1And he led me to the gate, the gate that faces the eastern way. 2And, look, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the eastern way, and its sound was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone from His glory. 3And it was like the look of the sight that I had seen, like that sight that I had seen when I came to pronounce the destruction of the city, and sights like the sight I had seen by the Kebar Canal. And I fell on my face. 4And the glory of the LORD came into the house through the gate that faced the eastern way. 5And a wind bore me up and brought me to the inner court, and, look, the glory of the LORD filled the house. 6And I heard it speaking to me, and a man was standing by me. 7And he said to me, “Man, the place of My throne and the soles of My feet where I dwell in the midst of the Israelites forever! Nor shall the house of Israel defile My name anymore—they and their kings—with their whoring and with the corpses of their kings, their high places, 8when they set their threshold by My threshold and their doorpost by My doorpost, with the wall between them and Me, and they defiled My holy name with their abominations that they did, and I made an end to them in My wrath. 9Now let them put far from Me their whoring and the corpses of their kings, and I will dwell in their midst forever. 10You, man, tell the house of Israel about the house, and let them be ashamed of their crimes, and let them measure its design. 11And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, inform them of the plan of the house and its design and its exits and its entrances and all its plan and all its regulations [and inform them of all its designs and all its rules] and write them before their eyes that they may observe all its design and all its regulations and do them. 12This is the regulation for the house on the mountaintop, all its boundaries all around are holy of holies. Look, this is the regulation for the house. 13And these are the measurements of the altar in cubits, a cubit and a cubit and a handsbreadth, and the trench a cubit deep and its boundary at its edge all around one span and its depth one cubit. And this is the structure of the altar. 14From the trench in the ground to the lower level it is two cubits, and one cubit wide, and from the small level to the large level, four cubits and a cubit wide. 15And the altar hearth is four cubits, and from the altar hearth to above the horns on the altar four. 16And the altar hearth is twelve cubits long by twelve cubits wide, square on its four sides. 17And the level section is fourteen cubits long by fourteen cubits wide on its four sides, and the boundary around it is half a cubit, and it has a trench a cubit all around, and its steps face the east.” 18And he said to me, “Man, thus said the Master, the LORD: These are the statutes of the altar on the day it is made, to offer up on it a burnt offering and to cast blood upon it. 19And you shall give these to the levitical priests who are the seed of Zadok, who may draw near to Me, said the Master, the LORD, to minister unto Me, a bull from the herd for an offense offering. 20And you shall take from its blood and put it on the four horns of the altar and at the four corners of the level section and on the boundary all around, and you shall purify and purge it. 21And you shall take the bull of the offense offering and burn it in the set place of the house outside the sanctuary. 22On the second day you shall sacrifice an unblemished he-goat as an offense offering, and they shall purify the altar as they purified with the bull. 23When you finish purifying, you shall sacrifice an unblemished bull from the herd and an unblemished ram from the flock. 24And you shall sacrifice them before the LORD, and the priests shall cast salt upon them and offer them up as a burnt offering to the LORD. 25Seven days you shall do a goat for offense offering each day and a bull from the herd and a ram from the flock. Unblemished shall they be. 26Seven days they shall purge the altar and make it clean and consecrate it, 27and the days shall be completed. And it shall happen from the eighth day onward that the priests shall do their burnt offerings and their well-being sacrifices on the altar, and I will accept them favorably, said the Master, the LORD.”
CHAPTER 43 NOTES
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2. the glory of the God of Israel. This phrase marks the beginning of another of Ezekiel’s epiphanies. The “glory” is the dazzling manifestation of the divine presence before the eyes of the prophet. It is possible that the glory here is identical with the divine chariot of chapter 1, but there is no unambiguous indication in the text that this is the case.
3. that sight that I had seen when I came to pronounce the destruction of the city. The Hebrew says merely “when I came to destroy the city,” but the prophet is not the agent of destruction, so it is assumed in this translation that he is referring to his prophecies of destruction in chapters 8–11.
and sights like the sight I had seen by the Kebar Canal. This phrase does take us back to the vision in chapter 1, which is located on the banks of the Kebar Canal.
5. the glory of the LORD filled the house. This clause is reminiscent of the epiphany in Isaiah 6. Here, as throughout these chapters, “the house” means “the house of the LORD,” which is to say, the Temple.
6. speaking to me. The Hebrew, at least as it is vocalized in the Masoretic Text, does not actually say “speaking,” medaber, but uses an unusual reflexive form of this verb, midaber, which would appear to suggest a kind of mediated activity of speech rather than direct address to the prophet. The somewhat paraphrastic but semantically correct solution of the New Jewish Publication Society translation is “speech addressed to me.”
7. the place of My throne. The noun phrase here is preceded by the accusative particle ʾet, leading us to expect a verb, but none appears in this sentence. Some understand the ʾet as indicating emphasis. This translation replicates the syntactic incompleteness of the Hebrew. It should be noted that the “man” addressing Ezekiel is now clearly God.
with their whoring and with the corpses of their kings. As elsewhere, the probable reference of “whoring” is idolatry. The “corpses of their kings” refers to the practice of the last several Judahite kings of using the Garden of Uzza, in proximity to the Temple, as a royal burial ground. Corpses impart ritual defilement. The threshold and doorposts of the next verse would thus be the threshold and doorposts of the royal mausoleums.
10. let them measure its design. For Ezekiel, there is a seamless connection between grand visions of a restored temple and a restored monarchy with the cubit-by-cubit measurements of the Temple that is to be rebuilt. It is as if, as he contemplates the Temple that has been in ruins for two decades, the reality of its rebuilding becomes palpable for him by his tracing all the details of its measurements that the builders are to follow.
11. [and inform them of all its designs and all its rules]. Although Ezekiel’s prose is prone to repetition, the repetition in this instance is so excessive that one suspects the bracketed clause to be an inadvertent scribal duplication.
13. a cubit and a cubit and a handsbreadth. As before, the indications of the measurements and the architectural terms are bewildering.
18. the altar on the day it is made. This phrase clearly indicates that this is a plan which the builders are to implement as they proceed with the reconstruction of the destroyed temple.
19. And you shall give these to the levitical priests. Now Ezekiel moves from architectural instructions to instructions about the sacrifices to be performed within the rebuilt temple.
20. the four horns of the altar. The ancient altars had hornlike protuberances, probably symbolizing power, at their four corners.
27. from the eighth day onward that the priests shall do their burnt offerings. After seven days during which the rebuilt altar is purified and sanctified, the priests will take up their set regimen of regular offerings.