20230111

a willing platform

Ezekiel 40:48-49 (JDV)

Ezekiel 40:48 Then he brought me to the portico of the house and measured the jambs of the portico; they were five cubits thick on each side. The width of the gate was fourteen cubits, and the side walls of the gate were three cubits wide on each side.
Ezekiel 40:49 The portico was twenty cubits across and twelve cubits deep, and 10 steps led up to it. There were pillars by the jambs, one on each side.

Eichrodt suggests that one of the ways of interpreting this last section of Ezekiel is to see it as “a prophetic vision of a future which the divine Lord of the people will bring into effect in his own time in complete independence from man” (531).

I think that is partly a helpful approach, but I think it is also a challenge. It is a challenge to the Jews in Ezekiel’s time to work toward a society that matched the glory of the new temple envisioned. It is also a challenge for Gentile Christians — or Christians of all ethnic origins — to set our standards high because we are called to house the presence of God.

God is at work. May we provide him a willing platform to do his work — in us and through us.

Eichrodt, Walther. Ezekiel. London: SCM Press, 1970.