Scripture Daily

Context No. 1231 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 48:13-20: in context

13“Alongside the border of the priests, the Levites shall have twenty-five thousand cubits in length and ten thousand in width. All the length shall be twenty-five thousand, and the width ten thousand. 14They shall sell none of it, nor exchange it, nor shall the first fruits of the land be alienated, for it is holy to the LORD. 15“The five thousand cubits that are left in the width, in front of the twenty-five thousand, shall be for common use, for the city, for dwelling and for pasture lands; and the city shall be in the middle of it. 16These shall be its measurements: the north side four thousand and five hundred, and the south side four thousand and five hundred, and on the east side four thousand and five hundred, and the west side four thousand and five hundred. 17The city shall have pasture lands: toward the north two hundred fifty, and toward the south two hundred fifty, and toward the east two hundred fifty, and toward the west two hundred fifty. 18The remainder of the length, alongside the holy offering, shall be ten thousand eastward and ten thousand westward; and it shall be alongside the holy offering. Its increase shall be for food to those who labor in the city. 19Those who labor in the city, out of all the tribes of Israel, shall cultivate it. 20All the offering shall be a square of twenty-five thousand by twenty-five thousand. You shall offer it as a holy offering, with the possession of the city.

In Ezekiel's vision of the restored land, a great central portion is set apart as holy: a strip for the priests, a strip for the Levites, none of it to be sold or traded, for it is holy to the LORD. And in the middle of this arrangement sits the city, a portion for common use, for dwelling and pasture, its produce feeding the workers who serve the city, drawn from all the tribes. The whole holy offering is a great square, with the sacred and the common laid out together in a deliberate order.

What is striking in this careful layout is how the holy and the common are held together, not separated into different worlds. At the center of the vision is the sacred portion set apart for God and his ministers, and right alongside it, within the same great square, is the ordinary city where people live and work and grow food. The two are not walled off from each other; the common is arranged around and beside the holy, so that daily life unfolds in the immediate presence of what is set apart for God. It is a picture of an integrated life, where the sacred is at the center and everything ordinary, the dwelling, the farming, the work, is organized in relation to it, not in a separate compartment. Our tendency is to divide life into a religious zone and a secular zone, the holy things over here and the ordinary work over there. Ezekiel's vision refuses that division. The city and its labor sit right beside the holy offering, the workers eating the produce grown in the shadow of the sanctuary. All of life, the sacred and the common, belongs in one ordered whole with God at the center.

Do I split my life into a religious compartment and a secular one, or is my ordinary work and living arranged, like Ezekiel's city, right beside and in relation to the holy, with God at the center of the whole?

Sources