Chapter 45 The New Land and The New Vision.
What is written here appears at first sight to be simply an idealistic arrangement for the division of the land by lot at the return from exile, in a similar way to the Mosaic idealistic arrangements carried into fruition by Joshua (Numbers 26:52-56), which never became a full reality because of the failure of the people of Israel. In a sense therefore it may seem to parallel those. But there is a remarkable distinction. The arrangements suggested by Moses, and carried out by Joshua, were clearly connected to the land as it was, even though they failed in fulfilment because of the disobedience and halfheartedness of the people. But Ezekiel is here portraying something that did not apply to the land as it was or to what he knew were the intentions of God's people. He is in fact deliberately describing in vision something that he knows will never literally be, but the principles of which he is certain will one day be fulfilled.
Ezekiel was a visionary, but he was no fool. He knew that the vision of his fellow exiles, or at least those of them whose hearts were for Yahweh, was to return to the land, reoccupy it, and then rebuild Jerusalem and the temple on Mount Zion. (And that incidentally is also the view of those who believe in the establishing of a Millennium about what the Jews would do then).
But what Ezekiel describes here is nothing like that. His visions of the throne of God, and now his vision of the heavenly temple already established in the land, had made him recognise that what the house of Israel were planning to do was not satisfactory. He realised that they would once more become bogged down in the land and fall back into the old ritualism, if not the old idolatry. And when we read Ezra and Nehemiah we recognise that that really was the danger, and indeed what eventually happened.
So under God's direction he lays out a plan for the future which points to something beyond that. He seeks to direct their hearts and minds to a more spiritual concept of the kingdom of God, a concept which would in fact in the end only find its fulfilment through the ministry of Jesus and in the everlasting kingdom.
What Ezekiel was seeking to convey, mainly passed the people by. For even God's presence revealed among them in His heavenly temple did not finally move them to appreciate the heavenly nature of Ezekiel's message. And that is why in the end they would even reject their Messiah because He proclaimed a heavenly kingship (Daniel 9:25-26 with Ezekiel 7:13-14; compare Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12). So careful consideration reveals a deeper meaning to his words than that which is apparent on the surface.
There is a clear suggestion in Ezekiel 45:1-5 that the twenty five thousand by twenty five thousand cubit area depicted is to be seen as a kind of enlarged ‘temple', with the heavenly sanctuary as the most holy place, the ‘holy portion' of the priests as an inner court, and the Levite and city areas as the outer court. This is the nearest that Ezekiel, given the conceptions of that time, could get to a heavenly kingdom.
In the first place it is clear that the measurements are not to be taken absolutely literally. No one allocating land would do so in such a stark mathematical manner, for it takes no account of landscape and landmarks, and it is in absolute contrast to the allocating of the land in the book of Joshua. It is thus far more likely that the numbers are to be seen as conveying a specific but not literal message, and this is confirmed by the covenant significance of the numbers. It describes an area which is ‘foursquare' in multiples of five (25000 by 25000 cubits), which surely indicates a kind of perfection within a covenant relationship.
We are not here dealing with the same situation as pictured earlier. The temple area in Ezekiel 42:20 was surrounded by what was ‘common' or ‘profane'. But here it is to be surrounded by ‘the holy portion'. Thus the situations are to be seen as very different. The two descriptions are clearly conveying different lessons at different times, the one the stark holiness of the heavenly sanctuary in contrast to the world to which it had come before the people returned, the other the special holiness of a far wider area required by God once the people of God have returned to the land and have been re-accepted by Him.
The first thing that Ezekiel is in fact trying to convey is that from now on all concentration should be placed on a recognition of the heavenly temple ‘among them' which is not directly connected with Jerusalem. In Ezekiel's eyes Jerusalem was to be thrust aside as the special place where His people could meet with God. It was not totally condemned, but simply set aside. It was desanctified and made ‘ordinary', and seen as to some extent peripheral. It was present there but seen only as the representative of ‘the whole house of Israel' in the smallest section of the foursquare arrangement. And all the thoughts of the people were to be collected around the heavenly sanctuary situated on a mountain well away from Jerusalem, and not on ‘the city' itself.
This is all evidenced by the fact that the heavenly temple, within its own wall, measuring five hundred cubits by five hundred cubits, is described as ‘most holy' (Ezekiel 45:3), and an open space of fifty cubits broad is to be maintained around it, to maintain this extreme holiness. Then it is surrounded by ‘the holy portion' in which the priests, the sons of Zadok, dwell, with their hearts and thoughts towards the heavenly temple in their midst, acting as a barrier between it and the outside world.
This holy portion is then to be seen as adjacent with the Levite portion, which is in turn adjacent with the city portion which represents the whole house of Israel, making up the outer court. Or it may be seen as surrounded by the remainder, 1) a Levitical portion, 2) ‘the city' which is for the whole house of Israel, 3) the portions for the Prince, and 4) the allocations to the tribes (not mentioned in this chapter). The whole idea is of a kind of enlarged sanctuary, with the temple being seen as ‘the inner sanctuary', that which is ‘most holy' (Ezekiel 45:3), the holy portion of the priests, being the inner court, and the remainder being the outer court, all with their attention concentrated on the heavenly sanctuary, in the latter case with a special place for the Prince within the outer court.
Ezekiel is beginning the process of wooing their hearts from the earthly to the heavenly, and turning their attention away from Jerusalem to the living God on His heavenly throne. He wants concentration on the Kingly Rule of God. It is the beginning of the process whereby ‘the land' will cease to be important in itself except as it is fulfilled in a world associated with, and responding to, the heavenly temple, before finally itself being absorbed into that temple.
There is an intricacy about this which we shall consider while we look at the text, but the important lesson we must first face up to is that we must not misjudge Ezekiel and the revelation he received. He was a man of extraordinary vision. The last thing we must see in him is someone who was just mechanically mapping out a theoretical blueprint for some far off millennial kingdom. He had a much more vital message to give, and one closer to the hearts and present experience of God's true people. He saw well beyond his times.
As we go on then we will make suggestions as to some of the ideas which may have been in Ezekiel's mind. Sometimes they will overlap. For what he is trying to get over are ideas of which he has a deep appreciation, but which, because of the limitation of the conceptions of the time, he had great difficulty in expressing. Whether this is so readers must judge for themselves.