Week 32 Ezekiel 40
The last big section of Ezekiel is about Ezekiel’s vision of a Temple. A bible reader might think it’s tedious reading but – for me – it’s tedious in an interesting way. There are quite a few exact measurements of the structure and detailed descriptions of the floor plan & decorative elements & furnishings. If I’m trying to mentally reconstruct the temple it’s easy to get lost. But I’m not really aiming at an architectural replica.
Last year I wrote that “Ezekiel’s Vision-Temple was never built (that I know about) and whether it’s a future building-project waiting-to-happen is debatable.” And I was thinking about that same thing this year.
There’s at least two ways to think about Ezekiel’s Temple. The first is that it was a building that Ezekiel was shown in a visionary experience and he was toured around the facility and given specific measurements. And the plan was that that building would eventually be built. That’s one way to see it.
The other way is to see it as a vision of something fantastic to come. But not a real live temple like the one Ezekiel saw in his vision.
Two ways: a temple-in-a-dream that was a forecast of a temple that would eventually become a temple in real life. Or else a temple-in-a-dream that would never become a real temple because it was meant to represent something temple-like but not an actual temple.
Note: see “Ezekiel’s Temple” July 13, 2021.