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Ezekiel

Ezekielchapter 48

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Speaks with:Joshua 19×7Genesis 30×6Ezekiel 45×8Ezekiel 48×5Joshua 13×4Revelation 21×5

Summary

Chapter summary

The tribes receive parallel strips running east to west, seven to the north (Dan, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, Reuben and Judah) then the great oblation in the center with the sanctuary, the priests, the Levites, the city and the prince's land, and five to the south: Benjamin, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulun and Gad. The city is a square of four thousand five hundred each way, with twelve gates named for the twelve tribes, three to a side: the plan Revelation 21 gives the New Jerusalem. The book that opened with a departing glory ends with a name: 'And the name of the city from that day shall be, Jehovah is there.'

Context

Prophecy · Ezekiel — Ezekiel overview

  • A. 1–7 Seven tribal portions north of the sanctuary
  • B. 8–22 The holy oblation for priests, Levites, city, and prince
  • C. 23–29 Five tribal portions to the south
  • D. 30–35 Twelve gates, and the city named The LORD Is There

The outline

  1. A.Seven tribal portions north of the sanctuaryvv. 1 to 7

    Read vv. 1 to 7 →

  2. B.The holy oblation for priests, Levites, city, and princevv. 8 to 22

    Read vv. 8 to 22 →

  3. C.Five tribal portions to the southvv. 23 to 29

    Read vv. 23 to 29 →

  4. D.Twelve gates, and the city named The LORD Is Therevv. 30 to 35

    Read vv. 30 to 35 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The glory departs and returns

Pattern

Ezekiel is built on the movement of the glory of the Lord: seen in exile by the river Chebar, rising from the cherub to the threshold, leaving the city by the east, and returning by the way of the east gate. The book's last verse turns the return into an address: the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there.

The departure explains why Jerusalem fell, and the return is the book's whole hope. A reader who tracks the glory's stations reads forty-eight chapters as one account rather than a pile of visions.

  1. Ezekiel 1:28

    The glory seen by the river Chebar

    The prophet sees the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord and falls upon his face.

  2. Ezekiel 10:4

    The glory rises to the threshold

  3. Ezekiel 11:23

    The glory leaves the city eastward

    It stands upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city, the last station before exile.

  4. Ezekiel 43:4

    The glory returns by the east gate

  5. Ezekiel 48:35 you are here

    The city named The Lord is there

The world behind this chapter

Ezekiel 48
When
The Babylonian exile, the close of the temple vision and of the book · The twenty-fifth year of Jehoiachin's exile — c. 573 BC
Where
The whole land divided into parallel strips from the eastern border to the Mediterranean, with the city at the centre of the southern half of the holy district
Who first heard it
Twelve tribes' worth of descendants scattered across an empire, most of whose tribal land had been lost for over a century

The history

The division is nothing like the old map. Instead of the irregular territories won and settled in Joshua's day, the land is cut into level bands running east to west across the country: seven tribes north of the holy district and five south of it, each with a strip of coast, hill country and valley. Everyone gets a share of every kind of ground.

How it is assigned is as significant as the shape. The original allotment was decided by lot, tribe by tribe, over years of fighting. This one is simply announced, and it includes tribes that had effectively ceased to exist — the northern tribes deported by Assyria a hundred and forty years earlier, listed here as though nothing had been lost.

The city is measured as a square of four thousand five hundred cubits on each side with open land around it, and it has twelve gates, three on each side, each one named for a tribe. Real cities named their gates by where the road went — the Fish Gate, the Sheep Gate, the Valley Gate. Naming every gate for a tribe means there is no side of this city that belongs to anyone in particular.

The farmland around the city is worked by labourers drawn from all the tribes of Israel, and its produce feeds the city's workers. Nobody owns the capital.

The last line of the book is the name of the city, and it is the answer to everything that went before: the LORD Is There. The book that began with the glory arriving at a canal in Babylon, and turned on the glory walking out of the temple, ends with the name of a city that cannot be abandoned.

What it meant to them

For hearers whose tribal identity was the one thing exile had not been able to take, hearing Dan and Asher and Naphtali read out with land again would have been almost unbearable. Those names had been gone since before their grandparents were born.

And the final name closes the wound the book opened. Their great terror had been that God had left. The city's name, given as its permanent title from that day onward, is a sentence about presence — and it is the same promise the last chapters of the New Testament pick up when they describe a city with twelve gates and no temple in it, because God Himself is there.

Sources cited

  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
  • John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
  • C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 48. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on C. F. Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.

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