Ezekiel 40:1-4

CHAPTER 40:1-48.

THE POSITION, WALLS, GATES, AND COURTS OF THE TEMPLE.

IT is not our purpose to go into greater length on the details of this closing vision, than is absolutely necessary to convey a pretty distinct idea of the revelation contained in it. And as the readiest and most satisfactory way of handling it, we shall take it in convenient successive portions; first giving a translation, with explanatory notes where such may be required, and on each section presenting a brief view of the general import.

Ezekiel 40:1. In the five-and-twentieth, year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, (It is a much debated point, and not yet settled, what is to be understood by the beginning of the year whether the first month of the ecclesiastical year (Nisan), or the first of what was called the civil year (Tisri), or the first of the year of jubilee, which began on the tenth day of the seventh month. We need not spend either our own time or that of our readers by recounting all the arguments that have been alleged for either of these opinions, and against the others; but deem it enough to state that no satisfactory reasons have ever been produced to show that the Hebrew people generally, before the captivity, or the prophets in particular, were wont to take account in their dates of any year but that usually called the ecclesiastical one. All except this may be said to be mere conjecture. The beginning of the year, in this sense, memorable for its connection with the first beginnings of the people as a nation, was surely a fit period for the Spirit imparting the vision of new and better things to come.) in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten; in the self-same day the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me thither. (The expression in this clause is striking: brought me thither where? namely, to that place whither his thoughts and feelings were ever tending as their centre, and which needed not to be more particularly described. It indicates how much the heart of the prophet felt itself at home in that beloved region.)

Ezekiel 40:2. In the visions of God he brought me to the land of Israel, and set me down by a very high mountain, and upon it a city-like building to the south. (We can have no doubt what is to be understood by the very high mountain on which the prophet was set down in the visions of God. The expression refers back to Ezekiel 17:22; Ezekiel 20:40, where a similar designation is given to that mount, which formed the seat and centre of God's earthly kingdom. That Mount Zion was thus named chiefly in a moral respect, on account of its being the chosen theatre of God's peculiar manifestations to his Church and people, has been already stated on the former of these passages, and again noticed in the introduction to this chapter. And now especially, when the prophet was in the ideal region of God's visions, where all was to be seen and considered in a spiritual respect, it was most fitly presented to his view as a place of high elevation. The last clause is attended with some difficulty, but the most natural rendering seems to be that given above. The upon it must necessarily point to the mountain itself on which the prophet stood; and this, as he immediately proceeds to tell us, was the site, not of a city in the proper sense, but of the temple buildings. For what he sees upon the hill is what he proceeds to describe; and it is in regard to the framework he saw that he says, at the beginning of Ezekiel 40:3, “and he brought me thither.” It seems plain, therefore, that the מִבְנֵה־עִיר  must be a compound phrase, descriptive of the temple buildings which he saw in vision on the mount. And so I understand it: like the framework of a city, or a city-like building an erection so vast and varied that it bore the aspect of a city rather than of a single structure. We need not wonder at this, when we consider that the space they occupied was much larger than the entire site of ancient Jerusalem. Then in regard to the remaining word, “to the south,” I see no proper difficulty about it, or any necessity for adopting the change suggested by the LXX., and followed by many commentators, and reading מנֶּגֶד, over-against. The prophet was first brought to the mountain, and somewhere about it, or on it, was set down (he uses the rather indefinite preposition אַל, at or by); there he descries the city-like framework a little to the south of him, and then God “brings him thither,” i.e., close up to it, that he might see what it was.)

Ezekiel 40:3. And he brought me there, and lo, a man, whose appearance was as the appearance of brass, with a line of linen in his hand, and a measuring- rod, and he stood in the gate.

Ezekiel 40:4. And the man said to me, Son of man, look with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears, and apply thine heart to all that I show thee; for in order that thou mayest be shown them art thou brought hither: declare all that thou seest to the house of Israel.

These verses form the introduction to the whole concluding section, and call for little in the way of general remark. We observe in them so far a resemblance between the commencement and the close of the book, that in each alike the prophet is borne away by a Divine hand, and placed amid the visions of God. There are, however, two characteristic differences between the earlier and the later. First, in respect to the region where these ideal manifestations of Divine truth and glory were given formerly on the banks of the Chebar, as if the glory of Jehovah had forsaken its old haunts, and now on what was emphatically the mount of God, as if he were again returned thither, and had even already raised it to a far nobler elevation. The substance of the visions, too, very strikingly differed; for while that on the Chebar was fitted chiefly to awaken thoughts of terror and solemn awe in the bosom, this, on the other hand, was calculated to produce feelings of the liveliest confidence and the most exalted hopes. The heavens seemed now, in a sense, cleared of all their stormier elements, and were radiant with the sunshine of the Divine favour. The man with the appearance of brass (bright, furbished brass is to be understood) must, of course, be considered a representative of the higher world, a special messenger of God; and the two instruments in his hand, the linen tape and the measuring rod, were for taking the dimensions the first the larger, the second the less. It is also quite in unison with the prophet's strongly ideal and realistic cast of mind, that he should not simply have given the pattern and dimensions, but should have presented the Divine messenger in the attitude of going to take all the measurements before his eyes.