Of Dry Trees
Posts Tagged ‘Ezekiel’
The Building God Builds
When is a building not a building and a detailed plan of a building not a desire to have it built? Answer: When God gave Ezekiel a detailed plan for a temple in chapters 40-48. Yeah, I don’t much like riddles either and obviously I’m not good at them but Ezekiel’s temple feels like a riddle. Some people believe that Ezekiel was given the plans for a temple that the Jews will build just before Jesus returns and that it will be the place from which he’ll reign during the Millennium. I’d previously explained why I didn’t believe that was the case.
My reasoning was that later revelation, in this case the book of Revelation, shows that Ezekiel’s vision was not supposed to be a physical building but something else. In chapter 21 of the book of Revelation, John is shown “the bride of the Lamb” yet all he describes is a city. Not one single person is mentioned therefore the “city” must represent the bride, or the Church. I then showed that the city John described is very similar to the temple that Ezekiel described. What I’d missed when I first worked on all this is that God explained it all himself:
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. – Ezek. 43:10-11
His reasons are: 1) that Israel may be ashamed of their apostasy and 2) that they may turn and observe all its laws and statutes. God does not say to Ezekiel, “that they may build this building according to the plan I have shown you” as he had with Moses (Exo. 25:40).
The purpose God gave Ezekiel is consistent with Ezekiel’s entire ministry. His prophecies are largely aimed at Israel’s unfaithfulness and the promise that God would restore to himself a people who will be righteous.
In his vision of the temple, Ezekiel was shown a depiction of God’s faithful people. The difference between the Church and national Israel is that the Church is the assembly of the regenerate (Ezek. 37, Eph. 2:1-10). The Church, unlike national Israel, are given new hearts with the law inscribed on them (Jer. 31:31, 33; Heb. 8:10). Israel continually broke God’s covenant with their uncircumcised hearts (Ezek. 44:7) but the promise of the New Covenant is that all it’s members will have circumcised hearts (Deut. 30:6, Col. 2:11).
This is why God said that his purpose in showing them the temple was that they may be ashamed and that they might obey. Israel repeatedly turned away and when God himself came to them, they crucified him and yelled, “We have no king but Caesar!” (John 19:15). The Church will never do that, can never do that since it is built on the announcement that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9, 1 Cor. 12:3) so any church that did would no longer be a church.
God turned to the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous (Rom. 11:11) and that is what God told Ezekiel this vision of the temple would do. A building built by the Jews wouldn’t make the Jews ashamed or jealous, it would make them proud.1In Ezra 3:12 “old men who had seen the first house [i.e. temple], wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid” but that weeping was probably tears of joy at the temple being rebuilt. Their shame, according to Ezekiel 43, comes from their disobedience. God made a new people who would out shine the Jews. But at the same time, the Church is not really a “new people” since Romans 11:25-26 shows that the Gentiles are brought into the real Israel and that in that way, by the elect Jews and Gentiles being brought together, all Israel, the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16), will be saved. So God did what he’d wanted and what he’d promised: he made a people for himself who would love him.
So the shocker is that Ezekiel’s temple isn’t a temple yet it is prophetic. The word “prophetic” is problematic in itself and so I need to take a moment to deal with that. When we hear the word “prophetic” we usually think of a prediction of the future. In the Bible, that is part of prophecy but not the heart of it. God most often sent his prophets to his people to call them to himself, not just to tell them the future. Ezekiel’s prophecy is like that. Yes, it does contain visions of the future but it is mostly telling Israel how rotten they’ve been. That’s what you should think of when you hear the word “prophetic” using in conjunction with the Bible.
Back to the main point: Ezekiel’s temple is not a building but it is prophetic in its condemnation of Israel’s faithlessness and in how it looks forward to God gathering a faithful people to himself. What I’d previously said about John’s vision of the new Jerusalem and Ezekiel’s vision of the temple was:
The similarities seem to indicate that when John was shown “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,” (Rev 21:9) he saw the same thing as what Ezekiel saw in his vision, that is, the Church.
| ↩1 | In Ezra 3:12 “old men who had seen the first house [i.e. temple], wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid” but that weeping was probably tears of joy at the temple being rebuilt. |
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A Study in Cherubim
What is a cherub? If have even heard of the word, the first thing that comes to mind when you hear it is most likely chubby babies with wings. That’s because Raphael painted them that way in his “Sistine Madonna”:
And now they are everywhere looking all cute. You just want to pinch those fat little cheeks, don’t you? Except, that isn’t what a cherub is. So what really is a cherub? Ezekiel saw some and here’s part of how he described them:
[T]hey had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings touched one another…As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. And their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies…As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning. (Ezekiel 1:5-14)
The reason you know these are cherubim is because Ezekiel says so in 10:20, “These were the living creatures that I saw underneath the God of Israel by the Chebar canal; and I knew that they were cherubim.”
They’re not supposed to be cute, they are fearsome. God put one at the entrance to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were evicted (Genesis 3:24). There were two cherubim on the top of the mercy seat (Exodus 7:89) and just like in Ezekiel’s vision, the continuing reference to the cherubim is that the Lord is seated above them.
So about all Raphael got right was the wings, just not enough of them. Perhaps. The way Ezekiel saw them, they had six wings, but consider how they’re described in 1 Kings:
In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olivewood, each ten cubits high. Five cubits was the length of one wing of the cherub, and five cubits the length of the other wing of the cherub; it was ten cubits from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other…And the wings of the cherubim were spread out so that a wing of one touched the one wall, and a wing of the other cherub touched the other wall; their other wings touched each other in the middle of the house. (1 Kings 6:23-24, 27)
These cherubim have two wings. Now lest you get the impression that these were uninspired, artistic representations, don’t forget that Bezalel and Oholiab were inspired to construct the tabernacle including the ark (Exodus 31:1-11). They didn’t make up what the cherubim looked like and when Solomon had the temple constructed, they had the ark with the cherubim. No reason they would make the look different if they had a model right there.
So what do we gain from this study of cherubim? I think there are a handful of things.
Ezekiel saw a vision. When prophets see visions, things mean something but not necessarily that cherubim are covered with eyes and have four wings. As we’ve seen elsewhere cherubim only have two wings. What Ezekiel’s vision is trying to communicate is that God is all-seeing and that’s why where his throne touches the earth that structure is covered in eyes. God sees. Cherubim are real creatures but the vision Ezekiel got of them was communicating more than their outward appearance. They’re spiritual beings and so their outward appearance is not something physical like ours.
The temple and tabernacle were earthly images of heavenly reality (Hebrews 8) and the same is true of what Ezekiel saw. He saw something true and real in heaven and tried to explain it in earthly terms. That’s what the temple did too. There is something real in heaven and the earthly things show a picture of what that is really like without duplicating it. It can’t be duplicated on earth.
And what is kind of cool is where these two things come together. In Genesis 3 God places a cherubim at the entrance to the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. But if the cherubim are associated with God’s presence, then God didn’t post a guard and take off. Everywhere else in the scriptures, God’s glory shone above the cherubim. In Genesis 3, the cherubim guarded the way to the Tree of Life but also into God’s presence. In Revelation 21 and 22 the Tree of Life is back and, as you’d expect, it is associated with God’s presence. In Revelation 21:22, John notices that the city that he was shown has no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” The point is that God dwells with man in this city. In chapter 22 he says that there is a river that flows out of the throne of God through the middle of the street of the city and on either side of it is the Tree of Life. There is no cherubim this time. Everything that is evil has been thrown into the lake of fire and in this city “nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false” (Revelation 21:27). There is no need of a guard now.
Endnote: This is not license to spiritualize everything in scripture which is usually the accusation as soon as you say anything like this. No, you have to pay attention to what the author is doing. Visions are not like watching TV where you get live coverage of the event. However, history is history and so when Moses says that Noah built an ark, an ark was built. Ezekiel tells you that he’s seeing a vision, Moses clues you in that he’s recalling historic events. Best to keep them straight. Notice that Moses never described the cherubim in Genesis, he only said that they were there; probably indescribable.
Ezekiel’s Temple
The issue came up in Sunday school last week whether the temple in Ezekiel’s vision in chapters 40-48 is a literal, physical building or a visionary representation of something else. The amount of physical detail given to the temple seems to indicate that it is intended to be a real, physical construction.
I believe the best way to read it is to recognize that Ezekiel is seeing a physical representation of another reality, not a physical building. In chapter 47 Ezekiel describes a river flowing from the temple. The further the river flows, the deeper the water gets. This is not something that we would expect to see in an actual temple build in Jerusalem. There are wells on the temple mount but they are deep underground so it is improbable that a river would well up from under the temple.
There are indications that the river is meant to picture something else. Not only does the water desalinate the ocean and the swamps and marshes, it multiplies animal life wherever it goes. The banks of this river team with trees that never drop their leaves and produce fruit monthly. Real trees don’t do that. The river is described in concrete terms just as the temple is yet the river is figurative so it seems consistent with the vision to understand the temple as figurative as well.
Since scripture helps us understand scripture, if the New Testament treats this vision as figurative then it is figurative. While there isn’t an exact citation of this vision in the New Testament, there are some tremendous similarities between Ezekiel’s temple and the city that John saw in Revelation 21. Consider: 1The Ezekiel/Revelation chart modified from The Road to Emmaus
| Ezekiel’s Temple | John’s City |
| Set on a high mountain (40:1-2; cf., 8:3) | Carried up to a high mountain (21:10) |
| One with a measuring rod (40:3) | Angel with a measuring rod (21:15; cf., 11:1) |
| The temple is measured (40:5-42:20) | The city is measured (21:16-17) |
| The temple is a square (48:30-35; cf., 41:4) | The city is a cube (21:16) |
| There shall be sacrifices; worship is central (43:13-27; cf., 46:1-21) | The nations shall bring their glory and honor; worship is central (22:26) |
| No abomination in the temple (44:4-14) | Nothing unclean in the city (21:27; cf., 21:8) |
| Priests will minister before the Lord (44:15-31) | Priests unto God (21:18-20; cf., 20:6) |
| Twelve gates for the sons of Israel (48:30-34) | Twelve gates for the sons of Israel (21:12-13) |
| Water flows from the temple (47:1-5) | Water flows from the throne of God (22:1;cf., 21:6) |
| Trees bear fruit and provide healing (47:6-12) | Tree of Life bears fruit and provides healing (21:2) |
| God will have a place for his people (47:13-48:29) | The people’s place is the Lord (22:5; cf., 21:3-4, 7) |
| The Lord will be there (48:35; cf., 43:1-12; 45:1-25) | The Lord will illumine them (21:22-23;22:3-5) |
| There is no city described. | The city has no temple (21:22) |
The similarities seem to indicate that when John was shown “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,” (Rev 21:9) he saw the same thing as what Ezekiel saw in his vision, that is, the Church.
Ezekiel’s imagery of God’s people as a temple with priests and sacrifices is consistent with the New Testament description of the Church. The Church is a temple (1Co 3:16-17, 6:19; Eph 2:19-22, 1Pt 2:5). We’re told to offer our lives as a living sacrifice to God. (Rom 12:1) Paul’s life of service is a drink offering poured out on the church’s faith. (Phil 2:17) His work gathering in the gentiles is an offering. (Rom 15:16, 2Ti 4:6) Our tithes and worship are sacrifices. (Phil 4:18, Heb 13:15) Likewise, Paul was acting as a priest in relationship to the gospel (Rom 15:16) and we are a priesthood (1Pt 2:5, 9; Rev 1:6, 5:10, 20:6).
Ezekiel’s vision of a temple represents something real through figurative language. I believe the reason Ezekiel spends so much time walking through and measuring the temple is impress us with the majesty of what the temple will be, not to lay out blueprints for it. That kind of writing is the best way he had to demonstrate the grandeur of what God will do when he restores his people. It is like the vision of the dry bones coming to life (37) and the stony heart of his people being replaced with a fleshly one (36:26-27) and washing them with clean water (36:24-25). If we understand Ezekiel’s temple in the context of this section of his writing, it is speaking of the restoration and purification of his people and that is exactly how we see the New Testament speak of the Church.
| ↩1 | The Ezekiel/Revelation chart modified from The Road to Emmaus |
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