Scripture Daily

Context No. 293 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 45:13-17: in context

13“‘“This is the offering that you shall offer: the sixth part of an ephah from a homer of wheat, and you shall give the sixth part of an ephah from a homer of barley, 14and the set portion of oil, of the bath of oil, one tenth of a bath out of the cor, which is ten baths, even a homer (for ten baths are a homer), 15and one lamb of the flock out of two hundred, from the well-watered pastures of Israel—for a meal offering, for a burnt offering, and for peace offerings, to make atonement for them,” says the Lord GOD. 16“All the people of the land shall give to this offering for the prince in Israel. 17It shall be the prince’s part to give the burnt offerings, the meal offerings, and the drink offerings, in the feasts, and on the new moons, and on the Sabbaths, in all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel. He shall prepare the sin offering, the meal offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offerings, to make atonement for the house of Israel.”

This is a technical passage from Ezekiel's long vision of a restored temple, full of measures of wheat and oil and precise fractions, the kind of text that is easy to skim. But it sets out a role worth slowing down for, the role of the one it calls the prince, the leader of the restored people.

The arrangement is specific. The ordinary people of the land bring a set contribution, a measured portion of grain and oil and a lamb from every flock. But the responsibility does not stop with what they give. It is the prince, the text says, who must provide the burnt offerings, the grain offerings, and the drink offerings at all the feasts and new moons and sabbaths. He is the one who prepares the sin offering and the rest, and the reason is stated plainly: to make atonement for the house of Israel. The leader's defining task here is not to be served by the people but to bear responsibility for their standing before God, to be the one who actually presents what reconciles the whole community to the LORD.

That is a striking picture of what authority is for. The prince is charged with the people's atonement, with providing at his own hand what puts them right with God, rather than extracting from them what serves himself. Wherever I hold responsibility over others, in a family, a team, a community, do I treat it as a position to be served, or as a duty to carry the cost of their good before God?

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