The Allotment of the Sacred Portion.
“Moreover when you divide by lot the land for inheritance, you will offer a gift-offering to Yahweh, a holy portion of the land. The length shall be the length of twenty five thousand, and the breadth shall be ten thousand. It shall be holy in all its surrounding borders. Of this there shall be for the holy place five hundred by five hundred, square round about, and fifty cubits for its open space round about. And by this measure you will measure, a length of twenty five thousand, and a breadth of ten thousand. And in it will be the sanctuary which is most holy. It is a holy portion of land. It will be for the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary who come near to minister to Yahweh. And it will be a place for their houses and a holy place for the sanctuary.”
The commencement is simple enough. It is a reference to when the people eventually return to the land in a new Exodus and begin to parcel out the land. But then he moves on to his new conception.
On return to the land Israel were first to set aside as ‘a holy portion' for Yahweh an area of land ‘twenty five thousand by ten thousand' (this is totally outside the city). This was probably intended to be seen as the equivalent of the priestly tithe. But it is stressed that it is a ‘holy portion', and it is to be sited where it will itself surround the heavenly temple. This would then be followed by an allotment to the Levites (Ezekiel 45:5) an allotment for ‘the city' (Ezekiel 45:6), and allotments to the prince (Ezekiel 45:7-8), after which the remainder would be divided up by lots as depicted in Ezekiel 47:13 to Ezekiel 48:35.
As we suggested on Ezekiel 42:20, where no mention is made of a unit of measurement we are probably to see it as meaning cubits, and this may be seen as confirmed by the mention of ‘cubits' for the ‘open space' around the sanctuary. So the size of ‘the holy portion' is to be twenty five thousand by ten thousand cubits. These measurements for the holy portion stress the covenant aspect of the whole. Twenty five is five times five, ten is five times two. Both are ways of expressing five intensified. Thus the holy portion itself strongly stresses the covenant relationship between Yahweh and His people.
‘Of this there shall be for the holy place.' Of the holy portion a section five hundred by five hundred has already been set aside for ‘the holy place', the heavenly sanctuary (Ezekiel 42:20), in its midst, for the heavenly sanctuary is already there, as Ezekiel has witnessed. This is described in Ezekiel 45:3 as ‘most holy'. This section is then to be surrounded by an open space of fifty cubits wide all round (the priests are not to be limited by the larger distances mentioned in Ezekiel 42:16-19).
The five hundred by five hundred was the size of the heavenly tabernacle to its outer wall (Ezekiel 42:20). So we are again in the realm of the heavenly. This is not describing the site of an earthly temple, but of the temple which is heavenly, depicting heavenly perfection, of which any earthly temple will be but a meagre copy. No one allocating actual land would do it on such a basis (when taken with what follows). This represents a God-given covenant ideal. In this regard we would point out once again that according to Ezekiel 42:15-20 measurements were made on a different basis, and that there the land outside the 500 by 500 was called ‘common', for there the emphasis was on the holiness of the heavenly sanctuary, to distinguish it from the mundane world to which it had come. There was as yet no ‘holy portion' for the priests.
But now the emphasis is on the holiness of the portion of land appointed to the priests, a portion of covenant proportions, which surrounds the heavenly sanctuary, and includes it. This is clearly later in point of time than the first arrival of the heavenly sanctuary, and does indeed await the return of the exiles. It is not strictly a temple which is in mind but a holy portion around the heavenly sanctuary on its mountain.
Furthermore the whole of this area, including the sanctuary in its midst, is specifically stated to be outside ‘the city' (Ezekiel 45:6). This certainly cannot be fitted in directly with a temple built in Jerusalem. The city in this case is seen as not worthy of the sanctuary. It is not even a part of ‘the holy portion'. The Jews, whose hearts were still wedded to Jerusalem, would never even have thought in terms of reproducing this situation. Nor did they. They missed the opportunity altogether. As ever their hearts were on the mundane. But Ezekiel was trying to turn their thoughts away from the earthly city of Jerusalem to a deeper heavenly reality, which he had already stressed in the vision of the heavenly temple, a sphere of holiness which had nothing to do with Jerusalem. He was envisaging something heavenly when there was little conception of such ideas.
So we must surely see this idealistic picture as rather presenting the truth that those who have God as their inheritance are to receive a perfect inheritance, an inheritance connected with the heavenly temple and that in the end this could only be fulfilled in the heavenly sphere. For where were they to find the heavenly temple? Possibly Ezekiel himself half believed they would see it when they arrived back in the land. But God's thoughts went deeper than that. This is the beginning of the transference of ‘the land' which they are to inherit, from the earth to the heavens, and to the new earth (compare Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22).