In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the LORD was upon me, and brought me thither.
The arrangements as to the land and the temple are, in many particulars, different from those subsisting before the captivity. There are things in it so improbable physically as to preclude a purely literal interpretation. The general truth seems to hold good that, as Israel served the nations for their rejection of Messiah, so shall they serve him in the person of Messiah when he shall acknowledge Messiah (Isaiah 60:12; Zechariah 14:16-19: cf. Psalms 72:11). The ideal temple exhibits-under the Old Testament forms, used as being those then familiar to the men whom Ezekiel, a priest himself, and one who delighted in sacrificial images, addresses-not the precise literal outline, but the essential character of the worship of Messiah as it shall be when He shall exercise sway in Jerusalem among His own people, the Jews, and thence to the ends of the earth. The very fact that the whole is a "vision" (Ezekiel 40:2), not an oral face to face communication, such as that granted to Moses (Numbers 12:6-8), implies that the directions are not to be understood so precisely literal as those given to the Jewish law-giver. The description involves things which, taken literally, almost involve natural impossibilities. The square of the temple, in Ezekiel 42:20, is six times as large as the circuit of the wall enclosing the old temple, and larger than all the earthly Jerusalem. Ezekiel gives three and a half miles and 140 yards to his temple square. The boundaries of the ancient city were about two and a half miles.
Again, the city in Ezekiel has an area of between three or four thousand square miles, including the holy ground set apart for the prince, priests, and Levites. This is nearly as large as the whole of Judea west of the Jordan. Since Zion lay in the center of the ideal city, the one-half of the sacred portion extended to nearly 30 miles south of Jerusalem - i:e., covered nearly the whole southern territory, which reached only to the Dead Sea (Ezekiel 47:19), and yet five tribes were to have their inheritance on that side of Jerusalem, beyond the sacred portion (Ezekiel 48:23-28). Where was land to be found for them there? A breadth of but four or five miles a-piece would be left. Since the boundaries of the land are given the same as under Moses, these incongruities cannot be explained away by supposing physical changes about to be effected in the land, such as will meet the difficulties of the purely literal interpretation. The distribution of the land is in equal portions among the twelve tribes, without respect to their relative numbers, and the parallel sections run from east to west. There is a difficulty also in the supposed separate existence of the twelve tribes, such separate tribeships no longer existing, and it being hard to imagine how they could be restored as distinct tribes, mingled as they now are. So the stream that issued from the eastern threshold of the temple, and flowed into the Dead Sea, in the rapidity of its increase and the quality of its waters, is unlike anything ever known in Judea or elsewhere in the world.
Lastly, the catholicity of the Christian dispensation, and the spirituality of its worship, seem incompatible with a return to the local narrowness and "beggarly elements" of the Jewish ritual and carnal ordinances, disannulled 'because of the unprofitableness thereof' (Fairbairn). (Galatians 4:3; Galatians 4:9; Galatians 5:1; Hebrews 9:10; Hebrews 10:18.) 'A temple with sacrifices now would be a denial of the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. He who sacrificed before, confessed the Messiah; He who should sacrifice now, would solemnly deny him' (Douglas). These difficulties, however, may be all seeming, not real. Faith accepts God's word as it is, waits for the event, sure that it will clear up all such difficulties. Perhaps, as some think, the beau-ideal of a sacred commonwealth is given according to the then-existing pattern of temple-services, which would be the imagery most familiar to the prophet and his hearers at the time.
The minute particularizing of details is in accordance with Ezekiel's style, even in describing purely ideal scenes. The old temple embodied in visible forms and rites spiritual truths affecting the people, even when absent from it. So this ideal temple is made, in the absence of the outward temple, to serve by description the same purpose of symbolical instruction as the old literal temple did by forms and acts. As in the beginning, God promised a complete restoration and realization of the theocratic worship and polity under Messiah, in its noblest ideal (cf. Jeremiah 31:38-40). In Revelation 21:22 "no temple" is seen, as in the perfection of the new dispensation the accidents of place and form are no longer needed to realize to Christians what Ezekiel imparts to Jewish minds by the magery familiar to them. In Ezekiel's temple holiness stretches over the entire temple, so that in this there is no longer a distinction between the different parts, as in the old temple: parts left undeterminate in the latter obtain now a divine sanction, so that all arbitrariness is excluded. So that it is to be a perfect manifestation of the love of God to His covenant-people (Ezekiel 40:1-49; Ezekiel 41:1-26; Ezekiel 42:1-20; Ezekiel 43:1-12); and from it, as from a new center of religious life, there gushes forth the fullness of blessings to them, and so to all people, (Ezekiel 47:1-23.) (Fairbairn and Havernick.)
The temple built at the return from Babylon can only very partially have realized the model here given. The law is seemingly opposed to the Gospel (Matthew 5:21-22; Matthew 5:27-28; Matthew 5:33-34). It is not really so (cf. Matthew 5:17-18; Romans 3:31; Galatians 3:21-22). It is true Christ's sacrifice superseded the law-sacrifices (Hebrews 10:12-18). Israel's province may hereafter be to show the essential identity, even in the minute details of the temple-sacrifices, between the Law and Gospel (Romans 10:4; Romans 10:8). The ideal of the theocratic temple will then first be realized.
In the beginning of the year - the ecclesiastical year, the first month of which was Nisan.
The city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me there - to Jerusalem, the center to which all the prophet's thoughts tended.