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Biblion Bible Commentary

Read the introduction to Ezekiel · About this commentary

The Holy Portion and Honest Scales

Ezekiel 45:1-25

1 “‘“Moreover, when you divide by lot the land for inheritance, you shall offer an offering to Yahweh, a holy portion of the land. The length shall be the length of twenty-five thousand reeds, and the width shall be ten thousand. It shall be holy in all its border all around. · WEB

Land is set aside for the sanctuary before anything else is allotted, and the princes are handed a weights-and-measures law.

The division of the land begins with a subtraction. Before the tribes receive anything, a portion is set apart for Yahweh, holy throughout its borders, with the sanctuary in it and a strip for the priests and another for the Levites. A city portion is added for common use, and land on either side is assigned to the prince. The order is the argument. The sanctuary's ground is not carved out of somebody's allocation after the fact; it is taken off the top.

The prince's portion is defined in the same paragraph, and the reason is given later in the vision: he is to have land of his own My princes shall no more oppress my people Ezekiel 45:8. A ruler with a secure income has one motive less for confiscation. It is an unglamorous provision and it addresses the specific abuse the book has documented in the princes since chapter 22.

Then the address turns direct, and the tone is that of a man raising his voice. Enough, you princes of Israel! Remove violence and plunder, and execute justice and righteousness! Stop dispossessing my people! Four imperatives in two verses, in a chapter otherwise composed of dimensions. It is the only place in the temple vision where the vocabulary of the early oracles returns.

What follows it is remarkable for where it sits. You shall have just balances, a just ephah, and a just bath — and then the standards are actually specified, with the bath and the ephah both set at a tenth of a homer and the shekel at twenty gerahs. A weights-and-measures regulation is written into a vision of a temple, immediately after a command about oppression and immediately before the calendar of offerings. Honest scales are treated as sanctuary business.

The rest of the chapter sets out the offerings for the new moon, the passover and the feast of the seventh month, with the prince providing for the people. The whole arrangement is summarized in one clause about the prince's function — to make atonement for the house of Israel — which is a description of a ruler whose office is discharged at the altar rather than on a throne.

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