Ezekiel 44: 1-3 The Sealed Gate of the Temple

¹Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. ²The LORD said to me: This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut. ³Only the prince, because he is a prince, may sit in it to eat food before the LORD; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.

The eastern gate of this temple is to remain closed for all human traffic because it is the path that the LORD has utilized to enter the temple. Even the priests and the prince (mentioned here for the first time in Ezekiel 40-48) must enter by the north or south gateways. The repetition of this gate remaining shut emphasizes the important nature of this command for the sanctity of the temple and the safety of the people. It also may serve as a polemic against the Babylonian New Year’s festival where Marduk is paraded from the temple and then reenters in procession to that temple’s central space. On the one hand, the LORD the God of Israel does not need human hands to carry the presence of God into the temple. Additionally, this permanent closing reinforces the LORD’s intention to be among the people forever and not to depart as the LORD’s presence did in Ezekiel 10.

The presence of the prince (Hebrew nasi) in this section will be expanded on later in Ezekiel 45:21-46:12 as the provider of offerings at festivals and a participant in those celebrations. Yet even this expansion does not offer a lot of specificity about the role of this prince of the people. On the one hand, the prince is permitted to eat before the LORD and has a special relation to the LORD. The presence of a new prince has been promised in both in Ezekiel 34: 23-24 and 37: 24-25 as a new David and one who is a faithful shepherd. Yet, this prince does not construct this temple like Solomon and Ezekiel’s focus is less upon this prince who shepherds the people, and more on the Levites and Zadokite priests who will keep the people from defiling the temple. This prince may have an honored role in God’s future but Ezekiel’s concern is primarily with priestly things and not princely things.

Ezekiel 44:4-31 The Levites and the Zadokite Priests

⁴Then he brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the temple; and I looked, and lo! the glory of the LORD filled the temple of the LORD; and I fell upon my face. ⁵The LORD said to me: Mortal, mark well, look closely, and listen attentively to all that I shall tell you concerning all the ordinances of the temple of the LORD and all its laws; and mark well those who may be admitted to the temple and all those who are to be excluded from the sanctuary. ⁶Say to the rebellious house to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: O house of Israel, let there be an end to all your abominations ⁷in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood. You have broken my covenant with all your abominations. ⁸And you have not kept charge of my sacred offerings; but you have appointed foreigners to act for you in keeping my charge in my sanctuary.
⁹Thus says the Lord GOD: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary. ¹⁰But the Levites who went far from me, going astray from me after their idols when Israel went astray, shall bear their punishment. ¹¹They shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the temple, and serving in the temple; they shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall attend on them and serve them. ¹²Because they ministered to them before their idols and made the house of Israel stumble into iniquity, therefore I have sworn concerning them, says the Lord GOD, that they shall bear their punishment. ¹³They shall not come near to me, to serve me as priest, nor come near any of my sacred offerings, the things that are most sacred; but they shall bear their shame, and the consequences of the abominations that they have committed. ¹⁴Yet I will appoint them to keep charge of the temple, to do all its chores, all that is to be done in it.
¹⁵But the levitical priests, the descendants of Zadok, who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, shall come near to me to minister to me; and they shall attend me to offer me the fat and the blood, says the Lord GOD. ¹⁶It is they who shall enter my sanctuary, it is they who shall approach my table, to minister to me, and they shall keep my charge. ¹⁷When they enter the gates of the inner court, they shall wear linen vestments; they shall have nothing of wool on them, while they minister at the gates of the inner court, and within. ¹⁸They shall have linen turbans on their heads, and linen undergarments on their loins; they shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat. ¹⁹When they go out into the outer court to the people, they shall remove the vestments in which they have been ministering, and lay them in the holy chambers; and they shall put on other garments, so that they may not communicate holiness to the people with their vestments. ²⁰They shall not shave their heads or let their locks grow long; they shall only trim the hair of their heads. ²¹No priest shall drink wine when he enters the inner court. ²²They shall not marry a widow, or a divorced woman, but only a virgin of the stock of the house of Israel, or a widow who is the widow of a priest. ²³They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean. ²⁴In a controversy they shall act as judges, and they shall decide it according to my judgments. They shall keep my laws and my statutes regarding all my appointed festivals, and they shall keep my sabbaths holy. ²⁵They shall not defile themselves by going near to a dead person; for father or mother, however, and for son or daughter, and for brother or unmarried sister they may defile themselves. ²⁶After he has become clean, they shall count seven days for him. ²⁷On the day that he goes into the holy place, into the inner court, to minister in the holy place, he shall offer his sin offering, says the Lord GOD.
²⁸This shall be their inheritance: I am their inheritance; and you shall give them no holding in Israel; I am their holding. ²⁹They shall eat the grain offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering; and every devoted thing in Israel shall be theirs. ³⁰The first of all the first fruits of all kinds, and every offering of all kinds from all your offerings, shall belong to the priests; you shall also give to the priests the first of your dough, in order that a blessing may rest on your house. ³¹The priests shall not eat of anything, whether bird or animal, that died of itself or was torn by animals.

Charles Taylor, in his massive work A Secular Age, talks about the way the ancient world was viewed by its inhabitants as a ‘porous’ place with specific thin places where the holiness of the divine or the profanity of the demonic could come into contact with the people. These spaces were both places of great blessing and great danger, and it required the actions of the entire community to maintain a proper relationship with the divine to prevent the holiness of the God the community worshipped from either abandoning the protection of the community or actively inflicting punishment on the community. (Taylor, 2007, pp. 25-90) The purpose of the ordinances and regulations, the Levites, the priests, and the prophets within this world is to protect the holiness of the temple, the holy place for the city and people, as well as the life and prosperity of the people. Proximity to the LORD the God of Israel is a fraught reality and careless trespassing of the LORD’s holy space, in addition to the other ethical covenant violations of the people led to the departure of the LORD from the previous temple and the exile of the people. In this reconfigured world where the LORD will be present in the temple, the priests and Levites must maintain this holy space in a proper and respectful manner to the powerful God who resides at the center of the temple.

Up to this point in the temple vision Ezekiel has been asked to see and observe, but now Ezekiel’s focus moves to hearing and reporting. As Katheryn Pfisterer Darr states:

Until this point in the vision, Ezekiel has been called to focus attention upon everything his guide shows him (40:4); now, he is told to focus attention upon everything Yahweh tells him (44:5)… attention turns from the visual revelation of Yahweh’s glory filling the Temple (v.4) to God’s aural revelation in the form of ordinances and instructions concerning access to the Temple and its personnel. (NIB VI:1573)

Ezekiel is now giving actions that prescribe and prohibit activities within the temple to ensure that the temple remains undefiled and the people are protected from the holy and yet dangerous presence of God. The Levites, the priests, and the structure all separate the mundane from the holy, the clean from the unclean.

This temple vision which includes the return of the LORD to Israel is a renewal of Ezekiel’s call. The people have been receiving messages of hope from the prophet but now his role is to form a new way of being for the people to operate in this hopeful and reordered future. To ensure this future Ezekiel becomes a new lawgiver providing critical actions the people must do to remain in a good relationship with their God and covenant partner. The departure of the people from Mosaic Torah has been drastic, and even the Levites have followed the people in their abandonment of the LORD. Now the reorganized temple and people have restated laws and ordinances to order their lives.

Although foreigners working in the temple was not mentioned earlier in Ezekiel 8 when the previous temple was examined the influence of foreigners on the policies and worship of Israel and Judah has been a regular part of the narration of Israel’s history. These foreigners may have been visiting dignitaries who participated in the celebrations of the people, but they may also have had some official function in the temple. It is conceivable that they would serve as guards since most kings of this time had foreigners who served in their household and military.[1] It is also possible that Israel and Judah, in their fascination with their neighbors, brought other religious leaders into the temple. Leviticus rejects even offerings coming from a foreigner as unacceptable,[2] yet this seems to be one of many ordinances that were either forgotten or ignored in the practice of the people. Now a reordered temple requires the right people performing the right tasks to ensure that the LORD’s offerings are holy.

The Levites were originally set apart for responding faithfully to Moses when the rest of the people abandoned themselves to the worship of the golden calf.[3] Now as the people strayed from following the covenant of the LORD the Levites followed the people and some may have led the people astray. The Levites are to bear responsibility for the space of worship and bear the responsibility for their own offenses and the offenses that happen within that space.[4] They stand between God and Israel and the consequences for their actions. Daniel Block quotes Jacob Milgrom’s note on the implications of this position for the Levites:

the Levites function as a “lightning rod to attract God’s wrath upon themselves” for Israel’s sin… for their own failure to guard the house against encroachment, the Levites will experience Yahweh’s punishment. Because of their guilt they may not perform the most sacred aspects of the temple ritual. (Block, 1998, p. 629)

The Levites serve as a focal point for God’s punishment and they become the ones who must bear it for the people. They also are charged with the security of the temple and ensuring the separation of the holy from the mundane. They will not participate in the full work of the Zadokite priests, but they do serve as a buffer between the people and the priests. The access of the people to the inner court has been removed and the priests now stand in this place securing the sanctuary but also preparing the burnt offerings and other sacrifices for the people.

The priests were originally Aaron and his family, referred to as the Elide line of the priesthood. The descendants of Aaron by the time of Eli had become corrupt and were eliminated by God (1 Samuel 3-4). Zadok becomes high priest under David and is one of the people who backs Solomon in his ascension to kingship at the end of David’s life.[5] Ezekiel may come from this line of Zadok and Ezra who will lead the renewal of the temple in a rebuilt Jerusalem is also from this line.[6] Ezekiel implies that the Zadokites never departed from the covenant while the Levites did, and because of their faithfulness they are given the central role in the ministry of the temple. We encountered the Zadokites previously in 40:46 as the priests who have charge of the altar and in 43:19 in the purification of the altar. Now these Zadokite priests have the privilege and responsibility of ministering before the LORD.

To minister before the LORD requires attention to the care of one’s body and clothing. The vestments, mentioned earlier in 42:14 where these vestments are to be stored, are to be linen, and the priest is not to wear any wool that would cause perspiration before the LORD. Sweat or any bodily excretion was viewed as a defiling thing.[7] In a similar manner the regulations on cutting hair or disfigurement are brought forward from Leviticus 21. Just as the animals brought for the sacrificial acts were to be unblemished, those who were to stand before God were not to be sweaty, not to have shaved their heads nor have unkempt hair. They also were not to drink and by their inebriation do something that would bring defilement to the space and offend the presence of God. For these priests there is an element of cleanliness being required to be in the space of godliness. Everything in this reordered temple among the reestablished priesthood was to have its proper actions and places. The Zadokites have no inheritance among the land, they are to trust in the LORD and the people of God to provide for them. They have no other responsibility than the maintenance of the holy temple. These priests are given the privilege of eating the offerings provided for the LORD, and that should satisfy them.

The priests are also to be holy in their relationships. Priests are only allowed to marry a virgin from the house of Israel or the widow of another priest. Their presence in this critical role before God requires a certain distance from the people. This concern for purity was also behind Ezra’s denunciation of mixed marriages for both priests, Levites, and even the people of Israel.[8] The priest were also not allowed to be in the presence of a dead person unless it is a very close relative (father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or unmarried sister) and even in the case of a close relative they must undergo a week for purification before they can resume priestly duties. Their job before the LORD is of critical importance in the life of the people and it impacts every aspect of their lives and relationships.

The priestly role has three components. First, they are commanded to educate the people in matters holy and profane, unclean and clean. Second, the priests are charged with responsibility for the administration of justice according to the law. The priests and religious leaders in Israel have been the ones with access to the law of God and are charged with ensuring that judgments are handled according to God’s law. Finally, the priests were to be models of obedience to the will of God. (Block, 1998, pp. 642-643) The temple was to be the center of life for the people, and the priests who ministered in the temple were to ensure that the actions that defiled the temple and the people in the past are not repeated.

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[1] For example many of David’s mighty men are foreigners (2 Samuel 23:8-38).

[2] Leviticus 22:25.

[3] Exodus 32:28.

[4] Numbers 18:23.

[5] 1 Kings 1.

[6] Ezra 7:2.

[7] Deuteronomy 23:9-14 discusses nocturnal emissions and the necessity of covering excrement. For Ezekiel sweat likely falls under this type of consideration for defiling this holy space. Sweat is not prohibited in the camp, but only in this place in close proximity to the LORD.

[8] Ezra 9: 1-4.