while inflicting the latter degradation on the Levites who had ministered at pre-exilic high places. If Ezekiel's fetching in of the sons of Zadok was merely a device to obtain a symbol of faithful and pure service, then the whole theory which has been so ingeniously erected on the so-called degradation of the Levites—a passage which has been styled "the key to the Old Testament "—runs the risk of falling to pieces, and, to use the words of Delitzsch, "the degradation of the Levites, which certainly appears in Ezekiel as an innovation," becomes "another thing than a riddle to be solved by the new Pentateuchal theory."