Gates, Daily Offerings, and Protected Homes

“The six working days” is literally “the six days of work”, the language of Exodus 20:9, “Six days shalt thou labour.” The new moon was also a day off from trade: Amos 8:5 has merchants asking, “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn?” The gate keeps the same calendar.

“Threshold” is miftan, the word used in 9:3 and 10:4 when the glory moved to the threshold of the house as it prepared to leave. The prince worships at a threshold too, and comes no farther. “Without” means he approaches from the outer court side.

The people stand farther back, at the entrance of the gate. With the gate open, those in the outer court could see through to the inner court and the altar, which is presumably the point of opening it on these days and leaving it open until evening.

Numbers 28:9 set the sabbath burnt offering at two lambs. Ezekiel’s prince gives six lambs and a ram, seven animals in all. The sabbath, one of the charges against Jerusalem in 22:8, is to be marked more lavishly than before.

“As he shall be able to give” is literally “the gift of his hand”, the phrase of Deuteronomy 16:17, where every man gives at the feasts “as he is able”. The ram’s grain is fixed at an ephah; the lambs’ grain is left to the prince’s means.

Numbers 28:11 required two bullocks, one ram and seven lambs at the new moon. Ezekiel prescribes one bullock, one ram and six lambs. Here, unusually, the new rule is smaller than the old one, which shows that the vision is not simply multiplying everything.

“According as his hand shall attain unto” is the idiom Leviticus 14:22 uses for a poor man’s offering: “such as he is able to get”. The phrase that protected the poor worshipper now describes the prince’s discretion.

The prince goes out by the same porch he entered. He is the one exception to the rule of the next verse, which forbids everyone else to leave by the gate they came in by.

“Solemn feasts” are the mo‘adim, the pilgrim festivals, when the courts were crowded. The Mishnah (Middot 2:2) describes a similar custom in the later temple: worshippers entered to the right and went round to leave by the left, except mourners, who walked the other way and were greeted as they passed.

2 Kings 16:18 records that Ahaz removed “the king’s entry without”, a private royal entrance into the house of the LORD. Ezekiel’s prince has no such entrance on feast days. He goes in with the crowd and out with the crowd.

“An hin of oil to an ephah” is stated for the third time in this chapter, after 45:24. A hin was about a sixth of a bath, and a bath equalled an ephah, so the oil is about one sixth the volume of flour. The ratio holds whatever the size of the offering.

A “voluntary” offering is a nedavah, a freewill gift not required by any feast (Leviticus 22:18–23). “One shall then open him the gate” is impersonal: a gatekeeper, perhaps one of the Levites of 44:11, opens it for him, and shuts it again as soon as he has gone.

“A lamb of the first year” is a yearling, ben shenato, the age required of the Passover lamb in Exodus 12:5. Nothing in Ezekiel’s calendar is as small as this offering, and nothing is as frequent: every other rite has its date, and this one has every date.

Numbers 28:5 set the daily grain at a tenth of an ephah and a quarter of a hin of oil. Ezekiel raises it to a sixth and a third. “Temper” in 1611 meant to moisten or mix; the Hebrew verb ras, to moisten, is found only here.

“Continual” is tamid, which became the name of the daily offering itself, “the Tamid”; a whole tractate of the Mishnah bears that name. The verse repeats lamb, grain and oil as though the list were a liturgy: the same three things, every morning.

The prince’s land passes to his sons as a nachalah, the family inheritance every Israelite household held. The prince is under the same inheritance law as any landholder. The chapter says nothing of the kingdom passing to a son, only the land.

The “year of liberty” is deror, the release proclaimed at the jubilee in Leviticus 25:10, “proclaim liberty throughout all the land”. Jeremiah 34:8–16 records Zedekiah proclaiming deror for Hebrew slaves in Ezekiel’s own lifetime, and the owners taking them back. This is the only mention of the jubilee in Ezekiel.

Samuel had warned that a king “will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants” (1 Samuel 8:14). This verse forbids exactly that. “Scattered” is the verb used for the scattering of the flock in 34:5–6.

The entry is beside the north inner gate, leading into the priests’ chambers of 42:1–14. At their far west end, in the recesses behind them, is a further place, tucked away from the traffic of the courts.

Leviticus 6:28 required that “the earthen vessel wherein it is sodden shall be broken”, because the sin offering made its pot holy. The priests’ kitchen keeps such holiness contained. In 1 Samuel 2:13–14 Eli’s sons had grabbed meat from the boiling pots with a three-pronged fork.

The Hebrew repeats itself: “a court in the corner of the court, a court in the corner of the court”, once for each corner, as the guide leads Ezekiel from one to the next. The outer court has four smaller courts built into its angles.

“Joined” renders qeturot, a rare word. It may mean enclosed or roofed; the Greek has “small”; and some link it to qatar, to smoke, making them smoky courts. Forty cubits by thirty, all four of one size.

“A row of building” is a course of stone running round each court, and the “boiling places” are cooking hearths set into the foot of the walls. The fires were built in, so that many pots could boil at once along the sides.

The “ministers of the house” are the Levites of 44:11 and 14. The “sacrifice of the people” is the peace offering, eaten by the worshippers themselves, as Elkanah’s family ate at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:4). Deuteronomy 12:7: “there ye shall eat before the LORD your God, and ye shall rejoice.”