1And these are the names of the tribes: From the northern end by the way of Hethlon, Lebo-Hamath, Hazar-Enan, the border of Damascus to the north, and from the eastern side to the west—Dan, one. 2And by the boundary of Dan from the eastern end to the western end—Asher, one. 3And by the boundary of Asher from the eastern end to the western end—Naphtali, one. 4And by the boundary of Naphtali from the eastern end to the western end—Manasseh, one. 5And by the boundary of Manasseh from the eastern end to the western end—Ephraim, one. 6And by the boundary of Ephraim from the eastern end to the western end—Reuben, one. 7And by the boundary of Reuben from the eastern end to the western end—Judah, one. 8And by the boundary of Judah from the eastern end to the western end there shall be a donation that you shall set aside—twenty-five thousand cubits in width and length like one of the portions from the eastern end to the western end, and the sanctuary shall be within it. 9The donation that you shall set aside for the LORD is to be twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand cubits wide. 10And for these shall the sacred donation be: for the priests on the north twenty-five thousand cubits long and to the west ten thousand cubits wide and to the east ten thousand cubits wide and to the south twenty-five thousand cubits long, and the LORD’s sanctuary shall be within it, 11for the consecrated priests of the sons of Zadok, who kept My watch, who did not stray when the Israelites strayed as the Levites strayed. 12And it shall be a donation to them from the donation of the land, holy of holies, by the territory of the Levites. 13And the Levites are opposite the territory of the priests, twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand cubits wide, the whole length twenty-five thousand cubits and the whole width ten thousand cubits. 14And they shall not sell any of it nor shall they exchange nor shall it be transferred. It is the best of the land, sacred to the LORD. 15And the remaining five thousand cubits in width by twenty-five thousand in length is profane ground for the city for dwellings and for open fields, and the city shall be within it. 16And these are its measurements: on the north side four thousand five hundred cubits and on the south side four thousand five hundred cubits and on the east side four thousand five hundred cubits and on the west side four thousand five hundred cubits. 17And there shall be an open field for the city to the north, two hundred fifty cubits, and to the south, two hundred fifty cubits and to the east, two hundred fifty cubits and to the west, two hundred fifty cubits. 18And the remaining area in length opposite the sacred donation shall be ten thousand cubits on the east and ten thousand cubits on the west, and it shall be opposite the sacred donation. And its produce shall be for bread for the city workers. 19And the city workers shall work in it from all the tribes of Israel. 20The whole donation, twenty-five thousand cubits by twenty-five thousand cubits square, you shall set aside as a sacred donation in addition to the city’s holding. 21And what is remaining is for the prince on both sides of the sacred donation and of the city’s holding, facing the twenty-five thousand cubits of the donation to the eastern and western borders facing the twenty-five thousand cubits on the western border opposite the tribal portions. This is the prince’s, and the sacred donation and the sanctuary of the house shall be within it. 22And the Levites’ holding and the city’s holding shall be within what is the prince’s between the territory of Judah and the territory of Benjamin. For the prince it shall be. 23As for the remaining tribes, from the eastern end to the western end: Benjamin, one. 24And by the territory of Benjamin from the eastern end to the western end: Simeon, one. 25And by the territory of Simeon from the eastern end to the western end: Issachar, one. 26And by the territory of Issachar from the eastern end to the western end: Zebulun, one. 27And by the territory of Zebulun from the eastern end to the western end: Gad, one. 28And by the territory of Gad to the southern end, the boundary shall be from Tamar to the waters of Meribath-Kodesh, to the wadi, as far as the Great Sea. 29This is the land that you shall cast in lots for the tribes of Israel, and these are its portions, said the Master, the LORD. 30And this is the span of the city: from the eastern side four thousand five hundred cubits in measure. 31And the gates of the city are after the names of the tribes of Israel: three gates on the north—the Gate of Reuben, one; the Gate of Judah, one; the Gate of Levi, one. 32And on the eastern side, four thousand five hundred cubits and three gates—the Gate of Joseph, one; the Gate of Benjamin, one; the Gate of Dan, one. 33And the southern side, four thousand five hundred cubits and three gates—the Gate of Simeon, one; the Gate of Issachar, one; the gate of Zebulun, one. 34The western side, four thousand five hundred cubits. Their gates are three—the Gate of Gad, one; the Gate of Asher, one; the Gate of Naphtali, one. 35All around it is eighteen thousand cubits. And the name of the city from that day shall be “The LORD Is There.”
CHAPTER 48 NOTES
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1. And these are the names of the tribes. For modern readers, this catalogue of the tribal territories, including a delineation of the sectors of Jerusalem, is likely to be an uninspiring conclusion to a book of prophecy. One suspects that for Ezekiel, on the contrary, these dry listings were inspiring because they constituted a geometrical representation of a vision of national restoration. It should be noted that almost none of this corresponds to the historical realities of the land but is rather an eschatological imagining of the land. All the demarcations are symmetrical—equal borders for each of the tribes; Jerusalem is divided into symmetrical sectors for the priests, the Levites, the king, and the common people; the four walls of the city with gates named for three tribes on each side.
Dan. Another manifestation of the eschatological character of Ezekiel’s report of tribal borders is that it is careful to include all twelve tribes, even though the ten northern tribes had ceased to exist a century and a half before this prophecy.
2. Asher, one. The evident sense of “one” is “one share in the division of the land.” The unvarying repetition of this formula for each of the twelve tribes conveys the idea that each receives an equal portion—again, in contradiction to the preceding historical reality.
8. And by the boundary of Judah . . . there shall be a donation that you shall set aside. For Judah, there is a break in the series of formulaic repetitions because Jerusalem is in the tribal territory of Judah, and so here the prophet reverts to his delineation of the borders of sacred space around the Temple. “Donation,” which elsewhere in the Bible refers to a kind of sacrifice, is throughout these concluding chapters a large plot of land reserved for priestly use.
and the sanctuary shall be within it. In Ezekiel’s priestly vision, the city and the whole land are centered around the sanctuary.
15. open fields. Israelite cities had open fields, migrashim, around them, chiefly used to pasture herds and cultivate crops.
18. bread for the city workers. As elsewhere, bread is a synecdoche for food.
19. And the city workers shall work in it from all the tribes of Israel. Because Jerusalem is the site of both the Temple and the royal bureaucracy, its maintenance is an obligation of the entire people, the exaction of labor being a kind of taxation.
23. As for the remaining tribes. Having detailed the sundry divisions within Jerusalem triggered by the mention of Judah, the prophet now returns to his formulaic catalogue of tribal boundaries.
29. This is the land that you shall cast in lots . . . said the Master, the LORD. This sentence uses two rather different formulations: the verb at the beginning, which suggests the casting of lots, harks back to the procedure said to be used for the division of the land in Joshua, but the LORD’s “saying” how the land should be divided implies the symmetrical, preordained plan of division evident here.
30. And this is the span of the city. Having finished with the tribal territories, Ezekiel returns to his overriding preoccupation with the dimensions of the city, his vision constantly centered on Jerusalem.
35. And the name of the city from that day shall be “The LORD Is There.” This concluding flourish underscores the grand eschatological character of this vision of the restored city and land: in the rebuilt, carefully demarcated, symmetrical Jerusalem, with the sanctuary at its center, the very name of the city will express God’s constant presence in the place where He has chosen to dwell.