We have now reached the last and in every way the most important section
of the book of Ezekiel. The nine concluding chapters record what was
evidently the crowning experience of the prophet’s life. His ministry
began with a vision of God; it culminates in a vision of the people of
God, or rather of God in the midst of His people, reconciled to them,
ruling over them, and imparting the blessings and glories of the final
dispensation. Into that vision are thrown the ideals which had been
gradually matured through twenty years of strenuous action and intense
meditation. We have traced some of the steps by which the prophet was led
towards this consummation of his work. We have seen how, under the idea of
God which had been revealed to him, he was constrained to announce the
destruction of that which called itself the people of Jehovah, but was in
reality the means of obscuring His character and profaning His holiness
(chs. iv.‐xxiv.). We have seen further how the same fundamental conception
led him on in his prophecies against foreign nations to predict a great
clearing of the stage of history for the manifestation of Jehovah (chs.
xxv.‐xxxii.). And we have seen from the preceding section what are the
processes by which the divine Spirit breathes new life into a dead nation
and creates out of its scattered members a people worthy of the God whom
the prophet has seen.
But there is still something more to accomplish before his task is
finished. All through, Ezekiel holds fast the truth that Jehovah and
Israel are necessarily related to each other, and that Israel is to be the
medium through which alone the nature of Jehovah can be fully disclosed to
mankind. It remains, therefore, to sketch the outline of a perfect
theocracy—in other words, to describe the permanent forms and institutions
which shall express the ideal relation between God and men. To this task
the prophet addresses himself in the chapters now before us. That great
New Year’s Vision may be regarded as the ripe fruit of all God’s training
of His prophet, as it is also the part of Ezekiel’s work which most
directly influenced the subsequent development of religion in Israel.
It cannot be doubted, then, that these chapters are an integral part of
the book, considered as a record of Ezekiel’s work. But it is certainly a
significant circumstance that they are separated from the body of the
prophecies by an interval of thirteen years. For the greater part of that
time Ezekiel’s literary activity was suspended. It is probable, at all
events, that the first thirty‐nine chapters had been committed to writing
soon after the latest date they mention, and that the oracle on Gog, which
marks the extreme limit of Ezekiel’s prophetic vision, was really the
conclusion of an earlier form of the book. And we may be certain that,
since the eventful period that followed the arrival of the fugitive from
Jerusalem, no new divine communication had visited the prophet’s mind. But
at last, in the twenty‐fifth year of the captivity, and on the first day
of a new year,(205) he falls into a trance more prolonged than any he had
yet passed through, and he emerged from it with a new message for his
people.
In what direction were the prophet’s thoughts moving as Israel passed into
the midnight of her exile? That they have moved in the interval—that his
standpoint is no longer quite identical with that represented in his
earlier prophecies—seems to be shown by one slight modification of his
previous conceptions, which has been already mentioned.(206) I refer to
the position of the prince in the theocratic state. We find that the king
is still the civil head of the commonwealth, but that his position is
hardly reconcilable with the exalted functions assigned to the Messianic
king in ch. xxxiv. The inference seems irresistible that Ezekiel’s point
of view has somewhat changed, so that the objects in his picture present
themselves in a different perspective.
It is true that this change was effected by a vision, and it may be said
that that fact forbids our regarding it as indicating a progress in
Ezekiel’s thoughts. But the vision of a prophet is never out of relation
to his previous thinking. The prophet is always prepared for his vision;
it comes to him as the answer to questions, as the solution of
difficulties, whose force he has felt, and apart from which it would
convey no revelation of God to his mind. It marks the point at which
reflection gives place to inspiration, where the incommunicable certainty
of the divine word lifts the soul into the region of spiritual and eternal
truth. And hence it may help us, from our human point of view, to
understand the true import of this vision, if from the answer we try to
discover the questions which were of pressing interest to Ezekiel in the
later part of his career.
Speaking generally, we may say that the problem that occupied the mind of
Ezekiel at this time was the problem of a religious constitution. How to
secure for religion its true place in public life, how to embody it in
institutions which shall conserve its essential ideas and transmit them
from one generation to another, how a people may best express its national
responsibility to God—these and many kindred questions are real and vital
to‐day amongst the nations of Christendom, and they were far more vital in
the age of Ezekiel. The conception of religion as an inward spiritual
power, moulding the life of the nation and of each individual member, was
at least as strong in him as in any other prophet; and it had been
adequately expressed in the section of his book dealing with the formation
of the new Israel. But he saw that this was not for that time sufficient.
The mass of the community were dependent on the educative influence of the
institutions under which they lived, and there was no way of impressing on
a whole people the character of Jehovah except through a system of laws
and observances which should constantly exhibit it to their minds. The
time was not yet come when religion could be trusted to work as a hidden
leaven, transforming life from within and bringing in the kingdom of God
silently by the operation of spiritual forces. Thus, while the last
section insists on the moral change that must pass over Israel, and the
need of a direct influence from God on the heart of the people, that which
now lies before us is devoted to the religious and political arrangements
by which the sanctity of the nation must be preserved.
Starting from this general notion of what the prophet sought, we can see,
in the next place, that his attention must be mainly concentrated on
matters belonging to public worship and ritual. Worship is the direct
expression in word and act of man’s attitude to God, and no public
religion can maintain a higher level of spirituality than the symbolism
which gives it a place in the life of the people. That fact had been
abundantly illustrated by the experience of centuries before the Exile.
The popular worship had always been a stronghold of false religion in
Israel. The high places were the nurseries of all the corruptions against
which the prophets had to contend, not simply because of the immoral
elements that mingled with their worship, but because the worship itself
was regulated by conceptions of the deity which were opposed to the
religion of revelation. Now the idea of using ritual as a vehicle of the
highest spiritual truth is certainly not peculiar to Ezekiel’s vision. But
it is there carried through with a thoroughness which has no parallel
elsewhere except in the priestly legislation of the Pentateuch. And this
bears witness to a clear perception on the part of the prophet of the
value of that whole side of things for the future development of religion
in Israel. No one was more deeply impressed with the evils that had flowed
from a corrupt ritual in the past, and he conceives the final form of the
kingdom of God to be one in which the blessings of salvation are
safeguarded by a carefully regulated system of religious ordinances. It
will become manifest as we proceed that he regards the Temple ritual as
the very centre of theocratic life, and the highest function of the
community of the true religion.
But Ezekiel was prepared for the reception of this vision, not only by the
practical reforming bent of his mind, but also by a combination in his own
experience of the two elements which must always enter into a conception
of this nature. If we may employ philosophical language to express a very
obvious distinction, we have to recognise in the vision a material and a
formal element. The matter of the vision is derived from the ancient
religious and political constitution of the Hebrew state. All true and
lasting reformations are conservative at heart; their object never is to
make a clean sweep of the past, but so to modify what is traditional as to
adapt it to the needs of a new era. Now Ezekiel was a priest, and
possessed all a priest’s reverence for antiquity, as well as a priest’s
professional knowledge of ceremonial and of consuetudinary law. No man
could have been better fitted than he to secure the continuity of Israel’s
religious life along the particular line on which it was destined to move.
Accordingly we find that the new theocracy is modelled from beginning to
end after the pattern of the ancient institutions which had been destroyed
by the Exile. If we ask, for example, what is the meaning of some detail
of the Temple building, such as the cells surrounding the main sanctuary,
the obvious and sufficient answer is that these things existed in
Solomon’s Temple, and there was no reason for altering them. On the other
hand, whenever we find the vision departing from what had been
traditionally established, we may be sure that there is a reason for it,
and in most cases we can see what that reason was. In such departures we
recognise the working of what we have called the formal element of the
vision, the moulding influence of the ideas which the system was intended
to express. What these ideas were we shall consider in subsequent
chapters; here it is enough to say that they were the fundamental ideas
which had been communicated to Ezekiel in the course of his prophetic
work, and which have found expression in various forms in other parts of
his writings. That they are not peculiar to Ezekiel, but are shared by
other prophets, is true, just as it is true on the other hand that the
priestly conceptions which occupy so large a place in his mind were an
inheritance from the whole past history of the nation. Nor was this the
first time when an alliance between the ceremonialism of the priesthood
and the more ethical and spiritual teaching of prophecy had proved of the
utmost advantage to the religious life of Israel.(207) The unique
importance of Ezekiel’s vision lies in the fact that the great development
of prophecy was now almost complete, and that the time was come for its
results to be embodied in institutions which were in the main of a
priestly character. And it was fitting that this new era of religion
should be inaugurated through the agency of one who combined in his own
person the conservative instincts of the priest with the originality and
the spiritual intuition of the prophet.
It is not suggested for a moment that these considerations account for the
inception of the vision in the prophet’s mind. We are not to regard it as
merely the brilliant device of an ingenious man, who was exceptionally
qualified to read the signs of the times, and to discover a solution for a
pressing religious problem. In order that it might accomplish the end in
view, it was absolutely necessary that it should be invested with a
supernatural sanction and bear the stamp of divine authority. Ezekiel
himself was well aware of this, and would never have ventured to publish
his vision if he had thought it all out for himself. He had to wait for
the time when “the hand of the Lord was upon him,” and he saw in vision
the new Temple and the river of life proceeding from it, and the renovated
land, and the glory of God taking up its everlasting abode in the midst of
His people. Until that moment arrived he was without a message as to the
form which the life of the restored Israel must assume. Nevertheless the
psychological conditions of the vision were contained in those parts of
the prophet’s experience which have just been indicated. Processes of
thought which had long occupied his mind suddenly crystallised at the
touch of the divine hand, and the result was the marvellous conception of
a theocratic state which was Ezekiel’s greatest legacy to the faith and
hopes of his countrymen.
That this vision of Ezekiel’s profoundly influenced the development of
post‐exilic Judaism may be inferred from the fact that all the best
tendencies of the restoration period were towards the realisation of the
ideals which the vision sets forth with surpassing clearness. It is
impossible, indeed, to say precisely how far Ezekiel’s influence extended,
or how far the returning exiles consciously aimed at carrying out the
ideas contained in his sketch of a theocratic constitution. That they did
so to some extent is inferred from a consideration of some of the
arrangements established in Jerusalem soon after the return from
Babylon.(208) But it is certain that from the nature of the case the
actual institutions of the restored community must have differed very
widely in many points from those described in the last nine chapters of
Ezekiel. When we look more closely at the composition of this vision, we
see that it contains features which neither then nor at any subsequent
time have been historically fulfilled. The most remarkable thing about it
is that it unites in one picture two characteristics which seem at first
sight difficult to combine. On the one hand it bears the aspect of a rigid
legislative system intended to regulate human conduct in all matters of
vital moment to the religious standing of the community; on the other hand
it assumes a miraculous transformation of the physical aspect of the
country, a restoration of all the twelve tribes of Israel under a native
king, and a return of Jehovah in visible glory to dwell in the midst of
the children of Israel for ever. Now these supernatural conditions of the
perfect theocracy could not be realised by any effort on the part of the
people, and as a matter of fact were never literally fulfilled at all. It
must have been plain to the leaders of the Return that for this reason
alone the details of Ezekiel’s legislation were not binding for them in
the actual circumstances in which they were placed. Even in matters
clearly within the province of human administration we know that they
considered themselves free to modify his regulations in accordance with
the requirements of the situation in which they found themselves. It does
not follow from this, however, that they were ignorant of the book of
Ezekiel, or that it gave them no help in the difficult task to which they
addressed themselves. It furnished them with an ideal of national
holiness, and the general outline of a constitution in which that ideal
should be embodied; and this outline they seem to have striven to fill up
in the way best adapted to the straitened and discouraging circumstances
of the time.
But this throws us back on some questions of fundamental importance for
the right understanding of Ezekiel’s vision. Taking the vision as a whole,
we have to ask whether a fulfilment of the kind just indicated was the
fulfilment that the prophet himself anticipated. Did he lay stress on the
legislative or the supernatural aspect of the vision—on man’s agency or on
God’s? In other words, does he issue it as a programme to be carried out
by the people as soon as the opportunity is presented by their return to
the land of Canaan? or does he mean that Jehovah Himself must take the
initiative by miraculously preparing the land for their reception, and
taking up His abode in the finished Temple, the “place of His throne, and
the place of the soles of His feet”? The answer to these questions is not
difficult, if only we are careful to look at things from the prophet’s
point of view, and disregard the historical events in which his
predictions were partly realised. It is frequently assumed that the
elaborate description of the Temple buildings in chs. xl.‐xlii. is
intended as a guide to the builders of the second Temple, who are to make
it after the fashion of that which the prophet saw on the mount. It is
quite probable that in some degree it may have served that purpose; but it
seems to me that this view is not in keeping with the fundamental idea of
the vision. The Temple that Ezekiel saw, and the only one of which he
speaks, is a house not made with hands; it is as much a part of the
supernatural preparation for the future theocracy as the “very high
mountain” on which it stands, or the river that flows from it to sweeten
the waters of the Dead Sea. In the important passage where the prophet is
commanded to exhibit the plan of the house to the children of Israel (ch.
xliii. 10, 11), there is unfortunately a discrepancy between the Hebrew
and Greek texts which throws some obscurity on this particular point.
According to the Hebrew there can hardly be a doubt that a sketch is shown
to them which is to be used as a builder’s plan at the time of the
Restoration.(209) But in the Septuagint, which seems on the whole to give
a more correct text, the passage runs thus: “And, thou son of man,
describe the house to the house of Israel (and let them be ashamed of
their iniquities), and its form, and its construction: and they shall be
ashamed of all that they have done. And do thou sketch the house, and its
exits, and its outline; and all its ordinances and all its laws make known
to them; and write it before them, that they may keep all its commandments
and all its ordinances, and do them.” There is nothing here to suggest
that the construction of the Temple was left for human workmanship. The
outline of it is shown to the people only that they may be ashamed of all
their iniquities. When the arrangements of the ideal Temple are explained
to them, they will see how far those of the first Temple transgressed the
requirements of Jehovah’s holiness, and this knowledge will produce a
sense of shame for the dulness of heart which tolerated so many abuses in
connection with His worship. No doubt that impression sank deep into the
minds of Ezekiel’s hearers, and led to certain important modifications in
the structure of the Temple when it had to be built; but that is not what
the prophet is thinking of. At the same time we see clearly that he is
very much in earnest with the legislative part of his vision. Its laws are
real laws, and are given that they may be obeyed—only they do not come
into force until all the institutions of the theocracy, natural and
supernatural alike, are in full working order. And apart from the doubtful
question as to the erection of the Temple, that general conclusion holds
good for the vision as a whole. Whilst it is pervaded throughout by the
legislative spirit, the miraculous features are after all its central and
essential elements. When these conditions are realised, it will be the
duty of Israel to guard her sacred institutions by the most scrupulous and
devoted obedience; but till then there is no kingdom of God established on
earth, and therefore no system of laws to conserve a state of salvation,
which can only be brought about by the direct and visible interposition of
the Almighty in the sphere of nature and history.
This blending of seemingly incongruous elements reveals to us the true
character of the vision with which we have to deal. It is in the strictest
sense a Messianic prophecy—that is, a picture of the kingdom of God in its
final state as the prophet was led to conceive it. It is common to all
such representations that the human authors of them have no idea of a long
historical development gradually leading up to the perfect manifestation
of God’s purpose with the world. The impending crisis in the affairs of
the people of Israel is always regarded as the consummation of human
history and the establishment of God’s kingdom in the plenitude of its
power and glory. In the time of Ezekiel the next step in the unfolding of
the divine plan of redemption was the restoration of Israel to its own
land; and in so far as his vision is a prophecy of that event, it was
realised in the return of the exiles with Zerubbabel in the first year of
Cyrus. But to the mind of Ezekiel this did not present itself as a mere
step towards something immeasurably higher in the remote future. It is to
include everything necessary for the complete and final inbringing of the
Messianic dispensation, and all the powers of the world to come are to be
displayed in the acts by which Jehovah brings back the scattered members
of Israel to the enjoyment of blessedness in His own presence.
The thing that misleads us as to the real nature of the vision is the
emphasis laid on matters which seem to us of merely temporal and earthly
significance. We are apt to think that what we have before us can be
nothing else than a legislative scheme to be carried out more or less
fully in the new state that should arise after the Exile. The miraculous
features in the vision are apt to be dismissed as mere symbolisms to which
no great significance attaches. Legislating for the millennium seems to us
a strange occupation for a prophet, and we are hardly prepared to credit
even Ezekiel with so bold a conception. But that depends entirely on his
idea of what the millennium will be. If it is to be a state of things in
which religious institutions are of vital importance for the maintenance
of the spiritual interests of the community of the people of God, then
legislation is the natural expression for the ideals which are to be
realised in it. And we must remember, too, that what we have to do with is
a vision. Ezekiel is not the ultimate source of this legislation, however
much it may bear the impress of his individual experience. He has seen the
city of God, and all the minute and elaborate regulations with which these
nine chapters are filled are but the exposition of principles that
determine the character of a people amongst whom Jehovah can dwell.
At the same time we see that a separation of different aspects of the
vision was inevitably effected by the teaching of history. The return from
Babylon was accomplished without any of those supernatural adjuncts with
which it had been invested in the rapt imagination of the prophet. No
transformation of the land preceded it; no visible presence of Jehovah
welcomed the exiles back to their ancient abode. They found Jerusalem in
ruins, the holy and beautiful house a desolation, the land occupied by
aliens, the seasons unproductive as of old. Yet in the hearts of these men
there was a vision even more impressive than that of Ezekiel in his
solitude. To lay the foundations of a theocratic state in the dreary,
discouraging daylight of the present was an act of faith as heroic as has
ever been performed in the history of religion. The building of the Temple
was undertaken amidst many difficulties, the ritual was organised, the
rudiments of a religious constitution appeared, and in all this we see the
influence of those principles of national holiness that had been
formulated by Ezekiel. But the crowning manifestation of Jehovah’s glory
was deferred. Prophet after prophet appeared to keep alive the hope that
this Temple, poor in outward appearance as it was, would yet be the centre
of a new world, and the dwelling‐place of the Eternal. Centuries rolled
past, and still Jehovah did not come to His Temple, and the eschatological
features which had bulked so largely in Ezekiel’s vision remained an
unfulfilled aspiration. And when at length in the fulness of time the
complete revelation of God was given, it was in a form that superseded the
old economy entirely, and transformed its most stable and cherished
institutions into adumbrations of a spiritual kingdom which knew no
earthly Temple and had need of none.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
This brings us to the most difficult and most important of all the
questions arising in connection with Ezekiel’s vision—What is its relation
to the Pentateuchal Legislation? It is obvious at once that the
significance of this section of the book of Ezekiel is immensely enhanced
if we accept the conclusion to which the critical study of the Old
Testament has been steadily driven, that in the chapters before us we have
the first outline of that great conception of a theocratic constitution
which attained its finished expression in the priestly regulations of the
middle books of the Pentateuch. The discussion of this subject is so
intricate, so far‐reaching in its consequences, and ranges over so wide an
historical field, that one is tempted to leave it in the hands of those
who have addressed themselves to its special treatment, and to try to get
on as best one may without assuming a definite attitude on one side or the
other. But the student of Ezekiel cannot altogether evade it. Again and
again the question will force itself on him as he seeks to ascertain the
meaning of the various details of Ezekiel’s legislation, How does this
stand related to corresponding requirements in the Mosaic law? It is
necessary, therefore, in justice to the reader of the following pages,
that an attempt should be made, however imperfectly, to indicate the
position which the present phase of criticism assigns to Ezekiel in the
history of the Old Testament legislation.
We may begin by pointing out the kind of difficulty that is felt to arise
on the supposition that Ezekiel had before him the entire body of laws
contained in our present Pentateuch. We should expect in that case that
the prophet would contemplate a restoration of the divine institutions
established under Moses, and that his vision would reproduce with
substantial fidelity the minute provisions of the law by which these
institutions were to be maintained. But this is very far from being the
case. It is found that while Ezekiel deals to a large extent with the
subjects for which provision is made by the law, there is in no instance
perfect correspondence between the enactments of the vision and those of
the Pentateuch, while on some points they differ very materially from one
another. How are we to account for these numerous and, on the supposition,
evidently designed divergencies? It has been suggested that the law was
found to be in some respects unsuitable to the state of things that would
arise after the Exile, and that Ezekiel in the exercise of his prophetic
authority undertook to adapt it to the conditions of a late age. The
suggestion is in itself plausible, but it is not confirmed by the history.
For it is agreed on all hands that the law as a whole had never been put
in force for any considerable period of Israel’s history previous to the
Exile. On the other hand, if we suppose that Ezekiel judged its provisions
unsuitable for the circumstances that would emerge after the Exile, we are
confronted by the fact that where Ezekiel’s legislation differs from that
of the Pentateuch it is the latter and not the former that regulated the
practice of the post‐exilic community. So far was the law from being out
of date in the age of Ezekiel that the time was only approaching when the
first effort would be made to accept it in all its length and breadth as
the authoritative basis of an actual theocratic polity. Unless, therefore,
we are to hold that the legislation of the vision is entirely in the air,
and that it takes no account whatever of practical considerations, we must
feel that a certain difficulty is presented by its unexplained deviations
from the carefully drawn ordinances of the Pentateuch.
But this is not all. The Pentateuch itself is not a unity. It consists of
different strata of legislation which, while irreconcilable in details,
are held to exhibit a continuous progress towards a clearer definition of
the duties that devolve on different classes in the community, and a
fuller exposition of the principles that underlay the system from the
beginning. The analysis of the Mosaic writings into different legislative
codes has resulted in a scheme which in its main outlines is now accepted
by critics of all shades of opinion. The three great codes which we have
to distinguish are: (1) the so‐called Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx.
24‐xxiii., with which may be classed the closely allied code of Exod.
xxxiv. 10‐28); (2) the Book of Deuteronomy; and (3) the Priestly Code
(found in Exod. xxv.‐xxxi., xxxv.‐xl., the whole book of Leviticus, and
nearly the whole of the book of Numbers).(210) Now of course the mere
separation of these different documents tells us nothing, or not much, as
to their relative priority or antiquity. But we possess at least a certain
amount of historical and independent evidence as to the times when some of
them became operative in the actual life of the nation. We know, for
example, that the Book of Deuteronomy attained the force of statute law
under the most solemn circumstances by a national covenant in the
eighteenth year of Josiah. The distinctive feature of that book is its
impressive enforcement of the principle that there is but one sanctuary at
which Jehovah can be legitimately worshipped. When we compare the list of
reforms carried out by Josiah, as given in the twenty‐third chapter of 2
Kings, with the provisions of Deuteronomy, we see that it must have been
that book and it alone that had been found in the Temple and that governed
the reforming policy of the king. Before that time the law of the one
sanctuary, if it was known at all, was certainly more honoured in the
breach than the observance. Sacrifices were freely offered at local altars
throughout the country, not merely by the ignorant common people and
idolatrous kings, but by men who were the inspired religious leaders and
teachers of the nation. Not only so, but this practice is sanctioned by
the Book of the Covenant, which permits the erection of an altar in every
place where Jehovah causes His name to be remembered, and only lays down
injunctions as to the kind of altar that might be used (Exod. xx. 24‐26).
The evidence is thus very strong that the Book of Deuteronomy, at whatever
time it may have been written, had not the force of public law until the
year 621 B.C., and that down to that time the accepted and authoritative
expression of the divine will for Israel was the law embraced in the Book
of the Covenant.
To find similar evidence of the practical adoption of the Priestly Code we
have to come down to a much later period. It is not till the year 444
B.C., in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, that we read of the people
pledging themselves by a solemn covenant to the observance of regulations
which are clearly those of the finished system of Pentateuchal law (Neh.
viii.‐x.). It is there expressly stated that this law had not been
observed in Israel up to that time (Neh. ix. 34), and in particular that
the great Feast of Tabernacles had not been celebrated in accordance with
the requirements of the law since the days of Joshua (Neh. viii. 17). This
is quite conclusive as to actual practice in Israel; and the fact that the
observance of the law was thus introduced by instalments and on occasions
of epoch‐making importance in the history of the community raises a strong
presumption against the hypothesis that the Pentateuch was an inseparable
literary unity which must be known in its entirety where it was known at
all.
Now the date of Ezekiel’s vision (572) lies between these two historic
transactions—the inauguration of the law of Deuteronomy in 621, and that
of the Priestly Code in 444; and in spite of the ideal character which
belongs to the vision as a whole, it contains a system of legislation
which admits of being compared point by point with the provisions of the
other two codes on a variety of subjects common to all three. Some of the
results of this comparison will appear as we proceed with the exposition
of the chapters before us. But it will be convenient to state here the
important conclusion to which a number of critics have been led by
discussion of this question. It is held that Ezekiel’s legislation
represents on the whole a transition from the law of Deuteronomy to the
more complex system of the Priestly document. The three codes exhibit a
regular progression, the determining factor of which is a growing sense of
the importance of the Temple worship and of the necessity for a careful
regulation of the acts which express the religious standing and privileges
of the community. On such matters as the feasts, the sacrifices, the
distinction between priests and Levites, the Temple dues, and the
provision for the maintenance of ordinances, it is found that Ezekiel lays
down enactments which go beyond those of Deuteronomy and anticipate a
further development in the same direction in the Levitical
legislation.(211) The legislation of Ezekiel is accordingly regarded as a
first step towards the codification of the ritual laws which regulated the
usage of the first Temple. It is not of material consequence to know how
far these laws had been already committed to writing, or how far they had
been transmitted by oral tradition. The important point is that down to
the time of Ezekiel the great body of ritual law had been the possession
of the priests, who communicated it to the people in the shape of
particular decisions as occasion demanded. Even the book of Deuteronomy,
except on one or two points, such as the law of leprosy and of clean and
unclean animals, does not encroach on matters of ritual, which it was the
special province of the priesthood to administer. But now that the time
was drawing near when the Temple and its worship were to be the very
centre of the religious life of the nation, it was necessary that the
essential elements of the ceremonial law should be systematised and
published in a form understood of the people. The last nine chapters of
Ezekiel, then, contain the first draft of such a scheme, drawn from an
ancient priestly tradition which in its origin went back to the time of
Moses. It is true that this was not the precise form in which the law was
destined to be put in practice in the post‐exilic community. But Ezekiel’s
legislation served its purpose when it laid down clearly, with the
authority of a prophet, the fundamental ideas that underlie the conception
of ritual as an aid to spiritual religion. And these ideas were not lost
sight of, though it was reserved for others, working under the impulse
supplied by Ezekiel, to perfect the details of the system, and to adopt
the principles of the vision to the actual circumstances of the second
Temple. Through what subsequent stages the work was carried we can hardly
hope to determine with exactitude; but it was finished in all essential
respects before the great covenant of Ezra and Nehemiah in the year
444.(212)
Let us now consider the bearing of this theory on the interpretation of
Ezekiel’s vision. It enables us to do justice to the unmistakable
practical purpose which pervades its legislation. It frees us from the
grave difficulties involved in the assumption that Ezekiel wrote with the
finished Pentateuch before him. It vindicates the prophet from the
suspicion of arbitrary deviations from a standard of venerable antiquity
and of divine authority which was afterwards proved by experience to be
suited to the requirements of that restored Israel in whose interest
Ezekiel legislated. And in doing so it gives a new meaning to his claim to
speak as a prophet ordaining a new system of laws with divine authority.
Whilst perfectly consistent with the inspiration of the Mosaic books, it
places that of Ezekiel on a surer footing than does the supposition that
the whole Pentateuch was of Mosaic authorship. It involves, no doubt, that
the details of the Priestly law were in a more or less fluid condition
down to the time of the Exile; but it explains the otherwise unaccountable
fact that the several parts of the law became operative at different times
in Israel’s history, and explains it in a manner that reveals the working
of a divine purpose through all the ages of the national existence. It
becomes possible to see that Ezekiel’s legislation and that of the
Levitical books are in their essence alike Mosaic, as being founded on the
institutions and principles established by Moses at the beginning of the
nation’s history. And an altogether new interest is imparted to the former
when we learn to regard it as an epoch‐making contribution to the task
which laid the foundation of the post‐exilic theocracy—the task of
codifying and consolidating the laws which expressed the character of the
new nation as a holy people consecrated to the service of Jehovah, the
Holy One of Israel.