Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Glory Returns by the East Gate
Ezekiel 43:1-12
1 Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looks toward the east. · WEB
The glory comes back into the house by the gate it left through, and the first thing said about the plan is that it is meant to produce shame.
The chapter opens at the east gate, and the direction is not incidental. The glory had gone out from the threshold to the east gate, and from there to the mountain east of the city Ezekiel 10:19 Ezekiel 11:23. Now the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east, along the same line, in reverse.
The description is short and the text stops to make an identification. The voice is like the sound of many waters. The earth shines with the glory. And then: It was like the appearance of the vision which I saw... when I came to destroy the city; and the visions were like the vision that I saw by the river Chebar. Three sightings are joined into one — the canal in exile, the departure from the doomed city, and this. The book insists that they are the same, and the prophet's response is the one from chapter 1: I fell on my face.
Then the glory enters by the east gate, the Spirit takes him into the inner court, and the house is filled. What is said from inside it is the sentence the whole book has been moving toward: Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell among the children of Israel forever. The wheels of chapter 1 established that the throne was mobile. Here it stops.
The conditions are stated immediately and they concern proximity. The kings had set their threshold by God's threshold and their doorpost beside his, with only a wall between, and had defiled his holy name by what they did in that space. The problem named is not distance but a nearness taken carelessly. And the sequel is stated as a fresh offer: Now let them put away their prostitution... Then I will dwell among them forever.
The last three verses give the vision its own stated purpose, and they should govern every reading of chapters 40 to 48. Show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the pattern. Then a condition follows — if they are ashamed of all that they have done — and only then is the full plan to be written out in their sight, so that they may keep the whole form of it. The measurements were never given as an end in themselves. They are shown to a people so that the gap between the plan and their record becomes visible, and the shame is the intended first result.
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