095. I. The Character And Importance Of The Vision

I THE CHARACTER AND IMPORTANCE OF THE VISION The last nine chapters of the book of Ezekiel, far from being, as so many readers treat it, a sort of appendix which may readily be ignored, is really a crowning conclusion to all that precedes. The prophet begins with a vision of God; he concludes with a vision of God in the midst of his purified, reverent people.

There is a real unity traceable throughout the book. In the earlier chapters the prophet unsparingly denounced his unfaithful nation and asserted its destruction because it was in every way misrepresenting its God and ignoring his precepts (Ezekiel 1-24). His foreign predictions (Ezekiel 25-32) were in reality a looking forward to the time when the insolent neighboring states should be cleared away to make room for the new ideal Israel. His hopeful visions of a unified and restored people prepared the way more completely for a sketch of the ideal embodiment of the true relations between God and his people. Perhaps no one but a priest as well as prophet, who knew the old and looked forward to a new and better order, who realized vividly the most dangerous tendencies of the nation before its exile, and who planned in a definite way to counteract them, could have been the medium of so noteworthy a reconstruction.

First of all, however, these chapters are interesting because they contain a remarkably bold prophecy. At a time when the temple and city lay in ruins, when the land was devastated and in the possession of Judah’s foes, the people scattered, the empire of their conqueror at the height of its power, and the exiles dispirited and helpless, the prophet draws a picture of a temple to be erected on the old site by a reunited and prosperous people who inhabit a fruitful and populous land without hint of traitor within or foe without. For sublime confidence one can only compare with it Jeremiah’s purchase of the field at Anathoth (Ezekiel 32:1-15) just before Jerusalem’s downfall. By such object lessons as these the prophets were wont to challenge despondency and to inculcate their own robust and unswerving faith.

Ezekiel, however, had a broader purpose than merely to awaken a spirit of hopefulness. His aim was constructive. Four ideas seem to have impressed themselves upon his mind as essential to the ideal development of his race: first, the people should make much more of the forms of religious life than ever before in order to be responsive to the demands of true holiness; again, the ritual recognized by them should be much more exact and strict than it had been in the past; in the third place, the ecclesiastical power must be independent in matters religious, not subject to royal caprice; and lastly, this power was to be centred in the family of Zadok. With consummate art Ezekiel presents such a ritualistic constitution, which provides for a temple with priests and servitors, with every appointment and necessary resource, protected and supported but not controlled by the king, its holiness guarded by the provision of an outer court, beyond which only consecrated men could pass, situated in the midst of a reservation allotted to the priests and Levites, which was in turn encircled by a territory where every true Israelite was allotted an equal share. It is a sketch, a ground plan, but its details are also carefully developed. Throughout the author recognizes that his vision has been given by God, an inspiration which is not belittled or gainsaid by the recognition of the prophet’s share in its formation.

Two details are new to Hebrew history. The old temple had only one court. Ezekiel provides another, in order to emphasize the distinction between that which is holy and ceremonially clean and, therefore, admissible to God’s presence, and that which is common. Not even the king may step within the inner court, where the great altar of burnt offering stands before the temple proper. Again, before the exile, many priestly families had a claim upon the perquisites and the prerogatives of the priesthood at Jerusalem. Ezekiel declares that the Zadokites alone are worthy to serve at the altar, because they had, on the whole, been faithful to the ideals of the priesthood.

There was one element of weakness in this newly formulated policy; it reduced popular religion to a series of forms. A man’s access to God was no longer to be direct in any sense; he could only stand afar off and watch, while others performed for him the symbolic rites. No doubt it was felt that the resulting systemization of religion would be a real advantage; but it can hardly be doubted that there was a loss in personal fervor.

Ezekiel’s plan was never fully adopted. It was not, in fact, so adjusted to existing conditions that it could be. It is really a sort of Messianic apocalypse, an ideal picture of what ought to come to pass, intended rather to suggest broad lines of progress than to indicate exact details.

Ezekiel has been properly termed the father of Judaism, for by his keen insight into the needs of the times and by his clever formulation of his proposed policy in this striking vision, he helped materially to shape the growth of the Jewish polity which resulted in the adoption of a strict ritual. His suggestions seem to stand half-way between the free and popular ritual of Deuteronomy and the elaborate technicalities of the Levitical code. In this work he probably also represents other thoughtful minds which were intent upon the religious problems of their race, and yet among them all he was as conspicuous as one of the stately cedars of which the prophets love to think. His was the master mind through which was given the impulse toward the most important transformation that ever a nation was called upon to undergo.