Ezekiel 44
Summary for Ezek 44:1-31: 44:1-31 a Now that the glory of the Lord had returned to the Temple, questions of access were critical. Who could approach this holy God? Like ch 43 b, this chapter is concerned with the Temple’s entrances and exits, as well as the duties and procedures associated with its use.44:2 c The outer east gate must remain perpetually closed because the Lord had now returned to his Temple and would never again leave it. He had also sanctified this gate by going through it, and no one else was ever to use it.
44:3 d Though the prince had the significant privilege of being the only one allowed to feast in the Lord’s presence inside the east outer gateway, he was restricted to entering and leaving the portico from the outer court. He was not to enter from outside the Temple complex by going through the gate, as the Lord had; the earthly ruler is a man, not God, and he must submit to God. The prince must also never forget that the Temple is God’s palace, not his own private chapel.
Summary for Ezek 44:6-8: 44:6-8 e The people of Israel were called rebels because they had failed to control access to the sanctuary in the past; they had hired uncircumcised foreigners to come into the sanctuary and probably employed them as Temple guards and gatekeepers. This task should not have been delegated to foreigners; it should have been performed by the Levites, whom the Lord had assigned to perform it (cp. 44:10 f).
44:9 g No foreigners: This was not a blanket prohibition against non-Israelite access to the sanctuary. It only affected those who had not been circumcised and have not surrendered themselves to the Lord. Genuine converts could be part of the new Israel (see 47:22-23 h).
44:10 i when Israel strayed away from me to worship idols: The people had a long history of failing to follow God’s plan for worship, including the specific sin of employing foreigners as temple guards (44:8 j).
Summary for Ezek 44:12-14: 44:12-14 k The Levites had encouraged ... Israel to fall into deep sin by abandoning the Lord and worshiping idols. One of the consequences of that sin was that they could no longer enter the inner court of the Temple like the priests. However, by God’s grace, they would still have a significant ministry in serving the people and slaughtering their sacrifices.
• The people as a whole were placed at a greater distance from God because of their idolatry. Prior to the Exile they would have slaughtered their own sacrifices (see Lev 1:5 l, 11 m); now they must hand them over to the Levites to be slaughtered on their behalf.
Summary for Ezek 44:15-16: 44:15-16 n In contrast to the Levites and the people who abandoned the Lord for idols, the Levitical priests of the family of Zadok remained faithful to the Lord. Zadok was the high priest of Solomon’s day. His family’s reward was renewed access to the inner courtyard, where they were to perform the crucial sacrificial rituals nearer to the presence of God. A repeated theme in these chapters is that those who were faithful in the past would be rewarded with closer access to God and greater privilege in his presence, while those who were unfaithful would be kept at a greater distance.
Summary for Ezek 44:17-19: 44:17-19 o The privileged access of the priests carried heightened responsibilities for holiness. Their behavior was far more restricted than that of the people in general. They had to wear linen rather than wool so that their bodies would not be defiled by sweat (see study note on 36:17), and they were to maintain a separate wardrobe of sacred garments.
• endanger ... by transmitting holiness to them: Holiness was a contagious quality that could be conveyed to anything with which it came into contact. The problem with this is that if a sacred object transmitted holiness to a profane object or person, there could be fatal consequences (cp. Lev 10:1-3 p; 1 Sam 6:19 q; 2 Sam 6:6-7 r).
Summary for Ezek 44:20-27: 44:20-27 s The priests were to avoid contact with death, either by being in the presence of a dead person or through the ritual mourning practices in which they would shave their heads or let their hair grow completely free. They must not drink wine before entering the inner courtyard to avoid the risk of potentially fatal alcohol-induced errors (see Lev 10:9 t). The priests were restricted in marriage to virgins of Israel or to widows of the priests to ensure the continuing purity of the priestly line. In all of these ways, the priests were to model the radical distinction between holy and common and between the ceremonially clean and unclean for the people.
Summary for Ezek 44:28-30: 44:28-30 u Because the priests belonged to the Lord and were provided for through a share of the sacrificial offerings of the Temple, they would not have any property or possession of land. The Lord was their inheritance, and their temporal needs were to be supplied by the firstfruits of the people’s harvests and the various offerings made at the Temple.
44:31 v In their radical separation from the realm of death, they could not eat any bird or animal that died a natural death or was attacked by another animal.
Ezekiel 45
Summary for Ezek 45:1-8: 45:1-8 w The division of the restored Promised Land among the tribes is described in detail in chs 47–48 x, but the central sacred section is described here because it included the area set aside for the priests to live in. Regaining a share in the land was a pressing concern for the exiles at a time when they had none. Ezekiel’s interest, however, was not simply in promising that the land would be divided among them in a fair way. He wanted to remind them of what the Promised Land was about in the first place. It was a land in which God would dwell among his people. At the outset, therefore, the central part of the land would be assigned to the Lord as his holy portion. The main purpose of this was to provide a zone of holiness and protection around the Temple.Summary for Ezek 45:3-4: 45:3-4 y Within this holy portion, the Temple complex would form the Most Holy Place at the heart of a sacred square. Just as the Most Holy Place in the Temple was protected by an inner court that only the priests could enter, the Temple complex was surrounded by a section reserved only for priests.
Summary for Ezek 45:5-6: 45:5-6 z To the north of this priestly strip was an area reserved for the Levites; to the south (48:15 aa), the city was located on a half-size strip. The result was a square that was 81/3 miles on a side.
45:7 ab On both sides of the larger sacred area (45:1-6 ac), the remainder of the holy portion was assigned to the prince. The same principle of graded access that operated in the Temple was applied more broadly to the surrounding land. The Temple would be the geographical and spiritual heart of the new Israel. The land would be divided into strips running east to west, orienting the whole nation along the sacred east–west axis of the Temple. The city and the prince would still be important in the new economy, but they would no longer be at the center. The Lord was Israel’s King, and his dwelling place would be the hub of their existence.
Summary for Ezek 45:8-9: 45:8-9 ad One tangible expression of the Lord’s kingly rule was that he distributed the land to the prince as well as to the people. The prince was assigned a large enough piece of his own land to meet his needs and to allow him to support the ministry of the Temple without having to oppress and rob the people.
Summary for Ezek 45:10-12: 45:10-12 ae When the prince gathered the offerings of the people for the Temple (see 45:13-17 af), he was not to adjust the scales so that he profited from the difference between what he took in from the people and what he gave out for the ministry of the Temple.
Summary for Ezek 45:13-17: 45:13-17 ag The people were to provide for the regular daily offerings that will make atonement at the new Temple by means of a tax paid to the prince. The prince was to provide all of the offerings for special occasions, such as the religious festivals, the new moon celebrations, and the Sabbath days. Both the regular daily offerings and the special festival offerings functioned to purify the people of Israel, making them right with the Lord.
Summary for Ezek 45:21-25: 45:21-25 ah Like the offerings, the annual festivals in the new Temple had a purifying purpose. Instead of the three distinctive festivals of the Mosaic order (the feasts of Passover, Harvest, and Shelters), there were now only two virtually identical festivals, Passover and Shelters, spaced six months apart. The Passover feast still took place on the fourteenth day of the first month and resembled the earlier festival in many ways, though the number of sacrificial offerings was significantly higher than those prescribed in Num 28 ai. The Festival of Shelters, however, is not even explicitly named in the Hebrew text and has lost anything distinctive about its celebration except for the provision that the prince will provide the same sacrifices as for the Passover. It still occurs in the seventh month. The land’s constant purification from sin emerges as a central theme.
Ezekiel 46:1-18
Summary for Ezek 46:1-15: 46:1-15 aj Ezekiel continued to outline the responsibilities of the prince at the special celebrations by specifying his duties on Sabbath days and at new moon celebrations. The prince would be the representative worshiper on behalf of the people. He would pass through the Temple in procession with them, and he would also be uniquely able to approach the realm of the sacred on their behalf. 46:1 ak The east gateway between the inner and outer courtyards would open once a week for the Sabbath, once a month for new moon celebrations, and when the prince offered voluntary burnt offerings or peace offerings (46:12 al). The east gate between the outer courtyard and the outside world was never to be opened again (44:2-3 am).46:2 an The prince would have the unique privilege of going through the eastern gateway to the inner courtyard as far as the entry room to worship. This symbolized that God regarded him as more significant than the common people, but that he was still not fit to stand in God’s presence apart from mediation by the priests.
46:3 ao The ordinary Israelites, the common people, would be allowed to climb the stairs to the threshold to offer their worship when the gate was open on the Sabbath and the first day of the month; only then would they be able to see into the inner court. Otherwise, they were kept away from it.
Summary for Ezek 46:9-10: 46:9-10 ap During religious festivals, the people were to present themselves before the Lord by proceeding through the Temple from north to south or vice versa, with the prince in their midst. Their motion was to follow the profane north–south axis rather than the sacred east–west axis along which the priests’ activities took place.
46:12 aq The voluntary burnt offering or peace offering was in addition to the regular daily offerings of meat, grain, and oil that symbolized the regular table fellowship and communion that had now been restored between God and his people.
Summary for Ezek 46:16-18: 46:16-18 ar Because the land assigned to the prince was the Lord’s gift to him and to his family, he could not give it permanently to one of his servants. Each Year of Jubilee, the fiftieth year when all land in Israel reverted to its original family owners, this land would revert to the crown. This provision was intended to remove the temptation for the king to acquire more and more land with which to reward his faithful servants, resulting in less land for the ordinary people. The land belonged to the Lord, and he divided it among his people. No one, not even the king, was permitted to tamper with the people’s inheritance.
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