It was remarked in a previous lecture that the “prince” of the closing
vision appears to occupy a less exalted position than the Messianic king
of ch. xxxiv. or ch. xxxvii. The grounds on which this impression rests
require, however, to be carefully considered, if we are not to carry away
a thoroughly false conception of the theocratic state foreshadowed by
Ezekiel. It must not be supposed that the prince is a personage of less
than royal rank, or that his authority is overshadowed by that of a
priestly caste. He is undoubtedly the civil head of the nation, owing no
allegiance within his own province to any earthly superior. Nor is there
any reason to doubt that he is the heir of the Davidic house and holds his
office in virtue of the divine promise which secured the throne to David’s
descendants. It would therefore be a mistake to imagine that we have here
an anticipation of the Romish theory of the subordination of the secular
to the spiritual power. It may be true that in the state of things
presupposed by the vision very little is left for the king to do, whilst a
variety of important duties falls to the priesthood; but at all events the
king is there and is supreme in his own sphere. Ezekiel does not show the
road to Canossa. If the king is overshadowed, it is by the personal
presence of Jehovah in the midst of His people; and that which limits his
prerogative is not the sacerdotal power, but the divine constitution of
the theocracy as revealed in the vision itself, under which both king and
priests have their functions defined and regulated with a view to the
religious ends for which the community as a whole exists.
Our purpose in the present chapter is to put together the scattered
references to the duties of the prince which occur in chs. xliv.‐xlvi., so
as to gain as clear a picture as possible of the position of the monarchy
in the theocratic state. It must be remembered, however, that the picture
will necessarily be incomplete. National life in its secular aspects, with
which the king is chiefly concerned, is hardly touched on in the vision.
Everything being looked upon from the point of view of the Temple and its
worship, there are but few allusions in which we can detect anything of
the nature of a civil constitution. And these few are introduced
incidentally, not for their own sake, but to explain some arrangement for
securing the sanctity of the land or the community. This fact must never
be lost sight of in judging of Ezekiel’s conception of the monarchy. From
all that appears in these pages we might conclude that the prince is a
mere ornamental figurehead of the constitution, and that the few real
duties assigned to him could have been equally well performed by a
committee of priests or laymen elected for the purpose. But this is to
forget that outside the range of subjects here touched upon there is a
whole world of secular interests, of political and social action, where
the king has his part to play in accordance with the precedents furnished
by the best days of the ancient monarchy.
Let us glance first of all at Ezekiel’s institutes of the kingdom in its
more political relations. The notices here are all in the form of
constitutional checks and safeguards against an arbitrary and oppressive
exercise of the royal authority. They are instructive, not only as showing
the interest which the prophet had in good government and his care for the
rights of the subject, but also for the light they cast on certain
administrative methods in force previous to the Exile.
The first point that calls for attention is the provision made for the
maintenance of the prince and his court. It would seem that the revenue of
the prince was to be derived mainly, if not wholly, from a portion of
territory reserved as his exclusive property in the division of the
country among the tribes.(247) These crown lands are situated on either
side of the sacred “oblation” around the sanctuary, set apart for the use
of the priests and Levites; and they extend to the sea on the west and to
the Jordan Valley on the east. Out of these he is at liberty to assign a
possession to his sons in perpetuity, but any estate bestowed on his
courtiers reverts to the prince in the “year of liberty.”(248) The object
of this last regulation apparently is to prevent the formation of a new
hereditary aristocracy between the royal family and the peasantry. A life
peerage, so to speak, or something less, is deemed a sufficient reward for
the most devoted service to the king or the state. And no doubt the
certainty of a revision of all royal grants every seventh year would tend
to keep some persons mindful of their duty. The whole system of royal
demesnes which the king might dispose of as appanages for his younger
children or his faithful retainers presents a curious resemblance to a
well‐known feature of feudalism in the Middle Ages; but it was never
practically enforced in Israel. Before the Exile it was evidently unknown,
and after the Exile there was no king to provide for. But why does the
prophet bestow so much care on a mere detail of a political system in
which, as a whole, he takes so little interest? It is because of his
concern for the rights of the common people against the high‐handed
tyranny of the king and his nobles. He recalls the bad times of the old
monarchy when any man was liable to be ejected from his land for the
benefit of some court favourite, or to provide a portion for a younger son
of the king. The cruel evictions of the poorer peasant proprietors, which
all the early prophets denounce as an outrage against humanity, and of
which the story of Naboth furnished a typical example, must be rendered
impossible in the new Israel; and as the king had no doubt been the
principal offender in the past, the rule is firmly laid down in his case
that on no pretext must he take the people’s inheritance. And this, be it
observed, is an application of the religious principle which underlies the
constitution of the theocracy. The land is Jehovah’s, and all interference
with the ancient landmarks which guard the rights of private ownership is
an offence against the holiness of the true divine King who has His abode
amongst the tribes of Israel. This suggests developments of the idea of
holiness which reach to the very foundations of social well‐being. A
conception of holiness which secures each man in the possession of his own
vine and fig tree is at all events not open to the charge of ignoring the
practical interests of common life for the sake of an unprofitable
ceremonialism.
In the next place, we come across a much more startling revelation of the
injustice habitually practised by the Hebrew monarchs. Just as later
sovereigns were wont to meet their deficits by debasing the currency, so
the kings of Judah had learned to augment their revenue by a systematic
falsification of weights and measures. We know from the prophet Amos(249)
that this was a common trick of the wealthy landowners who sold grain at
exorbitant prices to the poor whom they had driven from their possessions.
They “made the ephah small and the shekel great, and dealt falsely with
balances of deceit.” But it was left for Ezekiel to tell us that the same
fraud was a regular part of the fiscal system of the Judæan kingdom. There
is no mistaking the meaning of his accusation: “Have done, O princes of
Israel, with your violent and oppressive rule; execute judgment and
justice, and take away your exactions from My people, saith Jehovah God.
_Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath._”(250)
That is to say, the taxes were surreptitiously increased by the use of a
large shekel (for weighing out money payments) and a large bath and ephah
(for measuring tribute paid in kind). And if it was impossible for the
poor to protect themselves against the rapacity of private dealers, poor
and rich alike were helpless when the fraud was openly practised in the
king’s name. This Ezekiel had seen with his own eyes, and the shameful
injustice of it was so branded on his spirit that even in a vision of the
last days it comes back to him as an evil to be sedulously guarded
against. It was eminently a case for legislation. If there was to be such
a thing as fair dealing and commercial probity in the community, the
system of weights and measurement must be fixed beyond the power of the
royal caprice to alter it. It was as sacred as any principle of the
constitution. Accordingly he finds a place in his legislation for a
corrected scale of weights and measures, restored no doubt to their
original values. The ephah for dry measure and the bath for liquid measure
are each fixed at the tenth part of a homer. “The shekel shall be twenty
geras:(251) five shekels shall be five, and ten shekels shall be ten, and
fifty shekels shall be your maneh.”(252)
These regulations extend far beyond the immediate object for which they
are introduced, and have both a moral and a religious bearing. They
express a truth often insisted on in the Old Testament, that commercial
morality is a matter in which the holiness of Jehovah is involved: “A
false balance is an abomination to Jehovah, but a just weight is His
delight.”(253) In the Law of Holiness an ordinance very similar to
Ezekiel’s occurs amongst the conditions by which the precept is to be
fulfilled: “Be ye holy, for I am holy.”(254) It is evident that the
Israelites had learned to regard with a religious abhorrence all tampering
with the fixed standards of value on which the purity of commercial life
depended. To overreach by lying words was a sin; but to cheat by the use
of a false balance was a species of profanity comparable to a false oath
in the name of Jehovah.
These rules about weights and measures required, however, to be
supplemented by a fixed tariff, regulating the taxes which the prince
might impose on the people.(255) It is not quite clear whether any part of
the prince’s own income was to be derived from taxation. The tribute is
called an “oblation,” and there is no doubt that it was intended
principally for the support of the Temple ritual, which in any case must
have been the heaviest charge on the royal exchequer. But the oblation was
rendered to the prince in the first instance; and the prophet’s anxiety to
prevent unjust exactions springs from a fear that the king might make the
Temple tax a pretext for increasing his own revenue. At all events the
people’s duty to contribute to the support of public ordinances according
to their ability is here explicitly recognised. Compared with the
provision of the Levitical law the scale of charges here proposed must be
pronounced extremely moderate. The contribution of each householder varies
from one‐sixtieth to one‐twohundredth of his income and is wholly paid in
kind.(256) The proper equivalent under the second Temple of Ezekiel’s
“oblation” was a poll‐tax of one‐third of a shekel, voluntarily undertaken
at the time of Nehemiah’s covenant “for the service of the house of our
God; for the shewbread and for the continual meal‐offering, and for the
continual burnt‐offering, of the Sabbaths, of the new moons, for the set
feasts, and for the holy things, and for the sin‐offerings to make
atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God.”(257)
In the Priestly Code this tax is fixed at half a shekel for each man.(258)
But in addition to this money payment the law required a tenth of all
produce of the soil and the flock to be given to the priests and Levites.
In Ezekiel’s legislation the tithes and firstfruits are still left for the
use of the owner, who is expected to consume them in sacrificial feasts at
the sanctuary. The only charge, therefore, of the nature of a fixed
tribute for religious purposes is the oblation here required for the
regular sacrifices which represent the stated worship rendered on behalf
of the community as a whole.
This brings us now to the more important aspect of the kingly office—its
religious privileges and duties. Here there are three points which require
to be noticed.
1. In the first place it is the duty of the prince to supply the material
of the public sacrifices offered in the name of the people.(259) Out of
the tribute levied on the people for this purpose he has to furnish the
altar with the stated number of victims for the daily service, the
Sabbaths, and new moons, and the great yearly festivals. It is clear that
some one must be charged with the responsibility of this important part of
the worship, and it is significant of Ezekiel’s relations to the past that
the duty does not yet devolve directly on the priests. They seem to
exercise no authority outside of the Temple, the king standing between
them and the community as a sort of patron of the sanctuary. But the
position of the prince is not simply that of an official receiver,
collecting the tribute, and then handing it over to the Temple as it was
required. He is the representative of the religious unity of the nation,
and in this capacity he presents in person the regular sacrifices offered
on behalf of the community. Thus on the day of the Passover he presents a
sin‐offering for himself and the people,(260) as the high priest does in
the ceremonial of the Great Day of Atonement.(261) And so all the
sacrifices of the stated ritual are his sacrifices, officiating as the
head of the nation in its acts of common worship. In this respect the
prince succeeds to the rights exercised by the kings of Judah in the
ritual of the first Temple, although on a different footing. Before the
Exile the king had a proprietary interest in the central sanctuary, and
the expense of the stated service was defrayed as a matter of course out
of the royal revenues. Part of this revenue, as we see in the case of
Joash, was raised by a system of Temple dues paid by the worshippers and
expended on the repairs of the house; but at a much later date than this
we find Ahaz assuming absolute control over the daily sacrifices,(262)
which were doubtless maintained at his expense.
Now the tendency of Ezekiel’s legislation is to bring the whole community
into a closer and more personal connection with the worship of the
sanctuary, and to leave no part of it subject to the arbitrary will of the
prince. But still the idea is preserved that the prince is the religious
as well as the civil representative of the nation; and although he is
deprived of all control over the performance of the ritual, he is still
required to provide the public sacrifices and to offer them in the name of
his people.
2. In virtue of his representative character the prince possesses certain
privileges in his approaches to God in the sanctuary not accorded to
ordinary worshippers. In this connection it is necessary to explain some
details regulating the use of the sanctuary by the people. The outer court
might be entered by prince or people either through the north or south
gate, but not from the east. The eastern gate was that by which Jehovah
had entered His dwelling‐place, and the doors of it are for ever closed.
No foot might cross its threshold. But the prince—and this is one of his
peculiar rights—might enter the gateway from the court to eat his
sacrificial meals.(263) It seems therefore to have served the same purpose
for the prince as the thirty cells along the wall did for common
worshippers. The east gate of the inner court was also shut as a rule, and
was probably never used as a passage even by the priests. But on the
Sabbaths and new moons it was thrown open to receive the sacrifices which
the prince had to bring on these days, and it remained open till the
evening. On days when the gate was open the worshipping congregation
assembled at its door, while the prince entered as far as the threshold
and looked on while the priests presented his offering; then he went out
by the way he had entered. If on any other occasion he presented a
voluntary sacrifice in his private capacity, the east gate was opened for
him as before, but was shut as soon as the ceremony was over. On those
occasions when the eastern gate was not opened, as at the great annual
festivals, the people probably gathered round the north and south gates,
from which they could see the altar; and at these seasons the prince
enters and departs in the common throng of worshippers. A very peculiar
regulation, for which no obvious reason appears, is that each man must
leave the Temple by the gate opposite to that at which he entered; if he
entered by the north, he must leave by the south, and _vice versâ_.(264)
Many of these arrangements were no doubt suggested by Ezekiel’s
acquaintance with the practice in the first Temple, and their precise
object is lost to us. But one or two facts stand out clearly enough, and
are very instructive as to the whole conception of Temple worship. The
chief thing to be noticed is that the principal sacrifices are
representative. The people are merely spectators of a transaction with God
on their behalf, the efficacy of which in no way depends on their co‐
operation. Standing at the gates of the inner court, they see the priests
performing the sacred ministrations; they bow themselves in humble
reverence before the presence of the Most High; and these acts of devotion
may have been of the utmost importance for the religious life of the
individual Israelite. But the congregation takes no real part in the
worship; it is done for them, but not by them; it is an _opus operatum_
performed by the prince and the priests for the good of the community, and
is equally necessary and equally valid whether there is a congregation
present to witness it or not. Those who attend are themselves but
representatives of the nation of Israel, in whose interest the ritual is
kept up. But the supreme representative of the people is the king, and we
note how everything is done to emphasise his peculiar dignity within the
sanctuary. It was necessary perhaps to do something to compensate for the
loss of distinction caused by the exclusion of the royal body‐guard from
the Temple. The prince is still the one conspicuous figure in the outer
court. Even his private sacrificial meals are eaten in solitary state, in
the eastern gateway, which is used for no other purpose. And in the great
functions where the prince appears in his representative character he
approaches nearer to the altar than is permitted to any other layman. He
ascends the steps of the eastern gateway in the sight of the people, and
passing through he presents his offerings on the verge of the inner court
which none but the priests may enter. His whole position is thus one of
great importance in the celebration of public ordinances. In detail his
functions are no doubt determined by ancient prescriptive usages not known
to us, but modified in accordance with the stricter ideal of holiness
which Ezekiel’s vision was intended to enforce.
3. Finally, we have to observe that the prince is rigorously excluded from
properly priestly offices. It is true that in some respects his position
is analogous to that of the high priest under the law. But the analogy
extends only to that aspect of the high priest’s functions in which he
appears as the head and representative of the religious community, and
ceases the moment he enters upon priestly duties. So far as the special
degree of sanctity which characterises the priesthood is concerned, the
prince is a layman, and as such he is jealously debarred from approaching
the altar, and even from intruding into the sacred inner court where the
priests minister. Now this fact has perhaps a deeper historical importance
than we are apt to imagine. There is good reason to believe that in the
old Temple the kings of Judah frequently officiated in person at the
altar. At the time when the monarchy was established it was the rule that
any man might sacrifice for himself and his household, and that the king
as the representative of the nation should sacrifice on its behalf was an
extension of the principle too obvious to require express sanction.
Accordingly we find that both Saul and David on public occasions built
altars and offered sacrifice to Jehovah. The older theory indeed seems to
have been that priestly rights were inherent in the kingly office, and
that the acting priests were the ministers to whom the king delegated the
greater part of his priestly functions. Although the king might not
appoint any one to this duty without respect to the Levitical
qualification, he exercised within certain limits the right of deposing
one family and installing another in the priesthood of the royal
sanctuary. The house of Zadok itself owed its position to such an act of
ecclesiastical authority on the part of David and Solomon.
The last occasion on which we read of a king of Judah officiating in
person in the Temple is at the dedication of the new altar of Ahaz, when
the king not only himself sacrificed, but gave directions to the priests
as to the future observance of the ritual. The occasion was no doubt
unusual, but there is not a word in the narrative to indicate that the
king was committing an irregular action or exceeding the recognised
prerogatives of his position. It would be unsafe, however, to conclude
that this state of things continued unchanged till the close of the
monarchy. After the time of Isaiah the Temple rose greatly in the
religious estimation of the people, and a very probable result of this
would be an increasing sense of the importance of the ministration of the
official priesthood. The silence of the historical books and of
Deuteronomy may not count for much in an argument on this question; but
Ezekiel’s own decisions lack the emphasis and solemnity with which he
introduces an absolute innovation like the separation between priests and
Levites in ch. xliv. It is at least possible that the later kings had
gradually ceased to exercise the right of sacrifice, so that the privilege
had lapsed through desuetude. Nevertheless it was a great step to have the
principle affirmed as a fundamental law of the theocracy; and this Ezekiel
undoubtedly does. If no other practical object were gained, it served at
least to illustrate in the most emphatic way the idea of holiness, which
demanded the exclusion of every layman from unhallowed contact with the
most sacred emblems of Jehovah’s presence.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
It will be seen from all that has been said that the real interest of
Ezekiel’s treatment of the monarchy lies far apart from modern problems
which might seem to have a superficial affinity with it. No lessons can
fairly be deduced from it on the relations between Church and State, or
the propriety of endowing and establishing the Christian religion, or the
duty of rulers to maintain ordinances for the benefit of their subjects.
Its importance lies in another direction. It shows the transition in
Israel from a state of things in which the king is both _de jure_ and _de
facto_ the source of power and the representative of the nation and where
his religious status is the natural consequence of his civic dignity, to a
very different state of things, where the forms of the ancient
constitution are retained although the power has largely vanished from
them. The prince now requires to have his religious duties imposed on him
by an abstract political system whose sole sanction is the authority of
the Deity. It is a transition which has no precise parallel anywhere else,
although resemblances more or less instructive might doubtless be
instanced from the history of Catholicism. Nowhere does Ezekiel’s idealism
appear more wonderfully blended with his equally characteristic
conservatism than here. There is no real trace of the tendency attributed
to the prophet to exalt the priesthood at the expense of the monarchy. The
prince is after all a much more imposing personage even in the ceremonial
worship than any priest. Although he lacks the priestly quality of
holiness, his duties are quite as important as those of the priests, while
his dignity is far greater than theirs. The considerations that enter in
to limit his power and importance come from another quarter. They are such
as these: first, the loss of military leadership, which is at least to be
presumed in the circumstances of the Messianic kingdom; second, the
welfare of the people at large; and third, the principle of holiness,
whose supremacy has to be vindicated in the person of the king no less
than in that of his meanest subject.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the transition referred to was
not actually accomplished even in the history of Israel itself. It was
only in a vision that the monarchy was ever to be represented in the form
which it bears here. From the time of Ezekiel no native king was ever to
rule over Israel again save the priest‐princes of the Asmonean dynasty,
whose constitutional position was defined by their high‐priestly dignity.
Ezekiel’s vision is therefore a preparation for the kingless state of
post‐exilic Judaism. The foreign potentates to whom the Jews were subject
did in some instances provide materials for the Temple worship, but their
local representatives were of course unqualified to fill the position
assigned to the prince by the great prophet of the Exile. The community
had to get along as best it could without a king, and the task was not
difficult. The Temple dues were paid directly to the priests and Levites,
and the function of representing the community before the altar was
assigned to the High Priest. It was then indeed that the High Priesthood
came to the front and blossomed out into all the magnificence of its legal
position. It was not only the religious part of the prince’s duties that
fell to it, but a considerable share of his political importance as well.
As the only hereditary institution that had survived the Exile, it
naturally became the chief centre of social order in the community. By
degrees the Persian and Greek kings found it expedient to deal with the
Jews through the High Priest, whose authority they were bound to respect,
and thus to leave him a free hand in the internal affairs of the
commonwealth. The High Priesthood, in fact, was a civil as well as a
priestly dignity. We can see that this great revolution would have broken
the continuity of Hebrew history far more violently than it did, but for
the stepping‐stone furnished by the ideal “prince” of Ezekiel’s vision.