Exile · 573 BC
Chapter 9
The River from the Temple
By the river banks, on both sides, will grow every tree for food, whose leaf won’t wither, neither will its fruit fail. It will produce new fruit every month, because its waters issue out of the sanctuary. Its fruit will be for food, and its leaf for healing.”
For parents
In Ezekiel 43:7–9 (the scene “The glory comes back”), Ezekiel is told of the people’s unfaithfulness to God (the World English Bible’s word is “prostitution”), of the dead bodies of their kings, and of how God destroyed them in his anger. The wording is softened. Nothing else in the chapter needs a warning.
It was the twenty-fifth year since and his people had been taken captive, and the fourteenth year since Jerusalem had fallen. It was the start of the year, the tenth day of the month. That same day the Lord’s hand was on Ezekiel. In visions of God he brought Ezekiel to the land of Israel and set him down on a very high mountain. On it, to the south, was something built like a city.
There, standing in the gateway, was a man who looked like bronze. In his hand he held a cord of and a measuring reed.
“,” the man said to him, “look with your eyes and listen with your ears, and fix your mind on all I show you. That is why you were brought here: so that I could show it to you. Tell the people of Israel all that you see.”
A wall ran all the way around the outside of the temple. The man’s measuring reed was six long, but these were long cubits, each one a hand’s width longer than usual. So the reed was about eleven feet long. He measured the wall. It was one reed thick and one reed high.
He went to the gate that faced east, climbed its steps, and measured the thresholds at its doorways. Inside the gateway were small rooms, three on each side. They were all the same size, each one reed long and one reed wide. The whole gateway was twenty-five cubits wide and fifty cubits long, about forty-five feet by ninety. There were windows all around it, and palm trees on its posts.
Then he brought Ezekiel into the outer court. A pavement ran all around it, with thirty rooms on the pavement. Two more gates led into this court, one on the north and one on the south. Each was the same size as the east gate, with seven steps going up to it. Across the court from each outer gate, a hundred cubits away, was a gate into the inner court. These gates were the same size too, but they had eight steps.
The inner court was a square, a hundred cubits each way, about 180 feet. The stood in front of the temple. The man brought Ezekiel into the temple’s great hall, forty cubits long and twenty wide. Then he went farther in and measured the room beyond it: twenty cubits by twenty, about thirty-seven feet each way. “This is the ,” he told Ezekiel.
All through the temple, from the floor to above the doorways, the walls were covered with and palm trees. A palm tree stood between one cherub and the next. Every cherub had two faces: a man’s face toward the palm tree on one side of it, and a young lion’s face toward the palm tree on its other side. There was also an altar of wood, three cubits high and two cubits long. It was all wood: its corners, its base and its sides. “This is the table that is in the Lord’s presence,” the man said.
When he had finished measuring the temple inside, the man brought Ezekiel out through the east gate and measured the whole area around it. With his reed he measured the east side, then the north, the south and the west: five hundred on every side. A wall ran around it, to keep what was holy apart from what was ordinary.
Afterward the man brought Ezekiel to the gate that faces east. Then the of the God of Israel came from the east. His voice was like the sound of many waters, and his glory lit up the earth.
What Ezekiel saw was like the vision he had seen when he came to destroy the city. These visions were also like the one he had seen by the . Ezekiel bowed with his face to the ground.
Years before, in that vision of the city, Ezekiel had watched the Lord’s glory go. It went out from over the temple’s threshold and stood over the cherubim. Before his eyes, the cherubim lifted their wings and rose from the earth, with their wheels beside them. They stopped at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house, with the glory of the God of Israel above them. Later the cherubim lifted their wings again. The Lord’s glory went up from the middle of the city and stood on the mountain on the east side of the city.
Now the Lord’s glory came into the temple through the gate that faces east. The Spirit lifted Ezekiel up and brought him into the inner court, and the Lord’s glory filled the temple.
Ezekiel heard someone speaking to him from inside the temple, and a man was standing beside him.
He said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will live among the people of Israel forever. The people of Israel and their kings will never again dishonor my holy name with their unfaithfulness, or with the dead bodies of their kings in their .
“They put their threshold next to my threshold and their doorpost beside my doorpost. There was a wall between me and them. They dishonored my holy name with the detestable things they did, so in my anger I destroyed them.
“Now let them put their unfaithfulness and the dead bodies of their kings far away from me, and I will live among them forever.
“Son of man, show this temple to the people of Israel, so that they will be ashamed of their sins. Let them measure its plan. If they feel ashamed of everything they have done, teach them about the temple: its shape and its layout, its ways out and its ways in, its whole design, and all its rules and laws. Write it down while they watch, so that they will keep to its whole design and follow all its rules.
“This is the law for the temple. On the top of the mountain, all the land around it on every side will be most holy. This is the law for the temple.”
Then the man brought Ezekiel back to the ’s outer gate, the one facing east. It was shut.
The Lord said to him, “This gate is to stay shut. It must not be opened, and no one may come in through it. The Lord, the God of Israel, has come in through it, so it is to stay shut. As for the , because he is the prince, he is to sit in it to eat bread in the Lord’s presence. He is to come in through the gate’s porch and go out the same way.”
Then the man brought him by the north gate to a place in front of the temple. Ezekiel looked, and the Lord’s glory filled the Lord’s house. He bowed with his face to the ground.
“Son of man,” the Lord said to him, “pay close attention. See with your eyes and hear with your ears all I tell you about the rules and laws of the Lord’s house. Pay close attention, too, to the way into the house and every way out of the sanctuary.”
These were some of the laws the Lord gave. All the people of the land were to give their offerings for the prince. It was the prince’s job to provide the , the and the for the feasts, the and the . He was to prepare the offerings that make for the people of Israel.
The inner court’s east gate was to be shut on the six working days and opened on the Sabbath and on the day of the new moon. On those days the prince would come in from outside through its porch and stand by its gatepost while the priests made his offerings. He would worship at its threshold and go out, but the gate would stay open until evening. The people of the land would worship in the Lord’s presence at the entrance of that gate.
Then the man brought Ezekiel back to the door of the temple. Water was flowing out from under its threshold, toward the east, because the front of the temple faced east. The water came down from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar.
He took Ezekiel out by the north gate and led him around outside to the outer east gate. And there was the water, running out on the right side.
The man went out toward the east with the cord in his hand. He measured a thousand cubits, about a third of a mile, and led Ezekiel through the water. It came up to his ankles.
He measured another thousand and led him through the water. Now it came up to his knees. He measured another thousand and led him through, and the water came up to his waist.
He measured one more thousand, and now it was a river Ezekiel could not cross. The water had risen until it was deep enough for swimming, a river no one could walk across.
“Son of man,” the man said, “have you seen this?” Then he led Ezekiel back to the bank of the river.
When Ezekiel got back, he saw a great many trees on the bank, on both sides of the river.
The man said to him, “This water flows out toward the land to the east. It will go down into the and on toward the sea. When it flows into the sea, the water there will be healed.
“In every place the rivers reach, every swarming creature will live. There will be great numbers of fish, because this water has come there. The water of the sea will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes.
“Fishermen will stand by it. From all the way to En Eglaim there will be places to spread out their nets. The fish there will be of all kinds, as in the , and there will be a great many of them.
“But its swamps and marshes will not be healed. They will be given over to salt.
“On both banks of the river, every tree that gives food will grow. Its leaves won’t wither, and its fruit won’t fail. Every month it will bear new fruit, because its water flows out from the sanctuary. Its fruit will be for food, and its leaves for healing.”
Then the Lord God said, “These are the borders of the land you will divide among Israel’s twelve . Joseph is to have two shares. Each of you will have a share, one the same as another, because I swore to give this land to your ancestors. It will be yours to keep.”
He set out its borders. In the north, the border ran from the Great Sea by way of Hethlon, past towns between and , as far as Hazar Enon. In the east, the Jordan was the border, between Hauran, Damascus, Gilead and the land of Israel, from the northern border down to the . In the south, it ran from Tamar to the waters of and along the brook to the Great Sea. In the west, the Great Sea itself was the border, up to a point opposite the entrance of Hamath.
“So divide this land among yourselves, tribe by tribe. Divide it as land to keep, for yourselves and for the foreigners who live among you and have children among you. Treat them like people born in Israel. They are to have a share with you among the tribes of Israel. Whatever tribe a foreigner lives in, give him his share there,” says the Lord God.
“These are the names of the tribes,” the Lord went on. Each tribe was to have one portion, reaching from the east side of the land to the west side. Starting at the northern border, they were Dan, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, Reuben and Judah.
Next to Judah was the portion the people were to set apart for the Lord. It was twenty-five thousand wide, with the Lord’s sanctuary in the middle of it. Part of it was a most holy gift for the priests, the sons of . They had kept the Lord’s instructions. When the Israelites went astray, as the did, these priests did not. The Levites’ land was beside the priests’ land, and the same size. They were never to sell any of it or trade it. The first fruits of the land were never to pass to anyone else, because it was holy to the Lord.
South of the holy portion came the rest of the tribes: Benjamin, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulun and Gad. Gad’s land reached the southern border. “This is the land you are to divide by lot among the tribes of Israel as their own,” says the Lord God, “and these are their portions.”
The last strip, five thousand wide, was for everyday use: for the city, for homes and for pasture land, with the city in the middle. The city was to be a square, four thousand five hundred on each side, with pasture land all around it. The land east and west of the city, beside the holy portion, would grow food for the people who worked in the city. The workers would come from all the tribes of Israel, and they would farm it. All together, the holy portion and the city’s land made a square, twenty-five thousand on each side.
The land that was left was for the prince. It lay on both sides of the holy portion and the city’s land, out to the eastern and the western borders, between the border of Judah and the border of Benjamin. “My princes will no longer oppress my people,” the Lord had said, “but will give the land to the people of Israel, tribe by tribe.”
The city would have twelve gates, three on each side, and they would be named after the tribes of Israel. On the north side would be the gates of Reuben, Judah and Levi. On the east side, the gates of Joseph, Benjamin and Dan. On the south side, the gates of Simeon, Issachar and Zebulun. And on the west side, the gates of Gad, Asher and Naphtali. Each side would measure four thousand five hundred reeds.
All the way around, the city would measure eighteen thousand reeds. And from that day on, the name of the city would be “The Lord is there.”