Ezekiel 44
Butler2. Jehovah had before left the house to destruction, because it had been polluted and profaned (11 : 22). He now returns to take possession of His holy habitation, prepared and sanctified for His reception. B. C.
4,5. Again, approaching from the north, the prophet in vision is impressed with a sense of the glory of Jehovah as filling His temple, and he falls upon his face in profound adoration. This case anticipates the great truth brought out so distinctively at the close of this entire vision, which indeed is the central thought throughout—viz., that God dwells among His people by His spiritual presence and glory. The name of the whole city shall be, “The Lord is there.” This being chief in importance, gave name to the city. Now the Lord solemnly charges the prophet to mark well (“set his heart upon”) all he was about to say in respect to the modes of worship in this temple and in respect to entering and leaving it. H. C.
5. Behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house. The glory, or the symbol of the Divine presence, entered into the temple and settled there, as it did when it was finished by Solomon (1 K. 8 : 10, 11). W. Lowth.
7. The place of My throne. Here is the place of my throne, etc. The cherubim were God’s throne, from whence He is said to sit between the cherubim, and the ark was His footstool (Ps. 99 : 1, 5). Calmet.
Where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever. This promise is to be understood like those formerly made upon the condition of their obedience, but it is eminently fulfilled in Christ, in whom all the prophecies of the Old Testament are to have their final accomplishment. Zechariah prophesies of the Messiah (chap. 6 : 13), that “He should build the temple of the Lord, and bear the glory;” that is, He shall build the Christian Church; “in him shall all the fulness of the Godhead dwell bodily,” and really, not in types and figures. (See Heb. 3 : 3; Matt. 16 : 18; John 1 : 14; Col. 2 : 9.) There was no visible Shekinah or glory in the second temple till the Lord, whom they expected, “came to His temple” (Mal. 3 : 1)—that is, till the Messiah, who was “the brightness of His Father’s glory,” appeared there, and made it an illustrious figure of that true church or temple of believers, where He would continue His presence forever (2 Cor. 6 : 16). (W. Lowth.) Bp. Hall.
5-11. The allusion to the “place of His throne” (verses 7, 8), and to their kings as having defiled God’s sanctuary by setting up idol gods there, looks to Manasseh. (See 2 K. 21 : 4-7.) These verses are specially valuable as revealing the conditions on which alone the Lord would return and continue to dwell among His people. They must—absolutely MUST put away their sins and be ashamed of their iniquities. If they consented heartily to these conditions, the prophet was to show them the form of the house, and all that the Lord had revealed of this new temple, and of its ordinances of worship as a pledge of His own restoring mercy and His return to dwell among them. This was specially pertinent to the exiles among whom the prophet lived, and shows that the Lord designed this vision to bear vigorously upon the hearts of that people then and there.
12. This temple stood on a mountain. So did that of Solomon, though this appears to have been the loftier one. The whole area of this mountain top was most holy as being the place where the Lord Jehovah truly dwelt. The subsequent verses of this chapter describe the great altar, and give the ordinances to regulate the sacrifices upon it. H. C.
Chap. 44. The relation of the different classes of people to the temple and its courts. The position of the prince (verses 1-3). Admonition to ministering priests, grounded upon former neglect (verses 4-16). Regulations as to the priests’ services. The garments of the priests are defined and various rules prescribed in the Law are repeated, with some additions in order to denote additional care to avoid uncleanness (verses 17-27). Provision for the priests and Levites (verses 28-31). B. C.
7,9. Strangers residing in Israel, but of uncircumcised heart, must by no means be permitted to enter the Lord’s sanctuary. The Levites who had apostatized into idolatry must bear the punishment of this great iniquity. They were forbidden to come near before the Lord, but were assigned to the more remote and less hallowed and honored services of the sanctuary. They were to minister in the presence of their more favored brethren, the priests, as their servants; but might not come specially near to the Lord. To the sons of Zadok who had not thus apostatized was assigned the distinguished honor of coming near to minister before the very presence of the Divine majesty. This discrimination had a most significant and earnest moral bearing. “Holiness becometh God’s house forever.” The favored ones there are the men of lowly heart who live near to God, walking softly before Him. H. C.
The argument e silentio can be only of limited application in regard to historical books, fully occupied as they are with other matters, and only occasionally and incidentally alluding to existing ecclesiastical laws and customs; but it is plainly of great importance in this prophetic setting forth of quite a full and detailed ecclesiastical scheme. The omission of references to any ritual law or feast or ceremony in the historical books can occasion no surprise, and afford no just presumption against the existence of such rites and ceremonies, unless some particular reason can be alleged why they should have been mentioned; but a corresponding omission from the pages of Ezekiel is good evidence either that the thing omitted was too familiar to require mention, or else that he purposely excluded it from his scheme. In other words, it shows that what he omits, as compared with the Mosaic Law, was either already entirely familiar to him and to the people; or else that the law he sets forth was, in these particulars, different from the Mosaic Law. To illustrate by an example: there can be no question that circumcision was a fundamental rite of the religion of the Israelites, practised in all ages of their history; yet, after the Pentateuch and the few first chapters of Joshua, there is no mention of it, and the words circumcise, circumcised, circumcision, do not occur in the sacred literature down to the time of Jeremiah; neither is there any allusion to circumcision in Ezekiel, except the mention of the stranger “uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh” (44: 7, 9). Of course the reason for this, in both cases, is that the law of circumcision was so familiar and the practice so universal that there was no occasion for its mention. On the other hand, the fast of the day of atonement is not mentioned either in the historical books or in Ezekiel. We are not surprised at its omission from the former, nor can this cast any shade of doubt on its observance, unless some passage can be shown in which it would have been likely to be spoken of; but we can only account for its being passed over in the cycle of the festivals in Ezekiel on the supposition that it formed no part of his scheme, while yet there are indications that he recognizes it, in his other arrangements, as existing in his time. F. Gardiner.
17-19. Outward purity symbolizes inward; the purity of the person that of the heart. Hence linen rather than woollen garments were prescribed. Sweat, as indicating impurity, must be avoided. Special garments were assigned to be worn exclusively before the Lord, to be exchanged for others when they came before the people. The last clause of verse 19 means, they shall not sanctify the people ministering in their ordinary garments, but only while wearing their sacred vestments.
23. Under the ancient economy, the ceremonial distinction between the holy and the profane, the clean and the unclean, had the high moral purpose of training the mind to recognize the distinction between holiness and sin. This same distinction it must be the great duty of God’s servants in the millennial age to teach and to enforce.
24. Under the law given through Moses, the distinction recognized in modern times between civil and religious statutes was scarcely known. The priests and Levites were then judges of civil cases. (See De. 17: 8-13; 2 Chron. 19: 8-11.) Hence naturally the same system obtains here.
25-27. No form of ceremonial uncleanness was accounted more flagrant than that which comes from contact with a dead body, or near approach to one. Hence promiscuous mourning for the dead and attendance upon these funeral solemnities were strictly forbidden to the priests, the law defining by name the near relatives for whom they might mourn. The same reason is here, to indicate the moral purity which will characterize the future kingdom of the Messiah.
28. They were to have subsistence from the altar and from the tithes which the law prescribed. Beyond this they had no inheritance. From landed estates the Lord purposely debarred them. This was also the doctrine of the ancient Mosaic system. H. C.
To describe the priests of his day as “the sons of Zadok” is no proof that Ezekiel did not recognize, or was ignorant of, their more ancient designation as “the sons of Aaron.” But the prophet makes this clearer by the reason which he gives for continuing to them the honor bestowed on their father in David’s reign: “The priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they shall come near to Me to minister unto Me, and they shall stand before Me to offer unto Me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord God” (verse 15). For faithfulness to their charge, then, they were to be retained in the place of high honor they had well guarded for centuries. A higher place they could not attain to. Nothing more noble was possible for them than to keep, with Jehovah’s approval, the position originally assigned to them. Not to have forfeited their rights was all that could be said. But it was different with “the Levites that are gone away far from me, when Israel went astray, which went astray away from Me after their idols; they shall even bear their iniquity” (verse 10). Manifestly these Levites were like Korah in the wilderness, “seeking the priesthood also.” But their usurpation of the priest’s office was punished, first, by a sharp reminder of the lower rank they hold; and, second, by a renewal of the wilderness exclusion of them from the priesthood. For the prophet proceeds: “And they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, having charge at the gates of the house, and ministering to the house. And they shall not come near unto Me, to do the office of a priest unto Me, nor to come near to any of My holy things, in the most holy place.” Misconduct on the part of the Levites in past ages made necessary a clear definition of their rank and duties in the new temple that was to be built. That definition was delivered by Ezekiel in words and phrases so startlingly the same as those of the Law given in the wilderness, that, if he had not the Pentateuch before him as we now read it, it will be difficult to attain to certainty in any historical matter whatever. There is not a shadow of reason for attributing to Ezekiel the invention of these words and phrases. If Moses was not the first utterer of them, we are in hopeless uncertainty about a matter which otherwise seems clear as noonday. The Levites said Ezekiel, “shall not come near unto Me to do the office of a priest unto Me,” as they attempted to do for ages “when Israel went astray.” But what are these words of the prophet save a copy, or a singularly clear echo, of those spoken in the wilderness: “The censers of these sinners against their own souls” shall be “a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense,” the peculiar duty of the priests in the holy place (Num. 16: 38-40; 2 Chron. 26: 16).
There remains another historical coincidence to be pointed out in connection with these statements of Ezekiel. With a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired, he lets us understand that the priests remained at their post, “in charge of My sanctuary,” “when Israel went astray.” Although he is speaking of “the sons of Zadok” as those whose relation to the high priesthood specially singled them out for mention, it is clear from his writings that a part of the priestly family is here standing for the whole. They did not desert the temple, however much their rights and revenues may have been curtailed. But the same praise is not given to the Levites; “they are gone away far from Me.” They abandoned their posts precisely as their successors did in the days of Nehemiah, a century and more after Ezekiel’s time. But there is historical evidence which confirms this forsaking of their duty by the Levites, “when Israel went astray.” No mention whatever is made of their desertion in the Book of Kings. The first discovery of it is given by the chronicler in narrating the overthrow of Athaliah. Jehoiada, the high-priest, and a son of Zadok, is seen at his post as chief keeper of the temple during the dreary six years of her tyranny. But the Levites had fled; they required to be “gathered out of all the cities of Judah;” and even after the priest had succeeded in his plans, the same Levites were coldly indifferent to the duty of repairing the neglected temple (2 Chron. 23: 2; 24: 5, 6). Read in the light of Ezekiel’s prophecies, these statements of the chronicler are a valuable and an undesigned proof of the historical value of his writings. Sime.