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Context No. 1221 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 41:1-7: in context

1He brought me to the nave and measured the posts, six cubits wide on the one side and six cubits wide on the other side, which was the width of the tent. 2The width of the entrance was ten cubits, and the sides of the entrance were five cubits on the one side, and five cubits on the other side. He measured its length, forty cubits, and the width, twenty cubits. 3Then he went inward and measured each post of the entrance, two cubits; and the entrance, six cubits; and the width of the entrance, seven cubits. 4He measured its length, twenty cubits, and the width, twenty cubits, before the nave. He said to me, “This is the most holy place.” 5Then he measured the wall of the house, six cubits; and the width of every side room, four cubits, all around the house on every side. 6The side rooms were in three stories, one over another, and thirty in each story. They entered into the wall which belonged to the house for the side rooms all around, that they might be supported and not penetrate the wall of the house. 7The side rooms were wider on the higher levels, because the walls were narrower at the higher levels. Therefore the width of the house increased upward; and so one went up from the lowest level to the highest through the middle level.

Ezekiel's guide leads him into the temple of his vision, measuring as they go: the nave, the entrance, and finally the innermost room, twenty cubits square, which the guide names, this is the most holy place. Around the main hall are side chambers in three stories, thirty to a level, and a curious detail: the side rooms grow wider as they go up, because the wall of the temple is stepped back at each level, so the building broadens toward the top.

Two features of this measured vision are worth catching. First, at the center of it all is the most holy place, the innermost room where God's presence dwelt, and everything is arranged around it. The whole intricate structure exists to house that one central space; the measuring leads inward to the holy of holies. It is a picture of a life or a community rightly ordered, everything arranged around and pointing toward the presence of God at the center. Second, the strange detail that the building grows wider as it rises. The side chambers were broader on the upper floors because the wall stepped back; the structure opened outward the higher it went. There is a quiet image in that of how life with God is meant to go, not narrowing and constricting as it rises, but broadening, opening up, becoming more spacious the closer it comes to the top. We sometimes fear that drawing nearer to God means a shrinking, tightening life; the temple that widens upward suggests the opposite, that nearness to God is expansive, that the higher you go the more room there is. The house of God is built around the holy place at its heart and grows wider toward heaven.

Is my life ordered around the presence of God at its center, and do I expect nearness to him to constrict me, when the temple of the vision grew wider the higher it rose?

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