WHEN YOU ALLOT the land as an inheritance, you are to present to the LORD a portion of the land as a sacred district, 25,000 cubits long and 20,000 cubits wide; the entire area will be holy. 2Of this, a section 500 cubits square is to be for the sanctuary, with 50 cubits around it for open land. 3In the sacred district, measure off a section 25,000 cubits long and 10,000 cubits wide. In it will be the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. 4It will be the sacred portion of the land for the priests, who minister in the sanctuary and who draw near to minister before the LORD. It will be a place for their houses as well as a holy place for the sanctuary. 5An area 25,000 cubits long and 10,000 cubits wide will belong to the Levites, who serve in the temple, as their possession for towns to live in.
6“ ‘You are to give the city as its property an area 5,000 cubits wide and 25,000 cubits long, adjoining the sacred portion; it will belong to the whole house of Israel.
7“ ‘The prince will have the land bordering each side of the area formed by the sacred district and the property of the city. It will extend westward from the west side and eastward from the east side, running lengthwise from the western to the eastern border parallel to one of the tribal portions. 8This land will be his possession in Israel. And my princes will no longer oppress my people but will allow the house of Israel to possess the land according to their tribes.
9“ ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: You have gone far enough, O princes of Israel! Give up your violence and oppression and do what is just and right. Stop dispossessing my people, declares the Sovereign LORD. 10You are to use accurate scales, an accurate ephah and an accurate bath. 11The ephah and the bath are to be the same size, the bath containing a tenth of a homer and the ephah a tenth of a homer; the homer is to be the standard measure for both. 12The shekel is to consist of twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels plus twenty-five shekels plus fifteen shekels equal one mina.
13“ ‘This is the special gift you are to offer: a sixth of an ephah from each homer of wheat and a sixth of an ephah from each homer of barley. 14The prescribed portion of oil, measured by the bath, is a tenth of a bath from each cor (which consists of ten baths or one homer, for ten baths are equivalent to a homer). 15Also one sheep is to be taken from every flock of two hundred from the well-watered pastures of Israel. These will be used for the grain offerings, burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to make atonement for the people, declares the Sovereign LORD. 16All the people of the land will participate in this special gift for the use of the prince in Israel. 17It will be the duty of the prince to provide the burnt offerings, grain offerings and drink offerings at the festivals, the New Moons and the Sabbaths—at all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel. He will provide the sin offerings, grain offerings, burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to make atonement for the house of Israel.
18“ ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In the first month on the first day you are to take a young bull without defect and purify the sanctuary. 19The priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the temple, on the four corners of the upper ledge of the altar and on the gateposts of the inner court. 20You are to do the same on the seventh day of the month for anyone who sins unintentionally or through ignorance; so you are to make atonement for the temple.
21“ ‘In the first month on the fourteenth day you are to observe the Passover, a feast lasting seven days, during which you shall eat bread made without yeast. 22On that day the prince is to provide a bull as a sin offering for himself and for all the people of the land. 23Every day during the seven days of the Feast he is to provide seven bulls and seven rams without defect as a burnt offering to the LORD, and a male goat for a sin offering. 24He is to provide as a grain offering an ephah for each bull and an ephah for each ram, along with a hin of oil for each ephah.
25“ ‘During the seven days of the Feast, which begins in the seventh month on the fifteenth day, he is to make the same provision for sin offerings, burnt offerings, grain offerings and oil.
46:1“ ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: The gate of the inner court facing east is to be shut on the six working days, but on the Sabbath day and on the day of the New Moon it is to be opened. 2The prince is to enter from the outside through the portico of the gateway and stand by the gatepost. The priests are to sacrifice his burnt offering and his fellowship offerings. He is to worship at the threshold of the gateway and then go out, but the gate will not be shut until evening. 3On the Sabbaths and New Moons the people of the land are to worship in the presence of the LORD at the entrance to that gateway. 4The burnt offering the prince brings to the LORD on the Sabbath day is to be six male lambs and a ram, all without defect. 5The grain offering given with the ram is to be an ephah, and the grain offering with the lambs is to be as much as he pleases, along with a hin of oil for each ephah. 6On the day of the New Moon he is to offer a young bull, six lambs and a ram, all without defect. 7He is to provide as a grain offering one ephah with the bull, one ephah with the ram, and with the lambs as much as he wants to give, along with a hin of oil with each ephah. 8When the prince enters, he is to go in through the portico of the gateway, and he is to come out the same way.
9“ ‘When the people of the land come before the LORD at the appointed feasts, whoever enters by the north gate to worship is to go out the south gate; and whoever enters by the south gate is to go out the north gate. No one is to return through the gate by which he entered, but each is to go out the opposite gate. 10The prince is to be among them, going in when they go in and going out when they go out.
11“ ‘At the festivals and the appointed feasts, the grain offering is to be an ephah with a bull, an ephah with a ram, and with the lambs as much as one pleases, along with a hin of oil for each ephah. 12When the prince provides a freewill offering to the LORD—whether a burnt offering or fellowship offerings—the gate facing east is to be opened for him. He shall offer his burnt offering or his fellowship offerings as he does on the Sabbath day. Then he shall go out, and after he has gone out, the gate will be shut.
13“ ‘Every day you are to provide a year-old lamb without defect for a burnt offering to the LORD; morning by morning you shall provide it. 14You are also to provide with it morning by morning a grain offering, consisting of a sixth of an ephah with a third of a hin of oil to moisten the flour. The presenting of this grain offering to the LORD is a lasting ordinance. 15So the lamb and the grain offering and the oil shall be provided morning by morning for a regular burnt offering.
16“ ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: If the prince makes a gift from his inheritance to one of his sons, it will also belong to his descendants; it is to be their property by inheritance. 17If, however, he makes a gift from his inheritance to one of his servants, the servant may keep it until the year of freedom; then it will revert to the prince. His inheritance belongs to his sons only; it is theirs. 18The prince must not take any of the inheritance of the people, driving them off their property. He is to give his sons their inheritance out of his own property, so that none of my people will be separated from his property.’ ”
19Then the man brought me through the entrance at the side of the gate to the sacred rooms facing north, which belonged to the priests, and showed me a place at the western end. 20He said to me, “This is the place where the priests will cook the guilt offering and the sin offering and bake the grain offering, to avoid bringing them into the outer court and consecrating the people.”
21He then brought me to the outer court and led me around to its four corners, and I saw in each corner another court. 22In the four corners of the outer court were enclosed courts, forty cubits long and thirty cubits wide; each of the courts in the four corners was the same size. 23Around the inside of each of the four courts was a ledge of stone, with places for fire built all around under the ledge. 24He said to me, “These are the kitchens where those who minister at the temple will cook the sacrifices of the people.”
Original Meaning
IN EZEKIEL 44:28 the priests were promised no “inheritance” or “possession” in Israel, for the Lord would be their inheritance and possession. Ezekiel 45:1–8 follows up this reference to a new division of the land with a preliminary description of the central area of this land, a sacred strip running from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the eastern edge of the Promised Land. The division of the land as a whole will be outlined in much greater detail in 47:13–48:35, but the central elements are clear already in chapter 45.
The issue of possession of the land was, of course, a pressing concern to the landless exiles. It had already surfaced as a problem in 33:24–29. The echoes of the theme of Jubilee that we noted at the outset of the vision in chapter 40 would also naturally have raised the question of a redistribution of the land. But the prophet was concerned about more than simply assuring the exiles that there would be an equitable reallocation of the land at some point in the future. Ezekiel wanted to reorient his hearers’ focus onto what the original idea of a Promised Land was all about: a land in which God would dwell in their midst.
The primary focus of the division of the land for the prophet here is not safeguarding human equality and land rights, but rather asserting divine sovereignty and safeguarding the divine presence in their midst. Hence, Ezekiel’s first concern in introducing the concept of a new division of the land is to insist that the people are to “present to the LORD” as an offering the central portion of the land as a “sacred district” (qōdeš, 45:1). This district is to measure 25,000 cubits1 by 20,000 cubits, comprising the land assigned to the priests (25,000 cubits by 10,000 cubits) and a similar area assigned to the Levites.2
The primary purpose of this sacred district is to provide a zone of graded holiness outside the temple, exactly analogous to that inside the temple.3 The entire temple complex is, from the perspective of the land, a “Most Holy Place” (45:3). The area immediately around the sanctuary is therefore reserved for the priests, in which they are to build their homes (45:3–4). The strip parallel to the priestly portion and to its north is reserved for the Levites and their cities (45:5), while the half-size strip to its south is for the city (45:6).4 To the east and west of the 25,000 cubit sacred square, the remainder of the sacred strip is to be allocated to the prince (nāśîʾ ) as his personal (or rather familial) inheritance.
Figure 2. Distribution of Land in the Sacred Portion
The same principles of graded access that applied within the temple complex have thus been extrapolated to the land itself, resulting in an entirely temple-oriented geography. This is evident not simply from the central position of the temple within the land and the restricted access allowed to different groups and individuals, but even from the east-west alignment of the strips into which the land has been divided. In contrast to the rather randomly shaped chunks into which the land was divided in Joshua 12–21, in Ezekiel the entire land is aligned with the east-west orientation of the temple.5
Holiness is thus the key principle underlying the division of the land, as is evident from the fact that the word qōdeš and its cognates occur no fewer than eleven times in Ezek. 45:1–6. At the center of this Holy Land is the temple, not the city or the king. The old Zion theology, which found its focus in the twin pillars of the election of Jerusalem and David, is now refocused on the central assertion of Yahweh’s kingship and rule in the temple.6
Even the future kings of the land, now addressed as “my princes,” are subject to the Lord’s oversight (45:8). Unlike the tribal “leaders” (same Heb. word) in the first division of the land in the days of Joshua (Num. 34:18), these princes in Ezekiel have no active part to play in distributing the land. The divine king has already allocated it, and their responsibility is limited to allowing the house of Israel to possess their tribal land in peace (Ezek. 45:8). Examples of this abuse in Israel’s past are too numerous to require documentation; perhaps the classic case is Jezebel’s judicial murder of Naboth in order to procure his vineyard for Ahab (1 Kings 21:1–16). Indeed, we may go so far as to say that this is the significant motivation in assigning a substantial portion of the land to the prince and his descendants. The prophet is not concerned so much to keep them in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed but rather to enable them to meet their own needs and to support the ministry of the temple without burdening and oppressing the people.
The primary focus of the prince’s duties is temple-centered, as with virtually everything else in Ezekiel 40–48. Thus the prince is responsible to ensure that accurate weights and measures are used in gathering up the offerings and gifts of the people (45:10–12). All are required to participate in the sacred offerings provided by the prince (45:13–16), and it is foreseen that this might be viewed as a possible means for the prince to enrich himself at the cost of the people by using disproportionate measures.7 Such a possibility is immediately disallowed.
But although the people provide the materials for the regular offerings (45:15–16), it is the prince’s responsibility from his own resources to provide the offerings for the special occasions: Sabbaths, New Moons, and annual festivals (45:17). In both the regular and the special offerings, the prince has a central role as the representative of the people in worship, presenting the “sin offerings, grain offerings, burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to make atonement for the house of Israel” (45:17). This is a great privilege, especially given the central significance of purification and atonement in chapters 40–48.8
Mention of the sacrifices on these special occasions in the ritual calendar leads into a discussion of the ritual calendar itself. Like the vision of the temple itself, Ezekiel’s calendar appears to be a stripped-down, focused edition of what had previously been in force. There is no mention of the Feast of Weeks, the third annual festival, and the remaining two festivals (Passover and Tabernacles) have become virtually symmetrical festivals of purification, celebrated in the first and seventh months of the year respectively (45:18–25). Of the two, the Feast of Passover retains more of its distinctive features: It is explicitly named “the Passover,” and the seven-day feast during which only unleavened bread is to be eaten and the application of sacrificial blood to the doorposts clearly recall the original festival (45:19–21). Yet its original character as a festival of the Lord’s deliverance from Egypt is now subordinated to a concern for purifying the sanctuary.9
The Passover feast proper is now preceded by a dual ceremony of cleansing the temple on the first and seventh days of the first month (45:18–20). During the seven days of the feast, the prince is to provide seven bulls and seven rams daily as a burnt offering, along with the daily purification offering of a male goat (45:23). This represents a substantial increase from the sacrifices demanded for the Passover in the Mosaic legislation of Numbers 28. The requirement to offer a bull as a purification offering for the prince himself and the entire community before the feast begins is in line with the requirements of Leviticus 4:14, however (Ezek. 45:22).
If the Passover feast is still named and recognizable, the festival in the seventh month, which takes place at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, has lost all its original distinctiveness. It lacks any name or description, except for the fact that the prince is to provide the same offerings for it as at the Passover (45:25). There is apparently no comparable purification ceremony before it, nor is any ceremony recorded that might correspond to the Day of Atonement ceremony associated with this festival in Leviticus 16. The primary annual ritual purification of the central sanctuary now takes place at the beginning of the year. But Ezekiel’s special interest in purification remains clear in the prominent place given to the sin offerings in the list of Ezek. 45:25. Both festivals thereby come to share the same interest in atonement for sin, which is the recurrent theme of Ezekiel’s cult.10
The prince is also required to provide the offerings for the Sabbath and New Moon festivals (Ezek. 46:1–8). On the Sabbath, he is to offer six lambs and a ram as a burnt offering, along with the proportionate grain and oil offerings to accompany them (46:4–5), while on the monthly New Moon festival, he is to offer the same plus a young bull (46:6). Of course, he cannot enter the inner court to offer these sacrifices himself; the priests must offer them on his behalf (46:2). However, he has the unique privilege as a layman of approaching to the threshold of the inner east gate and prostrating himself there before the Lord (46:2). “The people of the land,”11 however, are only permitted to approach to the entrance of the gate (46:3). With eight steps leading up to the gateway and beyond it a corridor almost ninety feet long, it is clear that their view of the activities of the inner court is decidedly limited.12 In Ezekiel’s program, the laity are being kept at a “safe” distance from the holy things.
At the annual festivals, God’s people are required to present themselves and prostrate themselves before the Lord (46:9). The command for the vassal to present himself at the court of the great king was a common requirement of ancient covenant treaties;13 this is therefore an act of corporate submission on the part of the people before the divine king. The community at large is assigned no other tasks in the cult. Even their annual processions through the temple are in the “profane” north-south or south-north direction (46:9), at right angles to the “holy” east-west orientation of priestly ministrations at the altar of burnt offering (43:17).14 Though the people are clearly expected to offer sacrifices of their own (cf. 46:24), these are relegated to footnote status, barely perceptible in the peripheral vision of the prophet.
The representative nature of the prince as chief worshiper is clear from the fact that he enters in the midst of the people and goes out with them (46:10). But his privileged position is clear also from his access to the east gate of the inner court, which is opened for him whenever he wishes to offer a freewill sacrifice (46:12).
The section on the sacrifices closes with the requirements for the daily sacrifice, which is now limited to a single morning sacrifice of a year-old lamb, with its associated grain offering (Ezek. 46:13–14). The former practice of offering also an evening sacrifice, attested in Numbers 28:4 and 1 Kings 18:29, 36, goes unmentioned.
After his discussion of the sacrifices, Ezekiel returns to his previous topic, the inheritance of the prince (Ezek. 46:16–18; cf. 45:7–8). The prince holds this land leasehold rather than outright, in trust for future generations. He can therefore only give it permanently to his children; if he should give it as a gift to one of his servants, it will revert to the crown at the year of freedom, the Jubilee year, when all land reverted to its original owners (Lev. 25:13). The purpose of this regulation is straightforward: In an economy where the king typically rewarded loyal service by gifts of land, there would have been a perpetual temptation for the king to acquire ever more land with which to reward his followers.15 Not so in the new Israel, which will be reconstituted as a nation of free peasants with an inalienable claim to their own land.
The fact that this powerful assertion against land stealing brackets the sacrificial regulations emphasizes the fact that the driving force behind the division of the land is not egalitarianism but divine sovereignty: The land is the Lord’s and he divides it. For the prince to intrude on that divinely sanctioned division by amassing greater quantities of land for himself is as impermissible as intruding on the central presence of God in the inner sanctuary or offering improper sacrifices to God. The prince is thereby continually reminded that he is a vassal of the great king and must behave as such.
The entire section of Ezek. 44:1–46:24 is rounded off by a return to the beginning. The heavenly messenger, inactive since 44:4, returns to guide the prophet out of the inner court via the sacred rooms where the priests cook and eat the sacred offerings that are not permitted to leave the sanctity of the inner court (46:19–20). Together they arrive back at the outer court, where the prophet is shown “the kitchens” (L) at its four extremities, where the Levites are to cook the sacrifices of the people (46:21–24). The tour of the temple is thus neatly completed, having gone from the outside to the center (Ezek. 40:5–41:4) and back out again twice.16
Bridging Contexts
INTERPRETIVE PROBLEMS and their attempted solutions. The middle section of Ezekiel’s temple vision has provided almost insoluble problems for a number of different interpretative approaches. The rabbis, convinced in the unbreakable unity of the Old Testament and able at times to resort to considerable ingenuity in their harmonizations, found it virtually impossible to harmonize the regulations of Ezekiel with those of Moses in the Pentateuch. Indeed, it is recorded that one rabbi, Hananiah ben Hezekiah, hid himself away in his attic and burned three hundred barrels of oil in his lamp before being finally able to reconcile the different laws. But for his labors, the book of Ezekiel as a whole was in danger of being excluded from the canon.17 Unfortunately, the fruits of his efforts were lost to future generations “because of our iniquities.”18 At times, the rabbis gave up altogether and referred their pupils to a higher authority: Elijah would explain it when he came.19
From an entirely different perspective, the middle portion of Ezekiel’s temple vision has proved problematic to dispensationalists. Their difficulty is not in harmonizing Ezekiel and Moses but in harmonizing a “literal” interpretation of Ezekiel’s temple as the millennial temple of the restored Jewish nation with the apparently plain New Testament teaching that the levitical sacrifices have been brought to an end with the death of Christ (Heb. 10). Once again, a number of different solutions have been suggested. The majority of dispensationalists have argued that the sacrifices are memorials to the sacrifice of Christ, with no atoning character.20 However, the idea that these are memorial sacrifices is nowhere apparent in Ezekiel, and it is specifically claimed by Ezekiel that these offerings will make atonement (Ezek. 45:15, 17, 20).21
Others have struggled with the identity of “the prince” (nāśîʾ ) in Ezekiel 40–48. Is he a messianic figure, as the “prince” of Ezekiel 34 and 37 appears to be?22 How then do we explain the need to warn the Messiah against sin (45:9; 46:18)? Does the Messiah need to offer a sin offering on his own behalf (45:22), and does he have children (46:16)?23 But if he is not the Messiah, who is he?
These approaches, it seems to me, have run into difficulty because they have fallen into the classic temptation that besets those of us who take the unity of Scripture seriously. They have given priority to the universal over the particular, asking, “How can I make this text fit with what I know from the rest of Scripture?” rather than, “What distinctive truth does this particular passage teach?” As a result, commentaries on this passage tend to be long on harmonization and short on explanation. Actually, the interpretative problems that so stubbornly resist harmonization are significant keys to understanding the meaning of the passage and of the temple vision as a whole, for which this provides the center.
The nature of a vision and its message here. What the approach of rabbis and dispensationalists alike forget is that Ezekiel 40–48 presents a vision, not legislation. To be sure, part of the vision is in legislative form, but it is vision in the form of legislation, not legislation in the form of vision. Legislation is a law program designed to be carried out; it must therefore either be harmonized with existing legislation or supersede it. Legislation is intended to be interpreted literally as meaning exactly what it says. If God’s intent through Ezekiel was to impart new legislation to supplement or supersede the law of Moses, then it was a failure. The returning Jews made no apparent effort to implement the changes proposed, even those that would have required no radical expense or earth-moving equipment, such as the two annual festivals.24 Nor is there any indication within the vision that its implementation is to be postponed to a future millennial temple. Unlike the battle with Gog, which has frequent time indicators fixing it in the distant future, the temple of Ezekiel 40–48 is already extant in visionary form in Ezekiel’s own time.25
A vision, however, does not need to be carried out in its details to achieve its purpose. When Martin Luther King Jr. cried out in his famous speech “I have a dream . . .” and went on to outline a vision of black and white children playing together in harmony, his purpose was to encourage repentance, changed hearts, and hope. Provided that emotions were stirred and minds changed to feel sorrow over past attitudes and to envision the possibility of a new future, the dream would have accomplished its purpose, even had repressive laws and practical difficulties prevented the physical realization of the dream. In the same way, Ezekiel’s vision was intended to encourage repentance, faithful endurance, and hope of a future unlike the past.
In what ways, then, does Ezekiel 45–46 contribute to this goal of bringing the exiles to repentance, endurance, and hope? (1) The passage (and the vision) asserts that the Lord alone is King. Instead of asking whether “the prince” is a messianic figure, it would be better to ask why the messianic figure of this vision appears in so muted tones, with such limited powers. He is certainly still a figure of great privilege. He owns a substantial portion of real estate bordering on the sacred district; he approaches closer to the Most Holy Place than any other non-Levite; he offers sacrifices on behalf of the whole people; he is the head of a dynasty. But in power he is still well short of the classic form of the central royal figure of the future golden age.26
Even the identification of the prince as a descendant of David is lacking (unlike chs. 34 and 37), although it is hard to imagine that Ezekiel had a different dynasty in mind. Why is that? Because in Ezekiel’s vision there is another central royal figure, the Lord himself reigning in the temple. The past abuses of the monarchy will be done away with, legislated out of existence by a rearrangement of the land and by specific commands to the future monarch; but the monarch himself remains as a representative of the people. He remains in place, but only as the vassal of the Great King, God himself.27
(2) The passage (and the vision) teaches that God is doing a new and greater thing that involves time as well as space. Instead of asking how we can square Ezekiel’s sacrificial legislation with that of the Pentateuch, it would be better to ask about the distinctive goal of his program.28 In contrast to the Pentateuchal program, Ezekiel’s sacrifices appear to be more numerous and more focused on the concept of purification. This is another way of conveying the same message as the temple building itself, which is larger and more restricted in access than the former temple. God is doing something greater than the former things, a greatness that shows itself in the dimensions of the holy space and the number of the sacrifices.29 God is also doing something that will prevent any repetition of the contamination of the past that drove him from the land, through erecting high walls and buffer zones and inaugurating more rites of purgation.
But the cosmogonic process of creating a new world involves ordering not merely spaces and inhabitants but time itself.30 For that reason, the distinct lack of “timelessness” in the vision is significant. Unlike most eschatological visions in the Bible, which are essentially static tableaux, frozen in time, Ezekiel envisages a place with Sabbaths and New Moons and new years, a place where the year of Jubilee rolls around and the prince has children. In Ezekiel’s reordering of the festival calendar, time itself is brought under the discipline of the new age.
(3) The passage once again underlines the message that the temple is at the center of time and space in the new age. It dominates the restored land, which is entirely oriented with reference to it. Social status is entirely determined by access and position relative to it. Providing for its worship services is to be the dominant concern of the prince and people alike. In place of the old centers of Zion and the Davidic king, now everything revolves around the temple. The city and the king are still there, but they no longer have personal names, so that nothing may detract from the glory and prominence of the dwelling of Yahweh in the midst of his people. To put it into a paraphrase of Isaiah’s distinctly messianic language, Ezekiel would have said, “For unto us a temple is constructed, to us a sanctuary is given” (cf. Isa. 9:6).
The prince’s position, tasks, and responsibilities are all subordinated to the central vision of God’s dwelling in the midst of his people in the temple. Thus, since Jesus is the new temple, the glory of God dwelling in the midst of men and women, it is the temple that is the primary “messianic” figure in Ezekiel 40–48. It is the temple that points us to Jesus, not the prince.
The nature of sacrifice and its relation to Jesus. This concern with the presence of God in the midst of his people explains why the sacrifices are central to the temple vision. The entire levitical system of sacrifice served to undergird the covenant relationship of Israel and God. Sacrifice functioned primarily in four different ways in ancient Israel, each reflecting an aspect of the covenant relationship. (1) It provided a means of restoring breaches in the covenant relationship between the vassal and the Great King, through the giving of a substitute as a ransom payment for the sinner. (2) It functioned as a tribute payment from the vassal to his overlord. (3) It provided an opportunity for the vassal king to enjoy a covenant meal with his suzerain. (4) It served as a means of ensuring the necessary cleansing of impurity so that the holy suzerain might dwell with the vassal.31 The various sacrifices of the Old Testament each served one or more of these goals.
For the New Testament, however, all of these sacrifices find their fulfillment in Christ. He is the One who atones for us; he is the One who pays our tribute for us; he is the One in whom we experience the blessings of intimate fellowship with the Father; he is the One who cleansed the heavenly temple once and for all on our behalf.
(1) Jesus is our ransom, the atoning sacrifice paid for our redemption. As Mark 10:45 reminds us, Jesus came in order “to give his life as a ransom for many.” The apostle Peter tells us, “it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18–19). Jesus, like Isaac, is the beloved Son, to be offered by his own Father (Matt. 3:17)—though for him there is no animal substituted. Jesus himself is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The wages of sin require the death of the covenant-breaker unless a ransom be paid on his or her behalf. Yet unlike the burnt offering, which was offered daily, Jesus offered his sacrifice once and “for all time” on the cross (Heb. 10:12–14). There is no need for a continued repetition of the death of Christ for it was of infinite value.
(2) In addition, Jesus has offered tribute in our place. He lived the perfect life for us, thus fulfilling all the obligations of the covenant. He humbled himself and became obedient even to the point of death (Phil. 2:8). That is the importance of what theologians call Christ’s “active obedience,” the fact that his work was not simply to come and die on the cross to pay for our sins, but first of all to come and live the perfect life for us, which is now credited to our account. Without it, his death would not have been sufficient; it would merely have removed our covenant breaking. What God demands of his people, however, is not only no covenant breaking but perfect covenant keeping. Jesus kept the demands of the law fully in our place.
(3) But as well as being our atonement and our tribute offering, Jesus is also our fellowship offering. In the Lord’s Supper, we remember Jesus’ death on the cross, where he became the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Yet the meal aspect of the Lord’s Supper belongs to the symbolism of the fellowship offering. Unlike Mesopotamian observances, in which the table was laid primarily for the benefit of the deity, the Lord invites his people to sit down to table in his presence and celebrate our deliverance together.32 We feed on the body of Christ, just as in Old Testament times the people actually ate the fellowship offering. The cup we share is called by Jesus “the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25), recalling the blood of the old covenant, the blood of the burnt offerings and peace offerings sacrificed at Mount Sinai, which was sprinkled on the people (Ex. 24:8). Like the peace offering, the Lord’s Supper is a covenant meal, a celebration of the new covenant family of God’s goodness and radical self-giving.
(4) Finally, Jesus is our purification offering. Hence in the book of Hebrews the blood of Jesus is not simply applied to the saints, it is applied to the heavenly sanctuary itself. It is efficacious to purify that heavenly sanctuary once and for all, thus ensuring that God can dwell forever in the midst of his people (Heb. 9:23). Because of this definitive purgation, believers now have confident and direct access to the Most Holy Place itself (10:19)! That purgation no longer needs to be repeated in the shadowy forms of the levitical order because in Christ the fullness of the new order has come!
Contemporary Significance
A PATTERN FOR Christian worship. If the goal of the vision of Ezekiel 45–46 is to bring the exiles to repentance, endurance, and hope through a vision of reordered worship, how may this passage have the same effect on us?
In the first place, it reminds us as well as them that the heavenly order is different from the appearances of the mundane world in which we live. In our worship, we are constructing an alternative outlook on the world, an alternative view of reality, which challenges the worldview of the majority. In our liturgy, we come apart from the everyday world in which we live the rest of the week and envision a different world, a place where we exiles can find a home. Ezekiel’s temple provides us a four-dimensional map of that sacred space, inviting us to consider well its spiritual geography, topography, and chronology and to repent and leave behind our earthbound focus.
Moreover, in Ezekiel’s vision the Lord is enthroned as King, exalted far above any rivals. In our worship too, there should be no doubt about the sovereignty of God. Our songs, prayers, readings, testimonies, and other varied elements should be theocentric and Christocentric, exalting the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the world, God the Father may be denigrated, disregarded, and ridiculed; his Son’s name may be most often heard taken in vain; his Spirit may be regularly grieved and blasphemed against. But the meetings of his people should all the more be filled with his praises and focused on hearing and doing his will.
In Ezekiel’s vision, the prophet clearly anticipates God’s doing something new, something greater even than the faith once delivered to Moses. What Ezekiel and the other Old Testament saints looked forward to has now come about in Christ. As the writer to the Hebrews put it: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). This greater privilege that we have gives us reason to worship with greater joy and greater reverence and awe than our spiritual forefathers, who lived ahead of the coming of Christ (12:28).
Specifically, the pattern of the Old Testament sacrifices, as delivered to Moses and writ large by Ezekiel, provides a pattern for Christian worship.
• Over the doorway into worship stands written the need for the forgiveness of sins, and at the heart of worship must be the continual return to God’s provided ransom, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” This was the focus of the burnt offering.
• In our worship, we should focus our thoughts and give thanks not simply for the passive obedience of Christ—his death on the cross for us—but also for his active obedience—his perfect life lived for us, by which the obligations of the covenant are fulfilled. This was the focus of the grain or tribute offering.
• The goal of our worship—what Christ has achieved for us through his perfect life and atoning death—is nothing less than fellowship with God and with one another around the Lord’s Table. This was the focus of the fellowship offering.
• In order for us to worship in the presence of God, both we and the heavenly tabernacle itself must be purified of all unrighteousness. This was the focus of the purification offering and of the self-offering of Jesus, whose blood purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
Contemporary worship. Worship informed by this pattern will be different in a number of ways from much of what passes for worship in the contemporary church. To begin with, it will have a God-centered (and not merely Christ-centered) focus. The goal of Jesus’ earthly ministry was to bring glory to the Father’s name (John 12:27–28); in return, God the Father would glorify him (13:31–32). Yet so often the Father disappears almost completely from our contemporary worship songs, replaced by an exclusive focus on my relationship with Jesus.
True worship should also preserve the law-gospel dynamic, which lies at the heart of the best historic liturgies. In other words, in order to appreciate the good news of the gospel we need to confront ourselves again with the reality of God’s perfect law, which condemns our own sin and points us to Jesus as our sinless substitute. We need to remind ourselves of our personal impurity, which must be cleansed away before we can approach the all-holy God. Without a deep appreciation of our sinfulness and impurity, real worship is not a possibility.
In that worship, all God’s people now have a central part to play. Here is where our privilege once again far exceeds that envisaged by Ezekiel. Whereas the ordinary people in his vision were to be kept at a distance from God’s presence because of their past sins and a concern to protect his holiness, now, covered in the blood of Christ, we may draw near to the Most Holy Place itself (Heb. 10:19). We need no human priests to interpose between us and the holy God, to conduct our worship on our behalf, for we have a great priest, Jesus, who has perfectly met our needs (10:21).
In the light of that incredible privilege, let us indeed count it a great blessing to draw near to God in worship and adoration. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, and let us stir one another on to love and good deeds and lives of purified holiness, until the approaching day comes when Christ our King will return and we will be exiles no more (Heb. 10:22–25).