As Christians, we can still take comfort as well as challenge from the words of the ancient prophet. For us, the decisive event in redemptive history is not the fall of Jerusalem, paying for its own sins, but the death of the Son of God on the cross, paying for all the sins of his people. After Christ’s subsequent resurrection, everything has changed: New creation has arrived on earth (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

ABSTRACT: Ezekiel’s temple vision, difficult as it is to understand, fits within the large message the prophet spoke to God’s exiled people: Their shameful sin had led to shameful loss; nevertheless, God would restore them for his name’s sake and dwell with them again. Ezekiel’s temple communicates in symbolic form God’s purpose to make a new covenant with his people, return them to a new land, and dwell with them forever.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Iain Duguid (PhD, University of Cambridge), professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, to explain the theological significance of Ezekiel’s temple vision.

There are many passages of the Bible that are hard to understand — the genealogies that fill the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles, for instance, or the entire book of Leviticus, with its sacrifices and rituals. Some of these difficult passages may tempt us to wonder if Paul really intended to include them in the “all Scripture” that is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). Ezekiel 40–48 would certainly fall within that group. These nine chapters include a detailed description of a visionary temple, an assortment of obscure rules for leaders, priests, and people, a description of a miraculous river that flows from the temple, and a redistribution of the land of Israel into parallel strips of equal width for the twelve tribes.

What, if anything, does this passage have to do with the larger storyline of the Old Testament or, more practically, with you and me?

A Message for Ezekiel’s Contemporaries

To answer that question, we need to survey other parts of the prophet’s message, thus providing the context in which to read Ezekiel 40–48. Situating the temple vision allows us to understand why God gave it to Ezekiel in the first place and how to apply it today.

Ruined Temple, Restored Hearts

First, we need to understand what had happened to the Jerusalem temple of Ezekiel’s own day, a story depicted in visionary form in Ezekiel 8–11. In Ezekiel 8, the prophet sees representations of the false worship of his contemporaries summed up in four consecutive scenes of ever-increasing idolatry, each closer than the last to the heart of the Jerusalem temple, culminating in a group of elders offering worship to the sun in the inner court of the temple itself (Ezekiel 8:16). These abominations form the reason why the Lord abandons the Jerusalem temple, handing it over to the Babylonians to be destroyed (Ezekiel 9–10). Before his temple is destroyed, the Lord goes with his people into exile to be for them a sanctuary (11:16). He also promises to eventually bring his people back from exile and transform them, giving them a new heart to obey him and restoring their relationship with him (11:17–20).

In Ezekiel 34–37, after the news of Jerusalem’s destruction reaches the exiles (33:21), the Lord promises to bring his people back to the land of Canaan and to give them that promised new heart of obedience (Ezekiel 36:24–31) — not for their own sake, but to demonstrate the holiness of his name (36:22–23, 32). The result of this restoration ought to be shame on the part of Israel, as they recall their past misdeeds (36:32). The Lord also promises to put his sanctuary once again in the midst of his people (37:26). This time, it will endure forever (37:28), unlike the previous temple, which was destroyed for the people’s sins (Ezekiel 8–10). This will be a perpetual testimony to the Lord’s holiness and his grace to his people, whom he will finally cleanse from their sinful backsliding and make into a holy people (37:23, 28).

In Ezekiel 38–39, the prophet depicts a final battle, in which a representative global alliance of seven nations from all four points of the compass is brought against the returned people by the Lord, no longer to punish his people for their sins but to demonstrate his own power and holiness by comprehensively defeating their enemies. This is a battle in which ancient wooden weaponry (clubs, spears, bows and arrows, and so on) survives fire from heaven (Ezekiel 38:22) in order to serve as firewood for Israel (39:9). Israel’s only part in the conflict is to collect the discarded weapons and bury the dead bodies (39:12–15).

Clearly, we are operating in the realm of symbolism, not realistic description. The point of this prophecy is made explicit in Ezekiel 39:21–29: Having renewed his people, the Lord promises to no longer subject them to destruction for their sins, as he did earlier. Rather, just as he once demonstrated his holiness by exiling his sinful people from the land, so in the future he will demonstrate his holiness by protecting them from all dangers. Israel’s past sins separated them from God and took them into exile (39:22–24). Now the shame they rightly felt will be removed (39:26).

True Repentance, Secure Hope

A common feature runs through Ezekiel’s prophecy. Israel sinned greatly, and their sin led to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and their exile to Babylon. Acknowledging their failure should lead to an appropriate sense of shame among the exiles, while vindicating the Lord’s judgment.

But judgment is not the final word. Some of Ezekiel’s contemporaries were tempted to think that the Lord was either unable to protect his people against the might of the Babylonians or that his actions had been unfair (see Ezekiel 18:2). On the other hand, if they acknowledged that the Lord’s actions were just, they were tempted to despair over the possibility of any future relationship with him: They felt like dry bones, cut off from their God (37:11). In response, the prophet paints a portrait of a future relationship between God and his people, established solely by his might and grace, in which he would once again dwell in their midst (37:27). This time, the bond would not be broken by the people’s unfaithfulness (37:24) or by the assaults of enemies, no matter how fearsome (chapters 38–39). The Lord’s sanctuary would be among them again, undefiled and undefilable (37:28).

This background prepares us to recognize the message Ezekiel’s temple vision was designed to communicate to his original hearers in exile in Babylon.

As for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and they shall measure the plan. And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the temple, its arrangement, its exits and its entrances, that is, its whole design; and make known to them as well all its statutes and its whole design and all its laws, and write it down in their sight, so that they may observe all its laws and all its statutes and carry them out. This is the law of the temple: the whole territory on the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the temple. (Ezekiel 43:10–12)

We should notice at once the similarity of this purpose to the previous oracles. If Ezekiel’s contemporaries understood the significance of the temple vision properly, it ought to have prompted in them a proper shame over their past behavior and a renewed commitment to protecting the temple’s holiness, but it should also have given them great hope that their God was committed not only to returning them to their land but also to dwelling among them once again.

Theology as Architecture, Legislation, and Geography

We noted earlier that the battle in Ezekiel 38–39 operates in the realm of visionary symbolism rather than straightforward reality: The Lord uses the imagery of an apocalyptic battle to communicate a theological message (see 39:21–29). So, too, Ezekiel 40–48 is not intended to give a blueprint for a future temple and its operations. On the contrary, the utopian vision critiques the past sins of Israel and affirms a different future for God’s people, as a result of their radical transformation described in chapters 34–37.1

The new people, in a new-covenant relationship with their God, would return to a radically new land, in which their God would dwell with them forever. To express those transformative changes that the Lord is bringing about in his people, Ezekiel uses the forms of architecture, legislation, and geography.

The Message of Ezekiel’s Temple

What central theological concerns drive the design of Ezekiel’s temple? To begin with, access into the presence of God is restricted. The outside walls are higher, the gates stronger, and the divisions clearer than they were in the tabernacle or in Solomon’s temple.

Read More

1. The first readers of Ezekiel’s vision understood this and so made no effort to implement the vision when they returned to Judah after the exile. Of course, constructing the building that Ezekiel described would have been challenging given the lack of critical details, such as any height measurements (apart from the outside wall) and any description of materials, both of which were key elements in the descriptions of the tabernacle (see Exodus 25–40) and of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 6). Moreover, Ezekiel’s temple is far too big to fit on the temple mount in Jerusalem and, indeed, if the land distribution of Ezekiel 47–48 is taken seriously, it would be located around sixty miles north of Jerusalem. However, Ezekiel’s rearrangement of the Mosaic festivals into two annual feasts of atonement would have been straightforward enough to implement, had it been understood that these laws were intended to be followed literally (45:18–25).