Ezekiel: Dwelling with God

Ezekiel was born to be a priest. As a Levite, he would have been prepared from a young age to know the specific laws that governed sacrifices and those who offered them. When he was 30, he would be able to offer sacrifices and intercede for Israel. But Ezekiel’s thirtieth year was spent in exile.

Ezekiel may have been astonished that prophecies came to him while he was far away from the temple and the promised land. The same year he would have begun his priestly duties, he was instead commissioned to bring a message of judgment to the exiled nation. But alongside this message of judgment was hope for restoration. And 14 years after Jerusalem had been captured and the temple destroyed, God gave Ezekiel a vision of a new temple.

Though Ezekiel was given detailed measurements in his vision, Ezra and Nehemiah did not build the second temple to these specifications, nor is there a command to do so in this vision. The detail about water running out of the temple, beginning as a trickle but ending as a great river (Ezekiel 47:1–6), indicates that this is a symbolic vision about a future restoration. The trees on either side of the river, bearing fruit each month with healing leaves (verse 12), foreshadow John’s vision of the new Jerusalem and bring an Edenic element to the vision.

The Jews of Ezekiel’s day were grappling with a theological crisis. They were supposed to be God’s people, but after generations of idolatry and breaking God’s law, they had been removed from the land God had promised to them—and the temple which had become a key part of keeping God’s law. How could they follow the law of Moses when many of them would never return to the land where it was meant to be kept?

Instead of going someplace to dwell with God, God descended to dwell with us.

Ezekiel’s temple symbolized a day when people would have such communion with God that we don’t need a temple. Instead of going someplace to dwell with God, God descended to dwell with us.

Question for Discussion/Reflection: Today, we understand that the Holy Spirit dwells in believers, and our bodies are called the temple of the Holy Spirit for that reason. Does that have any implications for how we should treat our bodies?

Suggestion for Prayer: Thank God for dwelling with us wherever we are and for the promise that we will be with him forever in the new heaven and earth.