Ezekiel 44
God demotes most Levite priests
Keeping eastern gate closed
1The guide led me outside the Temple complex and to the eastern gate, which was shut. 2The LORD said, “This gate is staying shut. [1] No one will open it because this is the way I came back. It stays shut. 3No one but the ruler can come in to eat a sacrificial meal there, and only in the vestibule room. To get there, he has to come and go through some other gate. [2]God returns to the Temple
4Then the guide took me to the front of the Temple. I could see the bright light of the LORD’s glory filling the inside of the Temple. I dropped face-down on the ground. 5The LORD said:Human, listen very carefully. Pay close attention as I tell you about the Temple rules people need to obey. There are laws to follow, even about how and where to use the Temple gateways. 6Deliver a message to the people of Israel, that nation of spiritual rebels. Tell them the Lord God says this:
Dear people of Israel, I’ve had it with your disgusting sins. 7You’ve welcomed pagans into my sacred home, where I accept your offerings of food and the blood of sacrificed animals. We had an agreement, a covenant you broke. 8You were supposed to maintain the Temple, my home among you. But you hired it out to pagan foreigners.
9I’m the Lord God, and I’m telling you that if you step foot on the Temple grounds, you males had better be circumcised. And male or female, you better be people of faith.
Levites demoted
10Levites, the tribe of priests in charge of Israel’s worship, bear the responsibility for this. These worship leaders left me and started worshiping idols. 11Still, I’ll let them serve in my place of worship. I’ll give them responsibility for guarding the gates into the Temple. I’ll let them kill the animals that people bring to me as burnt offerings and other sacrifices. They’ll work as assistants to priests.12But because they helped the people of Israel worship idols, they’re going to face the consequences. 13They’ll be able to serve as assistants to priests, but not as priests. They can’t present the sacred offerings to me at the altar. They did repulsive things, and they have to live with the shame and the punishment.
14Yet, I’ll let them work at the Temple and do any of the chores that priests need them to do.
Zadok priests take charge of the Temple
15The only Levites who can bring the offerings to me are the descendants of the priest Zadok. [3] They stayed faithful to me. So, they’re the ones who can bring the people’s offerings to me. 16They’re the ones who can come into my Temple sanctuary. They’re the ones who can approach the table inside. They’re the ones in charge of ministry at the Temple.17Their ministry uniform is made of fine linen. They should wear no wool while ministering on the Temple grounds. 18Their uniform is linen from their underwear to their outerwear to their turbans. They shouldn’t wear anything that generates sweat.
19When they leave the inner courtyard to go to the outer courtyard where the people worship, they need to change clothes. I don’t want other people to come into contact with the holiness in those sacred clothes. [4]
20Priests shouldn’t shave their heads or let their hair grow long. They should keep it neatly trimmed. 21They can’t drink wine in the inner courtyard. 22They can’t marry a widow or a divorced woman—only virgins from the people of Israel.
Job description of a priest
23Priests are teachers who will show the people the difference between holy and secular, ritually clean and unclean. 24They’re judges as well, for they’ll settle disputes. And they’ll enforce my laws about religious festivals and the holy Sabbath day.25They shouldn’t spiritually contaminate themselves by contact with a dead person. Exceptions: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, and unmarried sister. 26If a priest does become ritually unclean, they have to go through the cleansing process and then wait an extra seven days. 27Then they can go back to work ministering in the Temple. But when they come back, they need to bring a purification offering.
28This is the inheritance I’m giving them: the priesthood. Don’t give them any land. They don’t need that kind of security. I am their security. 29They will eat the grain offerings that worshipers bring to the Temple. And they’ll eat meat from the purification offerings and the guilt offerings. Everything that’s holy in the Temple belongs to them. 30They get the best of the fruit harvest and every other offering, including bread the people bring. I’ll bless the people who bring these offerings to the Temple.
31Priests are not allowed to eat any bird or other animal that died on its own.
Footnotes
This is the eastern gate into Ezekiel’s visionary Temple complex. It was not the Eastern Gate through Jerusalem’s defensive walls. Suleiman the Magnificent sealed that gate when he rebuilt the walls in the 1500s—it remains sealed today. The story is that he sealed it and put a cemetery in front of it to keep the Jewish Messiah from fulfilling prophecy by returning through that gate (Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:1-11).
So, not even the king can walk through the eastern gate into the sprawling Temple courtyard. He comes into the courtyard through another gate. He’s allowed to eat sacrificed meat just inside the eastern gateway, but only in the vestibule, a room at the end of the long gateway. One of the sacrificial meals people would eat would be the meat from a peace offering, usually given as an expression of thanks to God.
Zadok was a priest who helped King David hold onto his royal power when David’s son Absalom led a violent coup. He also helped David’s son Solomon claim the throne, instead of Solomon’s older half-brother Adonijah—who Solomon later had executed. Zadok’s family of priests began to produce the high priests and other chief priests. Only descendants of Zadok could serve as chief priests. There were other families of priests, but those in the Zadok dynasty led Israel in matters of worship and Jewish law.
Ezekiel doesn’t explain how fabric can absorb holiness or transmit it to others. But the impression this leaves is that people ritually unclean could be harmed by something that came into contact with God. This was not the only time priests had to change clothes after performing a sacred act period (Leviticus 6:10-11; 16:23-24; Exodus 28:43). Washing the clothes protected citizens from encountering something not intended for them.
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