Ezekiel43chapter 43

The direction is the point. In chapters ten and eleven the glory rose from the sanctuary, paused at the threshold, moved to the east gate and went up from the city to the mountain on its east side. Here it comes from the east, the sound of it like the roar of many waters, and enters the house by the gate facing east. The route is retraced in reverse, step for step.

The altar described is a stepped structure and the terms used for it are unusual. Its lowest part is called the bosom of the earth, the top hearth is given a name meaning the mountain of God, and it has four horns at the corners and steps on the east side for the priests to climb. Horned altars of stone from this era have been excavated in Israel, and the stepped shape resembles the tiered platforms of Mesopotamian sacred architecture. An older law forbade steps at an altar so that a priest's nakedness would not be exposed, and the answer to that here is the linen breeches the priests are required to wear.

The consecration procedure is a familiar one: seven days of offerings — a bull for a sin offering, then a male goat, then a bull and a ram — with blood put on the horns, the corners of the ledge and the rim, and salt thrown on the offerings. This is close to the ordination ritual in Exodus and Leviticus. On the eighth day the regular offerings begin.

The sacrifices in this future house are the most argued-over feature of the vision. The reading followed here is that they function as memorials, looking back to the cross the way the older sacrifices looked forward to it, since the New Testament is explicit that Christ's offering was once for all; others hold that the passage is symbolic language for worship, or that it was a conditional plan for the returning exiles. The alternatives are named rather than settled here.