Original Meaning
FOLLOWING ON THE description of the return of the glory of the Lord to fill the central space of the temple, Ezekiel 44 continues the process of the filling of the various spaces described in chapters 40–42. No one is allowed access to the Most Holy Place itself, but who may be permitted to enter into the inner court of this holy God?1 The question of access to God is, of course, not a new one in Ezekiel’s day. The tabernacle had strict regulations governing access to the different areas,2 as had Mount Sinai itself before that (Ex. 24). What is new about Ezekiel’s vision, however, is that the rules of access are tighter than those of the tabernacle, and the basis for those rules is now bound up in the past obedience of the parties concerned. Those who have proved themselves obedient are rewarded with the closest access to the center, while those who have strayed are allowed only a more limited access.3 It is the outworking in visionary, graded form of the question and answer of Psalm 24:3–4:
Who may ascend the hill of the LORD?
Who may stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.
This section begins with an absolute prohibition of access: the outer east gate is closed and will forever remain closed (Ezek. 44:1–2). Because the Lord entered through it on his return to the Most Holy Place, it has acquired a special sanctity and may not be used by anyone else. However, the space within the gate may be used by the prince for his sacral meals before the Lord. When he does so, he is to enter this space from the outer court, not from outside the temple complex, in order that the outer gate may remain perpetually closed (44:3).
In this way, both the privilege and restriction of the prince’s position is emphasized. On the one hand, he holds a unique position among the laity with special privileges, including access to a private room in part of the central east-west spine of the new temple, an especially holy location.4 On the other hand, this room is in the outer part of that region, and the prince has no access to the inner court. Thus, compared to the past, when the kings frequently treated the sanctuary as a royal chapel, as if it were their own preserve in which they might establish whatever innovations they wished (e.g., 2 Kings 16:10–18), in future the royal figure has a limited, though still honorable, position.
That the concern of this section is with access—or, to use the language of the passage, “exits and entrances” (Ezek. 43:11)—is further underlined by the brief recapitulation in 44:4–5. Ezekiel sees again the glory of the Lord filling the temple and is thereupon instructed to pay attention to the statutes of the house of the Lord and its laws concerning entrance to the house and its exits. The continued presence of God is contingent on the proper control of access to these areas.
It was a failure to control access in the past that leads to the condemnation of the house of Israel in 44:6. Since Wellhausen used this passage as the heart of his reconstruction of the history of Israelite religion, it has been common to see this passage as a tendentious program aimed at downgrading the Levites from priestly status to that of temple servants.5 However, it is important to note that the prime target of accusation is the house of Israel as a whole; they (i.e., the laity) are primarily to blame and are therefore the ones who are “downgraded.” The Levites are involved only secondarily and therefore receive only a partial exclusion.6
The sin of the past lay in bringing “foreigners uncircumcised in heart and flesh into my sanctuary, desecrating my temple” (44:7). This probably refers to the well-attested practice of employing foreign guards in the temple (2 Kings 11:14–19). The people failed in “carrying out [their] duty in regard to my holy things” (šemartem mišmeret qodāšāy, Ezek. 44:8); instead, they assigned that charge to others. This view is confirmed by the observation that in temple or tabernacle contexts šāmar mišmeret is virtually synonymous with the task of guarding the holy things (Lev. 8:35; 2 Kings 11:5).7 This sin will be repeated no more; uncircumcised foreigners will have no right of access into the sanctuary (Ezek. 44:9).
Unfortunately, the NIV, like most English translations, obscures the flow of thought in the passage by placing a paragraph break after 44:9, as if verse 10 introduces a new subject. In fact, verse 10 continues the thought of what precedes by identifying the legitimate temple guards, the Levites.8 The flow of the main train of thought is as follows: The foreigners will not enter the sanctuary (v. 9), but the Levites will (v. 10); they will be in my sanctuary serving as armed guards at the gates of the house (v. 11).
To be sure, the Levites are not exonerated from blame; they served the people in the presence of their idols and must bear the consequences of their sin (44:10). Because they are tainted with the corruption of the preexilic sins of the people, they may not enter the inner court, serve as priests, or have any contact with the sacred offerings (44:13). But their ministry is extended rather than restricted when compared with the preexilic situation. Now they must slaughter the burnt offerings and sacrifices on behalf of the people (44:11), something the people had previously done for themselves.9
Once again the walls of separation have been raised in Ezekiel’s temple in comparison to the preexilic situation. The sin of the Levites, whatever its precise form,10 has consequences in terms of restriction on access and service. The greater sin of the people has even greater consequences in more strictly regulated access to the sanctuary and its service. The purpose of these regulations is to induce shame in the hearers as they consider their detestable practices (44:13), yet it is a shame mixed with an appreciation of grace, for the sinners have not been excluded utterly from the presence of the holy God, as their sins deserved.
In contrast to the Levites and the people, whose access is restricted because of their sin, the Zadokite priests receive the privilege of sole access to the inner court and the offering of all sacrifices at the altar and the service at the table inside the sanctuary itself (44:15–16). This privilege is explained as being due to their faithful service in the time of Israel’s apostasy (44:15). This is not because the narrator in Ezekiel 44 is unaware of the criticisms aimed at the priesthood in 22:26. In fact, it is precisely these sins that he insists will be done away with in the future, when the priests observe God’s law and keep his Sabbaths holy (44:24). The righteousness of the Zadokites is relative, not absolute, just as their access is relative: They are permitted to go closer to the inner sanctum than anyone else, but even they are not allowed to enter the Most Holy Place, not even for the annual Day of Atonement ceremony.11 Just as sin has spatial consequences of restricted access in Ezekiel’s vision of the future, so also righteousness brings with it the spatial rewards of greater access.12
But greater access into the realm of the holy carries with it also greater responsibilities and limitations. Because the Zadokite priests penetrate closer to the Most Holy Place than any others, they face additional restrictions on their behavior (44:17–27). They must wear linen rather than woolen clothing when they minister so that they do not defile the inner court with their sweat (44:17–18). Sweat may have been undesirable because it was regarded as belonging to the general category of bodily emissions that rendered one unclean (Deut. 23:9–14).13 Moreover, they are to distinguish between the “sacred” clothes they wear for ministry and the “other [profane] clothes” they wear for the rest of life. The former are to remain within the inner court, housed in the special rooms described in Ezekiel 42:13–14, so that holiness might not be accidentally transmitted to the people (44:19).
In Israelite law, holiness was not dangerous by itself. It was dangerous only to one who was contaminated with impurity or who acted in contravention of its laws.14 Therefore the priest, who daily handled the holy things, had to take special care with regard to his ritual cleanliness and actions. The fate of Nadab and Abihu stood as a solemn warning of the dangers attending the ministry of serving a holy God (Lev. 10:1–3). Of particular danger was the contamination associated with contact with the realm of death, either through contact with a corpse (Ezek. 44:25) or through the ritual mourning practices of shaving or loosing the hair of the head (44:20).15 The possibility of potentially fatal errors induced by the consumption of alcoholic beverages is also taken into account (44:21).16
The need for pure priestly stock, which flows from restricting access to the descendants of the seed of Zadok, is present in the restriction of priestly marriage to unmarried Israelite women or to the widows of priests (44:22). That provision assured that no offspring conceived by a former husband of a different tribe would be accidentally assumed to be of priestly stock.17 In all these ways, the priests are to be living models of what they teach—that there is a difference between holy and profane, between clean and unclean (44:23).
Since the priests belong to the Lord, they are to have the Lord as their inheritance alone (44:28). Unlike the other tribes, they are to be allotted no territory of their own in the new Promised Land. Instead, they are to be provided for through the sacrificial system. They are to eat the grain offering, the sin and guilt offerings, and all the things vowed to the Lord that cannot be redeemed (as in Lev. 27:28), along with all “the firstfruits” and the “special gifts” (lit., “the sacred contribution from all your sacred contributions,” Ezek. 44:30). This last item seems to be related to the “tithe of the tithe,” which the Levites are instructed to pass on to the priests in Numbers 18:25–29 (see RSV). This “holy food” from the life-giving altar and the gifts of God’s people is to be their sustenance. Birds or animals found dead or torn by wild animals are not to be eaten, however (Ezek. 44:31).
Throughout this chapter, the concern over the holiness of those having access to the central regions of the sanctuary is evident. Those who enter the inner parts of the sanctuary to minister in God’s service must have a past history of faithfulness and must continue to walk in the ways of the holy, lest they be destroyed in an instant by the holy God whom they serve.
Bridging Contexts
THE CONCERN FOR and protection of the holy. In ancient Israel, as elsewhere in the ancient Near East, a sanctuary was not a place to be entered lightly and unthinkingly. Rather, the sanctuary was seen as a danger zone, somewhat comparable to a nuclear power plant. In a nuclear power station, strict precautions have to be taken because of the special dangers of radioactivity, which can cause catastrophic effects if it is handled carelessly. Access to some areas of the site is strictly limited, and special clothing has to be worn for some processes to prevent lethal contact between those operating the plant and the radioactive material, and to prevent radioactivity being transmitted by them to the outside world. In an analogous way, the priests had to take special care in their dress and their conduct to avoid danger to themselves and to prevent dangerous levels of holiness being brought into contact with the general public.
Nowhere is this caution more evident than in Ezekiel’s vision. This is hardly surprising, given Ezekiel’s own experience of seeing the Jerusalem temple defiled and subsequently destroyed by God’s holy wrath. Anyone who personally witnessed the carnage caused by the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power station would understandably be concerned to tighten up regulations to guard against its repetition. In precisely the same way, Ezekiel’s vision represents a tightening of the “holiness code of practice,” a raising of the walls and reinforcing the steel of the containment chamber around the temple. Ezekiel is all too aware of something distant from our contemporary thinking: that it is a fearful thing for sinners to fall into the hands of the all-holy God.
But since we are all sinners, who among us can enter the inner court as a reward for our faithfulness? Who has a “righteousness” great enough to stand in God’s presence? As Christians, our natural answer, in terms of the New Testament terminology, is “no one.” As Romans 3:23 puts it: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” How then do we explain the “righteousness” of the Zadokites, on the strength of which they are granted access and privileges not granted to others? The answer lies in an understanding of the ancient Near Eastern treaty form known as a “covenant of grant.”18
In this type of treaty, known from Hittite and Akkadian sources as well as in biblical parallels, the faithfulness and loyalty of the ancestor secures the rights of all of his subsequent descendants. Unlike suzerainty treaties, where the covenant acts as a motivation to each generation to show loyalty, a covenant of grant is a simple reward for past loyalty. This loyalty is typically described in the terminology of having walked before the Lord (Gen. 17:1; 24:40; 1 Kings 8:25; 9:4; Isa. 38:3), of having a perfect heart (1 Chron. 28:9; Isa. 38:3), and of having kept God’s commands (Gen. 26:5; 1 Kings 2:3). Thus, when the Zadokites are described as having “faithfully carried out the duties of [God’s] sanctuary” (Ezek. 44:15), the key issue is their loyalty. They are not implied to be without moral blemish, any more than an Abraham was (Gen. 26:5); however, having been found faithful to God in a day of small things, their reward for loyal service is a place of responsible service in the kingdom (Matt. 25:21).
The question of rewards. The question of reward is a frequent theme in exilic writings, for obvious reasons. The Exile was, from the perspective of the exiles, a world turned upside down. The men in the black hats, the icons of evil, appeared to have won a convincing victory. The temptation to despair and to assimilate, to accommodate oneself to the “new realities,” was strong, almost overpowering. How was this to be prevented? How could the exiles be helped to avoid this fate? The answer is by showing them how to don interpretive spectacles that turned reality the right way up and reminded them that ultimately the good would triumph.
This could be done in a number of different ways. For example, the “hero stories” of Daniel, Esther, and Nehemiah show a member of the exiled group triumphing in the midst of the exilic situation, living in the world but not of it, succeeding through wisdom or through the direct intervention of God on their behalf.19 In a different way, Ezekiel’s temple vision turns the world right side up for his hearers, showing them a world in which faithful service of Israel’s God receives its due reward.
That reward is, in Ezekiel’s vision, a graded reward. Those who have been most faithful (the Zadokites) are rewarded with the greatest access to God; those who have been less faithful (Levites, princes, people) are progressively further at a distance from the throne. This gradation of reward should be neither overstressed nor understressed; there is real differentiation on the basis of merit, yet all the renewed people receive the fundamental blessing of being restored to God’s land, with God dwelling in their midst.
Both of these aspects of Ezekiel’s teaching are present in the New Testament. (1) In the vision of the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21, the fundamental equality of the saints is stressed. All are made perfect and granted standing in the presence of God himself, the heavenly Most Holy Place, which is the entire city. This is true because of the “covenant of grant” given to all of us who are in Christ; his righteousness is the basis for our full inheritance. In him, through faith, every Christian receives the righteousness of God (Rom. 3:22). In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, those who have worked hardest and longest receive the same reward as those who are hired at the eleventh hour (Matt. 20:1–16).
(2) Yet there are also texts that seem to affirm gradation in reward. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul draws a contrast between two types of builders. Both are Christians, building up God’s church on the only available foundation, Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11); but one builds with gold, silver, and precious stones, while the other builds with wood, hay, and straw (3:12). The works of each will be exposed on the Day of Judgment, its quality tested with fire (3:13). If what a person has built survives, he or she will receive a reward. If it is burned up, he or she will suffer loss (3:14–15). Both are equally saved (3:15), but they receive different rewards.20
Intriguingly, the two Synoptic versions of the parable of the talents present complementary pictures. In Matthew, the focus is on the sameness of the reward that the faithful stewards receive: The man who has been faithful with two talents hears his master say exactly the same words as the one who was faithful with five: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matt. 25:21, 23). Both have been equally responsible with different amounts and so receive the same reward. In Luke’s account, however, the one who faithfully achieved a tenfold increase in the money is rewarded with charge of ten cities, while the servant whose stewardship resulted in a fivefold increase is awarded charge over five cities (Luke 19:17, 19). Starting off with the same amount, their differing fruitfulness receives a graded reward.
There is also a desire throughout the Old Testament for a fully righteous priest who will be able to stand before God on the basis of his faithfulness. In 1 Samuel 2:35, in response to the unfaithfulness of the priests of the day, Hophni and Phinehas, God promised that in the future he would raise up “a faithful priest, who will do according to what is in my heart and mind.” Ultimately, both that promise and that desire find their fulfillment in the coming of Jesus, the merciful and faithful high priest of God’s appointing (Heb. 2:17). He is the only one who ever has stood, or ever will be able to stand, before God in his own righteousness, to offer to him the prayers and praises of his people. As a result, he is the high priest whom we need to enable us to approach the heavenly throne with boldness (Heb. 4:15–16). Our privileged access comes not from our own righteousness but from his.
Contemporary Significance
ON REWARDS. “What’s in it for me?” may seem a crass approach to discerning religious truth. Such an approach smacks too much of health, wealth, and prosperity teachers, who promise an immediate cash payoff for acts of devotion to God. In reaction, Christians have sometimes wanted to discuss the questions of faith “more objectively,” as if we should be able to delight in a religion that is true, even though its truth is of no benefit to us personally. An extreme position in this direction was developed by Samuel Hopkins in late eighteenth-century New England, who held that a Christian should be willing to be damned for the glory of God.21 The true believer should, so the argument went, desire to serve God even in the absence of any reward.
Scripture is more balanced than either the health-and-wealth extreme or the Samuel Hopkins extreme. Jesus himself asks us to consider carefully the payoff involved in different allegiances when he says, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). He urges us to expend ourselves to store up treasure in heaven (Luke 12:33). Paul stresses repeatedly that our sonship makes us heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17); it is this future reward that makes our present sufferings of little account (8:18). The world may consider that promise of little account, disdainfully describing it as “pie in the sky when you die,” but for Paul it is the basis for a hope that engenders patience in the present (8:25). This hope is not mercenary; it is simply the natural desire of love to possess its object.22 The person who disdains “pie in the sky” is probably a person with no love of pie.
The function of the scriptural teaching of rewards is twofold: It stresses the accountability of the saints to God as well as their future vindication by him.23 On the one hand, God expects fruitfulness from his servants and will hold everyone accountable for the use of the resources and opportunities entrusted to each one. Much is expected of the one to whom much is given. On the other hand, it is God to whom we are accountable and to whom we are to look for our reward.
This latter aspect of the Bible’s teaching is particularly important for those in exile like Ezekiel’s readers and for us, who struggle to live in a world where it seems that the immoral thrive while the godly struggle to make ends meet. It speaks to those who, like the psalmist, are tempted to envy the arrogant on account of the prosperity of the wicked (Ps. 73:3). It speaks to all of us who have bought into the ancient lie, presently promoted vigorously from Madison Avenue, that “a man’s life . . . consist[s] in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).
The answer for Ezekiel, as for the psalmist, comes from a visit to the sanctuary, the place of God’s presence with his people. There he is shown that what really counts in life are not the toys of this world but the joys of life in the presence of God. Ezekiel could have echoed the psalmist’s words of Psalm 73:25–28:
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.
In biblical terms, the reward that Christians look for and will receive is not a material one. We do not long for bigger and better mansions in heaven,24 still less for Cadillacs and country club homes here on earth. Our heart’s desire is rather to approach the presence of Almighty God and to stand before him, to be able to cast down our crowns at his feet and worship, lost in wonder, love, and praise. For us, as for the psalmist, it is simply good to be near God. That is the “pie in the sky” for which we long so passionately, and we could never be content to be eternally without it. As Jonathan Edwards put it:
Love to God . . . will make a man forever unwilling, utterly and finally, to be deprived of that part of his own happiness which he has in God’s being blessed and glorified, and the more he loves him, the more unwilling he will be. So that this supposition, that a man can be willing to be perfectly and utterly miserable out of love to God, is inconsistent with itself.25
The way of the cross. There is only one way to enter this reward of eternal life in the close presence of God: the way of the cross. When James and John sought the privilege of sitting at Jesus’ right and left hand in glory, the problem was not what they sought but the way in which they sought it. To be close to Jesus is indeed the ultimate reward that heaven offers, but it is not to be had for the asking. Rather, it belongs to those who have drunk the cup of Jesus and shared in his baptism (Mark 10:38). Such privilege is opened up to all Christians through his death in our place. When we are baptized, we are baptized into his death and the fruits that flow from his drinking of the cup in our place (Rom. 6:4). Yet the Scriptures also teach of a special reward reserved for those who have followed closely after the way of the suffering servant in this life (Mark 10:45). We are heirs of his glory in the world to come insofar as we share in his sufferings in the present (Rom. 8:17).
However, the privilege of close access to God is a reward we do not have to wait for eternity to begin to experience. We get to sample the firstfruits of the pie ahead of time. Even now, we can approach the throne of God with boldness, presenting our praises and our petitions, basking in the glory of his love. But if we expect to experience the full blessing of communion with God, our behavior must reflect his holiness. For the Zadokites, access to God’s presence meant heavy restrictions on their lifestyle. There were things they could not touch, places they could not go to, food they could not eat, and clothes they could not wear if they were to minister in the presence of the all-holy God. So too for us, if we expect to experience the blessing of God’s presence with us, then our lifestyle will be (from the world’s perspective) restricted.
People around us will undoubtedly think us strange, “narrow” people because we do not do the things they delight to do (1 Peter 4:4). They will find us odd in our commitment to the truth over convenient lies, to God’s Word over more fashionable contemporary perspectives, to morality in an age in which anything goes. But we are not accountable to them and their scale of values. Our scale of values should be centered around the glory of communion with God in the present and eternal life in his presence in the days to come, both of which should motivate us to lives of purity (1 John 3:3). Our world is turned right side up. As John Newton put it:
What words can express the privilege and honor of believers, who, whenever they please, have audience of the King of kings, whose compassion, mercy and power are, like his majesty, infinite. The world wonders at their indifference to the vain pursuits and amusements by which others are engrossed; that they are so patient in trouble, so inflexible in their conduct, so well satisfied with that state of poverty and obscurity which the Lord, for the most part, allots them, but the wonder would cease if what passes in secret were publicly known. They have obtained the pearl of great price; they have communion with God; they derive their wisdom, strength and comfort from on high, and cast all their cares on him who, they assuredly know, vouchsafes to take care of them.26