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what’s not there

Ezekiel 41:5-11 (JDV)

Ezekiel 41:5 Then he measured the wall of the house; it was six long cubits thick. The width of the side rooms all around the house was four cubits.
Ezekiel 41:6 The side rooms were arranged one above another in three stories of thirty rooms each. There were ledges on the wall of the house all around to serve as supports for the side rooms, so that the supports would not be in the house wall itself.
Ezekiel 41:7 The side rooms surrounding the house widened at each successive story, for the structure surrounding the house went up by stages. This was the reason for the house’s broadness as it rose. And so, one would go up from the lowest story to the highest by means of the middle one.
Ezekiel 41:8 I saw that the house had a raised platform surrounding it; this foundation for the side rooms was six long cubits high.
Ezekiel 41:9 The thickness of the outer wall of the side rooms was five cubits. The free space between the side rooms of the house
Ezekiel 41:10 and the outer chambers was twenty cubits wide all around the house.
Ezekiel 41:11 The side rooms opened into the free space, one entrance toward the north and another to the south. The area of free space was five cubits wide all around.

what’s not there

Hals asserts that “the major technique employed to formulate messages of hope in Ezekiel is to express them as the undoing of past evil situations” (Hals, 288). Throughout this final section of Ezekiel, what counts is not so much new things added to the picture of the ideal temple, but what is not there as compared to the former picture of the temple corrupted by the sins of the worshippers.

For you and me, the best thing about our future lives as the redeemed of God is not that we will have special superpowers, but that we will not have all those things that weigh us down and hinder our full devotion to God and his purposes.

LORD, we eagerly await our full deliverance through Christ at his return.

Hals, Ronald M. Ezekiel. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2014.