Measuring The Ideal Temple

Ezekiel 40-44

At the end of Ezekiel, there are a bunch of chapters about the dimensions of a new temple. It’s extremely boring to read. For those of us who want to learn from the Bible, what can we do with passages like this?

Ezekiel says that God gave him a vision of the new temple in Jerusalem. When Ezekiel received this vision, the former temple was a pile of ruins. Ezekiel’s vision describes a hope that one day the temple will be rebuilt.

In the vision, Ezekiel’s angelic guide measures out the dimensions of walls, gates, rooms, altars, doors, windows, and many other architectural details. It’s quite extensive. Naturally, you’d think these dimensions are important to God, and the best thing to do is build a temple following Ezekiel’s plans. If you’ve ever been to an old cathedral, you’ll know that architecture is important. Walking into a cathedral evokes a different feeling than walking into a mall. Perhaps God wants us to have the right architecture, to evoke the right feelings in us as we walk into his temple.

However, Ezekiel’s plans are impossible to follow. If you search for a diagram of Ezekiel’s temple, you’ll find images that give you the impression that Ezekiel wrote plans we can decipher. But if you search further, you’ll find that there are many details in Ezekiel’s plans that are unclear. Scholar Robert Alter says that most English translations of these chapters try to make the plans more intelligible than they are in Hebrew. Alter doesn’t do this in his translation, which means he has some passages like this:

“And he measured the gate’s hall from within to be one rod [6 cubits]. And he measured the gate’s hall to be eight cubits and its pillars two cubits, and the gate’s hall was within.” (40:9).

That’s confusing. What is a gate’s hall? How can a gate have a hall? And is it 6 cubits, or 8 cubits? And what does it mean for the hall to be 8 cubits? Is it 8 cubits high, long, or wide? Robert Alter’s translation is one long string of sentences that are equally hard to understand. If you look at the same verse in other English translations, they look totally different. That usually means all the translations are uncertain.

Surely, if Ezekiel really wanted to make precise building plans, he could have hired an architect to make drawings. Instead, we have plans that are impossible to follow. Ezekiel must have another reason for including these plans in his book.

As always, comparing this to other parts of the Bible is helpful. It reminds me of the book of Exodus, which starts out with an exciting narrative, then ends with boring architectural details. Perhaps Ezekiel included all these details because he wants us to compare his book with the book of Exodus. We could compare God’s call to Ezekiel with Moses and the burning bush. In Exodus, the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. In Ezekiel, the Israelites thought they were free in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem had become like Egypt. In Exodus, God destroyed Pharoah’s army to set the Israelites free. In Ezekiel, God sent Babylon to destroy Israelite leaders, and the rest went into exile in Babylon. Does Ezekiel want us to compare his exile in Babylon with freedom from slavery in Egypt? Maybe those two things are the same, in Ezekiel’s mind. Exile in Babylon isn’t fun, but neither was being in the wilderness after escaping Egypt.

If Ezekiel intended to make me compare his book with the book of Exodus, he just gave me a lot of homework. It would take a lot of time to comb through both books looking for similarities. The comparison would generate theological ideas that I wouldn’t notice if I only read the books separately. I could probably do a Phd about that. Maybe someone already has.

Then, you could compare Ezekiel’s temple vision with the temple Solomon built in Jerusalem. Ezekiel probably saw Solomon’s temple in person before he was exiled and the temple was destroyed. Ezekiel envisions a bigger temple than Solomon’s. That’s interesting, because the book of Kings says Solomon made the temple smaller than his palace. Solomon also built his palace right next to the temple.

Imagine the centre of Jerusalem, and seeing Solomon’s giant palace next to a smaller house for God. That tells people that politics and power are more important than God, which is not good, in Ezekiel’s view. In Ezekiel’s vision, the temple is the biggest structure, and there are no other structures around it. Ezekiel embeds a theological claim into his plans for the temple. The temple and worship of God should be separate from, and more important than, politics. Not following this guideline led Israel to destruction and exile.

So it turns out there is plenty we can do with these boring passages. But even if we didn’t have these intellectual avenues to explore Ezekiel’s vision, we can still see this as a meditative exercise. It takes a lot of focus and awareness to read these chapters. I can imagine taking this focus to physical spaces. I could walk through a church noticing every detail, just like Ezekiel did in his vision. In the right building, that could be a profound experience.