Compare & Correlate · Interpretive
Ezekiel's house as the holy of holies
A reading that the whole of Ezekiel's temple complex is the inner room enlarged. Three of its rows are the text's own — the nested squares, and the inner room's name applied to the whole mountaintop — and one is contradicted by four verses. The identification itself is a tradition's, and is drawn as one.
Interpretive: No verse makes this link. It is a reading, and it is named.
Ezekiel's house as the holy of holies. Interpretive — no verse makes this connection. It is a reading, named and labelled below.
Whose reading: G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission (2004) · confidence: moderate. No verse makes this connection.
Sources:
- G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission (IVP, 2004) — the expanding-sanctuary reading this entry is drawn from.
- Every verse in the right-hand column is the text's own; the left-hand column is the reading, and nothing in it is cited.
Row by row
| What the reading proposes | What Ezekiel says | |
|---|---|---|
| Square, like the inner room | the complex repeats the inner room's square | five stated squares: the altar hearth 12 × 12, the inner room 20 × 20, the inner court 100 × 100, the precinct 500 × 500, the holy portion 25,000 × 25,000Ezekiel 45:2 |
| Measured, and the word 'square' is the text's own at Ezekiel 40:47, 41:21, 43:16 and 45:2. | ||
| Called most holy | the name of the inner room belongs to the whole | the inner room is most holy at 41:4, and 43:12 makes the whole territory on the mountaintop most holyEzekiel 43:12 |
| Lexical: the same phrase at Ezekiel 41:4 and 43:12. This is the reading's strongest row, and Ezekiel makes it. | ||
| Divides holy from common | a boundary wall, as the veil was a boundary | a wall round about, to separate the holy from the commonEzekiel 42:20 |
| It houses the prince | the prince dwells within, as the ark did | the prince sits in the gate to eat, enters and leaves by its vestibule, offers a sin offering for himself and has sons to inheritEzekiel 46:2 |
| Contradicted: Ezekiel 44:3, 46:2, 45:22 and 46:16 keep the prince at the gate. The one who dwells within is the LORD, at Ezekiel 43:7 — and the text's words there are throne and dwell, not prince. | ||
| And then the city | the sanctuary widens until it is the creation | Ezekiel ends with a city named 'the LORD is there'; Revelation 21:16 makes its city square and 21:22 gives it no templeEzekiel 48:35 |
| This is the tradition's step, not the text's. | ||
Where it appears in the text
- Ezekiel 40 — the measuring reed, the inner court's square, the porch
- Ezekiel 41 — the inner room, measured and named most holy
- Ezekiel 42 — the wall that separates the holy from the common
- Ezekiel 43 — the throne, and the whole mountaintop called most holy
- Ezekiel 44 — the prince, seated in the gate
- Ezekiel 45 — the precinct, square, and the prince's own sin offering
- Ezekiel 46 — the prince at the threshold, and his sons' inheritance
- Ezekiel 48 — the holy portion, square, and the city's name
In the app this comparison opens beneath each of those chapters. Open it in TheophilusBible.