Re: Naked Bible 156: Ezekiel 40-48 Part 1 and Naked Bible 157: Ezekiel 40-48 Part 2
If you think of Ezekiel’s vision in chapters 40-48 as something more or less literal, you will miss the point entirely.
Heiser punches another big hole in Dispensationalism here. It’s common to see Ezekiel’s final vision (40-48) as a depiction of the Millennium. That’s simply not possible. Given a genuine knowledge of Hebrew prophetic literary conventions, the “millennium” refers to the long period between Christ’s Ascension and His Second Coming. Heiser also ties this passage to Revelation 20, pointing out how it’s the same event. Revelation is written in cycles, not chronological sequences. What’s in Revelation 19 does not come before Revelation 20 in chronology. Further, there is no literal millennium anywhere in Hebrew thinking.
In his previous podcasts on Ezekiel 38-39, Heiser had already shot down the idea that Gog/Magog had anything to do with Russia; it referred to people living in modern Turkey. Heiser talked about how the Valley of Dry Bones (AKA Travelers’ Valley) refers to some place on the eastern ridge above the Dead Sea. It’s the same place fire and brimstone fell on a previous occasion (Sodom and Gomorrah). The entire eastern ridge above the Jordan Valley all the way up to Mount Hermon is the homeland of the Watchers and the Nephilim clans, but the valley with the bones is a place also dotted with various shrines for death cults. It will become the graveyard of Satan’s army. It won’t be much of a battle, and nobody who understands Hebrew traditions could possibly take it literally.
The New Earth Kingdom is after the Second Coming, not some alleged Rapture followed by a literal Millennium. That’s an interpretive system, not the Bible. There will be no new Temple built in Jerusalem. Ezekiel’s description here cannot be taken literally. Why not?
1. The proportions are unbalanced, with the doors being half the length of the room inside.
2. There is no height indicated, no roof.
3. There are no instructions on building this thing, only measurements of something God Himself builds (for Eternity, not some resurrected Jewish kingdom). The whole point of this vision is to record symbols that would convict Ezekiel’s listeners of their sins.
4. There are no furnishings for a priestly offering, no place to wash, etc. The water flowing out of the Temple is a mere trickle at this point. This cannot represent a restored OT Temple with sacrifices.
5. After the Cross, there can be no purpose in a sacrificial system in a Millennium. Either Christ paid it all or He accomplished nothing.
Reminder: The OT sacrificial system was never about covering individual sins in the first place. Quoting Heiser —
People think this is about getting moral forgiveness and having your sins wiped away as an individual. In other words, they’re superimposing the talk about Jesus onto the Old Testament sacrificial system. If you have listened to our series on Leviticus, you know that doesn’t work because that’s not actually what Leviticus says ninety-nine percent of the time. The sacrifices are really about purifying objects and purifying sacred space and that sort of thing.
God would not commission a restoration of the sacrificial system since that pointed to Jesus, who would have already finished His redemptive work before any alleged Millennium. We are the sacred space; we are His Temple until He Returns. We are also the New Priesthood under Christ, who is High Priest under the Order of Melchizedek. Ezekiel does not envision a false Temple to a false worship.
6. You cannot separate the redrawn tribal boundaries from the Temple, and those tribal allotments in Ezekiel are clearly not literal. Indeed, the territory is considerably smaller than what David and Solomon held. Instead, it looks more like what Joshua conquered, minus everything on the East Bank of the Jordan, which land was never part of the promise in the first place.
7. The image of the Prince is not the Messiah if we take this literally. In Ezekiel’s vision, the Prince must offer sacrifices for himself; Christ is the Final Sacrifice. In the case of this Prince, there are places off-limits to him in the Temple. He also has a wife and children. There are restrictions on his land holdings, and he has no political authority to “rule the nations with a rod of iron” as the Messiah does. Making this figure the Messiah requires you start from an entirely different thought process, trying to see things the way the exiled Hebrew nobles would have, way before the New Testament imagery.
Saying something like this is a symbol does not mean, “It won’t happen.” It means what is coming cannot be understood in clinical terms. If you wipe away the awful nonsense of Dispensationalism and return to a genuine Hebrew Second Temple outlook, Ezekiel’s description says something totally different. The key here is restoring Eden, not some political-military state on the current earth.
Ezekiel’s verbiage here is the same as the ancient cosmic Mountain of God, the place where He resides and from which He reigns over Creation. The Garden of Eden is attached to that as His private space away from the courts. Ezekiel’s map of the future land of Israel is geographically impossible with earth as it now exists. The whole thing is realigned so that Jerusalem stands in the center of the territory, not in the south where the site stands now.
Ezekiel echoes the language of the global navel, the center of the universe, etc. The altar is at the “bosom of the earth” (literal Hebrew translation of 43:13). Nobody takes that literally. Instead, the description of the Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple, as well as the construction of each, echoed the language of Creation. That’s not apparent to us from English translations, but Heiser digs into the details to show how this is all tied together in symbolism that would be obvious to an ancient Hebrew mind. Don’t think about a physical structure, but metaphorical construct that speaks the language of Edenic paradise.
As part of this symbolism, Ezekiel’s temple is loaded with images of the Jubilee. Everything about his vision is in terms of 25 (half-jubilee) and 50, the Year of Liberation. The whole vision in chapter 40 opens with a notice of the date: 571 BC, the 25th year of captivity (half-jubilee), on the tenth of the first month.
Side note: Israel had used two calendars at the same time for several centuries. The original was the “religious calendar” (Nisan Year, first month at Passover) starting in the spring. However, King David was crowned the first of Tishri. His son Solomon began organizing his reign under a “civil calendar” (Tishri Year, seventh month). When the Kingdom split, Israel went back to Nisan Year calendar, while Judah retained the Tishri Year. Ezekiel was using the Tishri Year calendar, so his first month was Tishri, and the tenth day was the Day of Atonement.
The only other mention of a tenth day in the Torah was the start of a Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25:8ff). Ezekiel is giving us a clue here — God is hitting the reset button. The numerology here would be kindled in a Hebrew mind, starting to watch for the Passover Lamb. Everything was here except the Lamb. That Jesus was born on the first of Tishri matters a lot here; we get that from Revelation 12. But Ezekiel’s audience didn’t know that yet, so we realize that it’s left hanging intentionally. The idea was to pre-load the Hebrew awareness of a Messiah yet to come on King David’s Coronation Day (in the ANE, this was a king’s “birthday”).
It was left hanging intentionally because God was keeping the Messiah a secret from His rebellious staff. Paul said, “If they had known…” Jesus had to explain it repeatedly, so it wasn’t obvious, but the existence of this huge blank spot in Ezekiel’s message was meaningful in itself. Heiser goes on to mention other obscurities, but you get the point. Even the dimensions of Ezekiel’s new map of Israel is offered in multiples of 50. The coming of the Messiah would be the Final Jubilee.
