Scripture Daily

Context No. 388 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 48:6-12: in context

6“By the border of Ephraim, from the east side even to the west side, Reuben, one portion. 7“By the border of Reuben, from the east side to the west side, Judah, one portion. 8“By the border of Judah, from the east side to the west side, shall be the offering which you shall offer, twenty-five thousand reeds in width, and in length as one of the portions, from the east side to the west side; and the sanctuary shall be in the middle of it. 9“The offering that you shall offer to the LORD shall be twenty-five thousand reeds in length, and ten thousand in width. 10For these, even for the priests, shall be the holy offering: toward the north twenty-five thousand in length, and toward the west ten thousand in width, and toward the east ten thousand in width, and toward the south twenty-five thousand in length; and the sanctuary of the LORD shall be in the middle of it. 11It shall be for the priests who are sanctified of the sons of Zadok, who have kept my instruction, who didn’t go astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray. 12It shall be to them an offering from the offering of the land, a most holy thing, by the border of the Levites.

This is part of Ezekiel's vision of the restored land, and on the surface it is a surveyor's document, dividing the territory into equal strips, one portion for each tribe, with a special holy portion set apart in the center and the sanctuary placed in the middle of it, so that God's dwelling sits at the heart of everything. But tucked into the description of who gets the land nearest the sanctuary is a line that carries real weight.

The holiest portion of the land, the strip right around the temple, is assigned to the priests, and the text specifies which priests: the sons of Zadok, who kept my charge, God says, who did not go astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray. That is the whole reason they are given the place of honor. When the nation drifted into idolatry, and even the Levites, the tribe set apart for God, drifted with it, one priestly line held the line. They did not go astray when going astray was the norm, when nearly everyone around them, including their own colleagues, was drifting. And in the vision of the restored order, God has not forgotten it. He gives them the ground closest to his own dwelling. Their quiet faithfulness during a time of general apostasy, faithfulness that probably looked pointless and lonely while it was happening, is specifically remembered and specifically honored.

That is worth holding onto, because staying faithful when everyone around you is drifting is one of the loneliest things there is, and it rarely feels rewarded in the moment. The Zadokites had no way of knowing, while they held their ground, that God was keeping account of it. When the whole community around me is quietly drifting, and holding the line feels unnoticed and futile, do I trust, as it turned out to be true for the sons of Zadok, that God remembers who did not go astray, and honors it in the end?

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