Yahweh Is There
1 “Now these are the names of the tribes: From the north end, beside the way of Hethlon to the entrance of Hamath, Hazar Enan at the border of Damascus, northward beside Hamath (and they shall have their sides east and west), Dan, one portion. 2 “By the border of Dan, from the east side to the west side, Asher, one portion. 3 “By the border of Asher, from the east side even to the west side, Naphtali, one portion. 4 “By the border of Naphtali, from the east side to the west side, Manasseh, one portion. 5 “By the border of Manasseh, from the east side to the west side, Ephraim, one portion. 6 “By the border of Ephraim, from the east side even to the west side, Reuben, one portion. 7 “By the border of Reuben, from the east side to the west side, Judah, one portion. 8 “By the border of Judah, from the east side to the west side, shall be the offering which you shall offer, twenty-five thousand reeds in width, and in length as one of the portions, from the east side to the west side; and the sanctuary shall be in the middle of it. 9 “The offering that you shall offer to Yahweh shall be twenty-five thousand reeds in length, and ten thousand in width. 10 For these, even for the priests, shall be the holy offering: toward the north twenty-five thousand in length, and toward the west ten thousand in width, and toward the east ten thousand in width, and toward the south twenty-five thousand in length; and the sanctuary of Yahweh shall be in the middle of it. 11 It shall be for the priests who are sanctified of the sons of Zadok, who have kept my instruction, who didn’t go astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray. 12 It shall be to them an offering from the offering of the land, a most holy thing, by the border of the Levites. 13 “Alongside the border of the priests, the Levites shall have twenty-five thousand cubits in length and ten thousand in width. All the length shall be twenty-five thousand, and the width ten thousand. 14 They shall sell none of it, nor exchange it, nor shall the first fruits of the land be alienated, for it is holy to Yahweh. 15 “The five thousand cubits that are left in the width, in front of the twenty-five thousand, shall be for common use, for the city, for dwelling and for pasture lands; and the city shall be in the middle of it. 16 These shall be its measurements: the north side four thousand and five hundred, and the south side four thousand and five hundred, and on the east side four thousand and five hundred, and the west side four thousand and five hundred. 17 The city shall have pasture lands: toward the north two hundred fifty, and toward the south two hundred fifty, and toward the east two hundred fifty, and toward the west two hundred fifty. 18 The remainder of the length, alongside the holy offering, shall be ten thousand eastward and ten thousand westward; and it shall be alongside the holy offering. Its increase shall be for food to those who labor in the city. 19 Those who labor in the city, out of all the tribes of Israel, shall cultivate it. 20 All the offering shall be a square of twenty-five thousand by twenty-five thousand. You shall offer it as a holy offering, with the possession of the city. 21 “The remainder shall be for the prince, on the one side and on the other of the holy offering and of the possession of the city; in front of the twenty-five thousand of the offering toward the east border, and westward in front of the twenty-five thousand toward the west border, alongside the portions, it shall be for the prince. The holy offering and the sanctuary of the house shall be in the middle of it. 22 Moreover, from the possession of the Levites, and from the possession of the city, being in the middle of that which is the prince’s, between the border of Judah and the border of Benjamin, shall be for the prince. 23 “As for the rest of the tribes: from the east side to the west side, Benjamin, one portion. 24 “By the border of Benjamin, from the east side to the west side, Simeon, one portion. 25 “By the border of Simeon, from the east side to the west side, Issachar, one portion. 26 “By the border of Issachar, from the east side to the west side, Zebulun, one portion. 27 “By the border of Zebulun, from the east side to the west side, Gad, one portion. 28 “By the border of Gad, at the south side southward, the border shall be even from Tamar to the waters of Meribath Kadesh, to the brook, to the great sea. 29 “This is the land which you shall divide by lot to the tribes of Israel for inheritance, and these are their several portions, says the Lord Yahweh. 30 “These are the exits of the city: On the north side four thousand five hundred reeds by measure; 31 and the gates of the city shall be named after the tribes of Israel, three gates northward: the gate of Reuben, one; the gate of Judah, one; the gate of Levi, one. 32 “At the east side four thousand five hundred reeds, and three gates: even the gate of Joseph, one; the gate of Benjamin, one; the gate of Dan, one. 33 “At the south side four thousand five hundred reeds by measure, and three gates: the gate of Simeon, one; the gate of Issachar, one; the gate of Zebulun, one. 34 “At the west side four thousand five hundred reeds, with their three gates: the gate of Gad, one; the gate of Asher, one; the gate of Naphtali, one. 35 “It shall be eighteen thousand reeds in circumference; and the name of the city from that day shall be, ‘Yahweh is there.’
The tribes are laid out in equal strips around a holy portion, and the book ends by naming the city after the one fact that had been missing.
The allocation is described as a series of parallel bands running from the eastern border to the sea, one for each tribe, listed from north to south. Every tribe gets frontage on both boundaries and the same width of land. Whatever else this arrangement is, it is not the geography of Canaan, where the tribes had been fitted into hills, valleys and coastal plains of wildly unequal value. The plan is drawn on a principle rather than on terrain.
At the center is the holy portion, with the sanctuary in the middle of it, the priests to one side and the Levites to the other, and the city's land below. Judah lies immediately north of it and Benjamin immediately south, so the two tribes that had made up the surviving kingdom now stand as neighbors on either side of the sanctuary rather than one holding it. The tribes descended from the handmaids — Dan, Asher, Naphtali, Gad — are given full portions in the same series. No one is at the edge in the sense of being lesser.
The city itself is described last, and it is square, with three gates on each side named for the twelve tribes. Levi has a gate, though Levi has no tribal band. Joseph has a gate, though Joseph's portion was divided between his sons in the allocation. The gate list and the land list do not match, and both are given. Everyone who belongs has a way in, whether or not they hold territory.
The measurement of the circumference is the last number in a book full of them — eighteen thousand reeds around. And then the book ends on a name rather than a dimension: the name of the city from that day shall be, 'Yahweh is there.'
That is the answer to the sentence the whole book was written against. In a sealed room in chapter 8 the elders had said Yahweh doesn't see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land Ezekiel 8:12, and the people in Jerusalem had told the exiles to go far away from him. The glory had then been tracked leaving, stage by stage, until it stood on a mountain east of the city. Forty chapters later it comes back in by the gate it left through, and the last three words of the book are the city's new name. Nothing is said about its walls, its wealth or its king. What it is called is that God is in it.
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